Kings and harlots - Part 2

Well, hello, it's good to be together again. This is our second session on the question of church and state. Let's open in a word of prayer. Father, thank you for your word again. Thank you Lord for the opportunity to use this medium to be able to spread your word to other parts of the world. Lord, I pray that you would be present with us in this session, Lord, that you would help me as a speaker to speak clearly, help us with the technology, help the hearers to hear your word. I ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. So let's begin to read again. Remember this session is a continuation of the previous one. It's not a separate session as such. And obviously at the end of the session there will be the Q&A, a live Q&A, and the link will be up on the screen in the last 20 seconds of the session. So I want to read from John chapter 17 and verse 9 through 18, John chapter 17, 9 through 18, because this is the passage that we ended up with in the last session. So John 17, 9, Jesus is praying and he says, I pray for them, I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. And all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to you, Holy Father. Keep through your name those whom you have given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name, those whom you gave me I have kept, and none of them has been lost except the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. I just want to pick up on two verses here very, very quickly. The first is in verse 9. He says, I pray for them, I do not pray for the world. I do not pray for the world. Now here's a question we must ask, and I know this is a little bit out of sequence, but since we're in this passage, we need to answer this question. If Jesus does not pray for the world, does that mean that He did not pray for the Roman Empire? That He did not pray for the Greek government? And remember the scriptures speak about us praying for the government, that we might live peaceably, and all of those things. But clearly His focus is the church, and not the world. And then in verse 14, I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world. The world has hated them because they are not of the world. If the world loves the church, there is a question whether they are indeed the Lord Jesus'. If we are His, the world will hate us. Now, we've had several centuries of general acceptance and freedom in most Western countries to worship, and in fact the church has become very acceptable in many of these countries. The tide is changing, and we're losing that kind of acceptance. But I want us to understand that this is an anomaly. These few hundred years that we've been accepted by the world in the United Kingdom, in America, in South Africa, other places, this is not the normal thing. The normal thing is for the church to be persecuted. Just read the Bible, and you'll find that all over. Alright, now let's get to this question then of Christian nations. And this is where we get into really difficult territory. This is where we step on toes, because I know that if you're American, you probably believe with all your heart that America is a Christian nation. If you're English or Scots, you probably believe with all your heart that the United Kingdom is Christian. Now before we deal with that, let me explain to you that I don't deny that nations may have a Christian tradition. A Christian tradition, or a Christian ethic, or ethos. But it does not make them Christian. Can we understand the difference? Yes, our culture may be based on the Word of God, vaguely, more or less, approximately. But that doesn't make the nation a Christian nation. Now here's some of the reasons, I'm going to give you a handful of reasons here why nations cannot be a Christian nation. Well, the first thing is that Christ died for individuals, and not for nations. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whatever country believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting. Is that what the Bible says? No, whosoever, whichever individual. Jesus died for people, individuals, not for nations. So how can a nation be Christian unless it is born again? Nations cannot be born again. Nations cannot be saved as a nation. There is no such thing in the Word of God. And I said earlier, Israel is a different story. We're not going to mix things up. We're not Israel. We're a Gentile nation. Predominantly, 99% of those who are watching are probably Gentile. Nations cannot be saved. And unless you're saved, you're not Christian. Now we know that. We know that when it comes to individuals. We know that we have friends and neighbors. If you ask them on the census form, what religion do you have, they'll say Christian. And we say, they're not Christians because they're not born again. And yet we say that our country is Christian. But the Christian is not born again. The nation is not born again. America is not born again. England is not born again. In fact, if I really want to upset you, let me tell you this. America is not more born again than China is. And England is not more born again than Russia is. Countries, nations cannot be born again. It's impossible. And if you're not born again, you cannot be a Christian. It's as simple as that. So you can't have a Christian nation. If the nation is not born again. And the nation cannot be born again because Jesus didn't die for nations. He died for individuals. The second reason is that being a Christian implies a relationship. We've heard that many times, that Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship. Yes, that's true. And we know that that's true in the individual sense. There are many people in most countries in the world who would claim to be Christian. How do we know they're not Christian? Well, they're not Christian because they don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Now, how can a nation have a relationship with Jesus Christ? It's clearly impossible. It just can't happen. It's just a total anomaly. There's no way a nation can have a relationship with the Lord. And so a nation cannot be Christian. I'm sure that you'll say, well, you know, is it not possible that there are so many Christians in a nation that you can call it a Christian nation? Yeah, I think that there is a possibility of that. If you have a preponderance of citizens are truly born again, you may be able to begin to say it is a Christian nation. But is that true of any nation in this world? Has it ever been true of any nation? No, it's never been true. Christians have always been a minority. Yes, churches, those who are part of Christendom, those who go to church for Easter and Christmas or for baptism and burial, they claim to be Christian. We know that that's not Christian. And we know that there was a time in America, there was a time in England and other countries when probably 70, 80 percent of the population claimed to be Christian on that basis. But at no stage ever in any of these countries were Christians, true born again Christians, a majority. Therefore, those nations cannot be true Christians or Christian nations. Now, this idea of having a Christian nation is not a new idea. It's been tried many, many times. And I'm going to cite some examples for you, and I know that I'll probably upset a few people as I cite these examples. But I want us to think. The purpose of this exercise is to think and to think how does what we normally view line up with the Word of God. Now, I understand the Pharisees were not Christian, but you find the same idea there. The Pharisees said, we are a godly nation. Why are we a godly nation? Because we keep the laws. Because we keep the feasts. Because we tithe. Because we do those things. And yet Jesus says, you're not sons of Abraham, but you're sons of your father, the devil. And so the external, and here's an important thing, we're going to talk about this again when we speak about reforming societies. The external keeping of the laws of God does not make an individual or a nation a Christian nation. Israel was far from God, and they rejected their Messiah and crucified Him. And yet they would prove their religiosity, they would prove their commitment to the Torah and to the Scriptures and to the prophets by their legalism. But their hearts were far from God. They were children of the devil according to the Lord Jesus and according to John the Baptist. Calvin in his Geneva tried to establish a Christian state. Remember those days you had city states and so Geneva was an independent state. And so Calvin tried to make that a Christian, a Protestant as opposed to Catholic city or state. All the laws were based on the Bible. All of the citizens were forced to be in church. And if you didn't get to go to church you were in serious trouble. Morality was enforced. I mean they even had people who would come into your house and go through your wardrobe to see that you didn't have worldly clothes. And worldly clothes wasn't miniskirts. Worldly clothes was maybe just a little bit too bright or a couple more buttons than you were entitled to or something like that. You were in serious trouble. You could go to prison, you could be flogged, you could be pulled apart on the rack. And some were even killed for not keeping Calvin's laws. But Geneva was never Christian. And I have my doubts about Calvin quite frankly. They murdered true Christians. And yet that was their attempt to try and make a Christian nation out of Geneva in Switzerland. I grew up in South Africa and South Africa was very proud of its Christian heritage. And I could bore you for hours talking about how this fed through right from the great trek when the Boers left the British Empire seeing Britain, England, and I know this may be offensive if you're English, as Egypt. And that God was taking them to the promised land. And that in the promised land they would find the enemy nations, the black tribes. And that they would have to subjugate those tribes in order to establish the promised land. They believed they were God's chosen people. This was Calvinism in a very, very real form. And based on that Christian tradition, when I grew up, every detail of society was regulated by the Bible. We had strict censorship. You could not buy a pornographic magazine and even other magazines were strictly censured. Movies were mostly banned. You were not allowed to buy, you could not buy a newspaper or a Coca-Cola or anything on a Sunday. Everything was closed on a Sunday. You couldn't go to the swimming pool on a Sunday. You couldn't go to the beach on a Sunday. Every session, whether it was of Parliament or whether it was a school starting, the school week beginning or the school term beginning, would be opened in prayer. Nothing would happen without the ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church coming along and sanctifying the event. But did that make it a just society? I don't have to tell you about the abuses of apartheid. I don't have to tell you about the many wrongs in South African society. You could go to prison for homosexuality. The list goes on and on and on of all of the rules and the laws. And every South African believed with all of his heart that he was, certainly every white South African believed with all of his heart that he was a Christian. In the military, you would have the chaplains with you all the time. Part of your kit at every stage was your little Gideon Bible. And when you had inspection in the mornings, they would check your rifle and check your boots and check whether you had your Bible with you. But it wasn't a Christian nation. Now, I know we look at the United Kingdom and I'm sure that many folk watching today are from England or from Scotland or Wales, from one of the part of the United Kingdom. You say, well, you know, we're a Christian nation. Our queen is the head of the church. We have a long Christian tradition. You say, really? Around the turn of the previous century, around 1900-1901, the Boers in South Africa were fighting against England for independence. And when the United Kingdom couldn't win the battle against the Boers, they began to imprison their women and children. Thousands and thousands of women and children died of hunger and of disease in the concentration camps. This is a Christian nation. And I can tell you many, many other stories and you can probably tell me even more stories. But that's not what a Christian nation does. Even Germany was a Christian nation before the First World War. A lot of our theology today, and sadly most of it is bad theology, comes out of Germany. Much of the Reformation came out of Germany. They believed that they were a Christian nation and yet they went to war which resulted in millions of men killed on both sides in the First World War and the Second World War. It was Christian Germany that spawned a Hitler. We can go on and on. Oh, but America is Christian. Really? Have you ever thought what America has exported to the world as far as Christianity is concerned? Just think for a moment where every cult comes from. Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventism, Christian Science, Scientology, Unitarianism. The list goes on and on and on. Every single one of those comes out of America. And recently America exported the abominable prosperity gospel to the rest of the world. Yes, there have been good preachers that came out of America. There have been good missionaries that went out of England and that went out of America. One of the greatest influences in my life was Brother Willie Burton who came from the United Kingdom and went to Africa as a missionary. But the exceptions don't make the rule. And I don't know, and I'm really being very honest with you. I don't know that if we have to add it all up as far as America is concerned whether the good that America has exported. Not even talking about materialism. Materialism that has invaded every church in the world. Whether the good outweighs the bad. But I don't know that we can, I don't believe that we can call America a Christian nation. I'm not even going to go into the revisionism of history. What America was based on and founded on. Rebellion to the king. Killing the indigenous people to set up a new nation. And yet all of that is revised and changed so that it becomes the pilgrims that established America. Yes, we'll revise our history as much as we like because we don't like to face the reality. That we're a godless nation. And so here's the thing. It doesn't matter what our history may have been. It doesn't matter whether America had a Christian history and foundation. Or England had a Christian foundation or any other country in the world. The question is where are we now? And there is no question about it that there is not a single Christian nation in the world today. So what are we fighting for? What are we trying to establish in defending our national identity? When in fact it is not Christian at all. Now the way we try and do this is through trying to reform society. And this is, you know, every step we're going down here, we're getting a little bit closer to the nerve. And I know now in this section we're going to get even closer to the nerve and probably touch it. But you know that the vast majority of Christians in America vote a particular way. Because it is said that that party that they vote for, the Republican Party, let me name them, stands against abortion and homosexuality. That's great. We didn't have abortion and we didn't have homosexuality in South Africa. You go to prison for both of those things. Didn't make us a righteous nation. Didn't make us treat people fairly. You see, through legislation you can't change the hearts of people. It's as simple as that. Let me just get back to this idea of abortion and homosexuality. You see, here's a part of the problem, and I'll probably touch on this in the third session, but here's part of the problem is that if you ask anybody outside of the church in America today, what is an evangelical? What is an evangelical? What they'll tell you is an evangelical stands for three things. He's anti-abortion. He's anti-gay marriage. And he is for the Second Amendment. In other words, the right to bear arms. To carry a gun. That is what identifies Christians in America today. God help us. We are no longer known because we preach the gospel. We're no longer known because we are different because we've met with Jesus. That once we were blind, now we can see. We are known by the fact that we stand against these things. Yes, I'm against abortion. I'm against homosexuality. But that can never be my mission. My mission is to preach the gospel. And here's the problem, is that you can bring in every rule and every law that you like, and you can incarcerate people. You can kill people just as Calvin did. When they break the law, it doesn't change their hearts. It doesn't cause them to be born again. So what's the use of having these laws? If people are just worse off than ever before. Jesus spoke to the Pharisees. He says, you wash the outside of the cup, but inside is filthy. You might wash the tombs, and the tombs look all very pretty and beautiful. We have some beautiful cemeteries here in Los Angeles. I love to visit those places because they're so beautiful. Beautiful statues and lawns and gardens and really attractive places. But inside, it's full of dead men's bones. It's full of decay and death. And you can whitewash society and you can have every rule and every law that you like. Unless the hearts of men and women are changed, you're wasting your time. Because people can only change through the gospel. They are not changed through behavior modeling. They are not changed through legislation. Legislation does not change the hearts of people. Only the gospel can change the hearts of people. And in fact, it is counterproductive to the gospel to have the laws that we want. Let me be honest. Of course I want to live in a country where there is no abortion, where there is no homosexuality, where there is no murder, where there is no rape, where there is no crime. Of course, from a human point of view, that's what we want. But where are you going to find that? Only in heaven. And that's the problem. We're looking for heaven here on earth. We're not going to find it here. Heaven is up there. And we will only find it when we come to be with the Lord Jesus on that day. In the millennium, even then, there's going to be problems as we know. But having a Christian society through legislation is contrary to the gospel. Why is it contrary? Why is it against the gospel? Because it generates pride. Look how righteous we are. Look how moral we are. We are rich and increased with good, spiritual good. We don't need Jesus. We don't need the gospel. Growing up as a young evangelical Pentecostal Christian in South Africa was very, very hard. Because everybody believed they were saved because they were born in South Africa and they were baptized in the Reformed Church and confirmed in the Reformed Church. And they didn't understand that they were not born again. They needed to be saved. I would rather that society be as corrupt as it is and not have a semblance of Christianity. Because at least then we have a chance of explaining to them that there is hope in the Lord Jesus Christ that their best deeds are His filthier acts. But you see, here's the problem. We want to change society. We want to change the laws. We want to picket. We want to do all the stuff that we do, get involved in some kind of political action to try and change the laws. But we don't change our own hearts. And as I was preparing for these sessions, I read an article that I wrote about 10 years ago in 2010. And I'm not going to read the whole article. I'm just going to read a few sections and make a couple of comments. We want the Ten Commandments written in stone in the courthouse. As you probably know, that's a big thing here in America. These fights to retain the Ten Commandments in the courthouses. We want to retain. We want the Ten Commandments written in stone in the courthouse. But it is not written in our hearts. Think about that. In fact, we can't even recite them. You ask any Christian, even whether truly Christian or nominal Christian, you ask them to recite the Ten Commandments. They can't do it. But they'll fight. They'll do everything they can to have those Ten Commandments written on a piece of granite outside of the courthouse or on a tablet inside the courthouse. We lash out about the impact of Islam. And the impact it's having on our society. But we've done nothing to impact our community with true Christianity. See, Christians are fighting Islam. But they're not preaching the Gospel. We'll picket against abortion clinics. But we'll use the same clinics when our licentiousness bears fruit. Folks, many of these abortion clinics that everybody is complaining about are frequented by so-called born-again Christians. And sometimes by pastors, girlfriends. God, help us! You want to tell the world how to live when you can't live that way? We're angry about the 4,000 babies that are aborted every day in America, and we should be. But no one cares about the millions of spiritual babies that never come to be born again. And other spiritual babies that are aborted because of the stumbling blocks and the hostile environment they find amongst Christians and in our churches. We're worried about the babies that die out there, and yes, it's terrible. But what about the spiritual babies that are dying in our midst? We protest against same-sex marriage, yet our own marriages are a mess. We complain about homosexuals and their rising visibility and influence, but we are not an example to our children of what a godly man and woman looks like. We emasculate men and smile when boys are effeminate, and fathers are either brutes or wimps, and we wonder why boys become homosexual. Men do not know the meaning of true love. They do not know how to take responsibility to be leaders in their homes, and yet they wonder why girls grow up to hate men and to love women. We've created the problem in the church, and we want to fix the world. Everyone is frustrated about corruption, pork barrels, and special deals in government, yet we bribe our children and spouses when we have not done the right thing, or we bribe them to get them to do the right thing. We have jokes about the husband bringing flowers home, and his wife wants to know, what did you do wrong this time? But that's serious, and that happens in Christian homes. Little Johnny, just behave yourself, and I'll buy you an ice cream. That's bribery. It's corruption. It's just the price that's different between the price you're paying him, and the price they're paying the politicians to do what you want them to do. We show favoritism to our children, or church members, and others. We like people of our own race, even in the church, people who share our hobbies or our philosophy. But we blame the government for favoring special interest groups, for nepotism, when we do the same thing in our homes and in our churches. We complain about the government bailing out big business when big business deserved to crash, but at the same time we bail out our children every time they paint themselves into a financial corner. Folks, how many adults, how many older folks, have grown up children, and you're still bailing them out financially? But you complain about socialism in the government? Very few Christians read the Bible and pray regularly, and even fewer read the Bible and pray with their children. Folks, that's real. Fortunately, I can't ask for a show of hands. But how many of you are praying with your children, reading the Bible with them? And yet those same Christians who don't pray with their children and don't read the Bible with them, are complaining about the fact that prayer has been removed from the schools. This is hypocrisy. Everyone is perturbed by the rising national debt and inability of the government to curb expenditure when their personal credit is maxed out and their own greed drives them to spend more than they earn. Here's the last one. I know this is tough. But folks, this is where it comes down to. We want the church, let me not say you or we, let's say that the church in general, certainly in America and in England and in most countries, western countries, want to reform the government. They want to reform the world, but their own houses, their own churches, are not reformed, need to be sorted out. Many complain about the removal of the cross from public places. This is certainly true in America. But very, very few live a crucified life. What's more important? Having a cross on the hillside or living the crucified life? This is the problem. It's much easier to lobby, picket, protest, blame others for the very problems we are not willing to fix in our own lives. We can have a cross on every street corner, but until Christians individually learn what it means to take up their cross daily, nothing will change. Nothing will change. Like the fornicating drunken celebrity who wears a cross around their neck so Christians think that architectural crosses will cover the nation and the church's backsliding and sin. It doesn't. God help us to get these things right. Alright, I'm running short of time, so let me rush on. 1 Corinthians 5 verses 9-13. I'm going to read this very quickly. I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Paul's dealing with a sin in the church. Yet I certainly did not mean with sexually immoral people of the world. He says you can have relationships with unbelievers, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters. Since then you would need to go out of the world. He says the only way you can not have business dealings with them is to not be in the world anymore. But now I've written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually immoral, covetous, an idolater, a reviler, a drunken. It's amazing, a lot of these things apply to people who are preachers. Covetousness. Reviling. He says not even to eat with such a person. Now look at this. For what have I to do with judging those who are outside? We have nothing to do. The answer obviously to the question is rhetorical. We have nothing to do with judging the world. It is not our job to judge the world. Who do we judge? The very next chapter in Corinthians Paul says we need to judge the church. We need to deal with the issues in the church. But we want to criticize the world when we don't deal with the church. He says what do I have to do with judging also those who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? Clearly what Paul is saying in plain English is our business is to deal with the issues in the church not the issues in the world. But we don't deal with the issues in the church but we want to change the world. But those who are outside he says God judges. In other words what happens in the world, what happens in Parliament, what happens on Capitol Hill is God's business. God will deal with them. Our business is to deal with the church. Alright. The second last point. National repentance. This idea that we must call a nation to repentance. Here is the first problem. No one can repent for someone else. You cannot repent for your husband or your wife or your children. You cannot repent for your country. Even if 90% of a nation decided to repent on behalf of the nation, it doesn't deal with the other 10%. Each one must repent for himself. We've just gone through decades of this thing of people repenting. Germans repenting for what Hitler did. You can't repent. Only one who can repent for what he did is Hitler and it's too late for him. You can't repent for somebody else. You can't repent for a nation. You can't repent for anything other than for yourself. And repentance is not a day of prayer. It's not having a day of saying, oh, we're going to repent. I remember growing up in South Africa that when the droughts would come, as they would happen every few years, that the Dutch Reformed Church, because that was the only church, would call a day of prayer and all the farmers would leave their drunkenness and their debauchery and their adultery and what have you and go to church, put on their fancy suits and go to church for the day and there'd be a day of repentance. That's not repentance. Repentance is a change of actions. Let me just give it to you very quickly. Repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of heart that leads to a change of actions. And you can pray prayers of repentance as long as you like. There may be very real prayers such as Psalm 51. But until something really happens and you change, you haven't repented. And until a nation changes, it has not repented. A nation cannot repent. Yes, there was Nineveh. And I want you to take note of Nineveh, that Nineveh changed not because the king decreed repentance, but because every individual in the nation heard the voice of the prophet Jonah. And because they heard the message, they repented individually. And yes, the only way we can have national repentance is if God somehow in a revival as in the Welsh revival or some of those other revivals, begins to deal with the hearts of every individual and the individuals begin to change. But that gets us back to the gospel. That's the only thing we can do is preach the gospel. That people may come to repentance. And that if enough people come to repentance, then maybe the nation will begin to change. Alright, let me deal with the last section here. And that is the famous or infamous verse in Chronicles. And I'm going to go a little bit over time. I think we're going to end up closer to 50 minutes rather than 45 minutes. But I trust you'll bear with me. Because I believe that this is important. 2 Chronicles 7 verse 14. This verse is on the billboards of many churches here in America. It is quoted certainly by South Africans, Zimbabweans, people in England, people in America. I've heard it quoted in just about in Australia, New Zealand. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. You cannot apply that to America, Australia, England, any other country, any country in the world. This is a promise that God gives to Israel. This is at the time of the inauguration of the temple in Solomon's time. If my people, we spoke about Christian nations. By no stretch of the imagination can you call America God's people. For crying out loud, since when is England God's people? This promise is given to Israel and only to Israel. It is not repeated in the New Testament. It is not given to anyone else. It is given to Israel. Only Israel are His people. I'll get to the church, don't worry. Only Israel are His people. Only Israel is the only nation that is called by His name. No other nation. I don't understand. I have difficulty in dealing with this verse. I must be honest and I'm frustrated when I have to deal with it. Because it is just so simple. Where do you see America or United Kingdom or Zimbabwe? In my people called by my name. It's not there. It's as simple as that. If they humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, I will forgive their sins and heal their land. Now I know this is how they twist it. They say, well, you know, my people is the church. Exactly. It's the church today. Church doesn't replace Israel, but we can call ourselves His people. We are His people. We are called by His name. If we are truly born again, we are Christians. We follow Jesus Christ. That's why we are called Christians. If we pray, He will heal our land. But remember where we've been in these last sessions. Where is our citizenship? Where is our land? Our land is not America or whatever country. And in this context, our land isn't even heaven. Because if you look at the typology and you look at how typology is used in the Old Testament, the promised land is their inheritance. That is their land. What is our inheritance? No, it's not heaven. That's how materialistic we've become. That it's all about heaven. Our land, our inheritance is Jesus Christ. He is the promised land. He is the one that in Him we live and move and have our being. He is our hope. It's all about Jesus. He is the fulfillment of all of the promises of God. In Him they are yea and amen. Our land is Jesus. Jesus doesn't need healing. And even if you want to stretch it and say that the land is heaven, heaven doesn't need healing. But there is no way. And I don't know how else to deal with this. This is such a simple concept and yet it is not understood by the vast majority of Christians today. We are not, England or America or Scotland is not His people. They are not called by His name. And there is no promise that He will heal their land. Now here's the thing. This is exactly the same error as the prosperity gospel. I suspect that most people who are watching this video understand the problems with the prosperity gospel. But the problem with the prosperity gospel comes from a wrong interpretation of scripture. Because what they do is they take the Old Testament promises that were to Israel and they apply them to us. And so God promised physical prosperity, great harvest, much rain, all of these blessings. You'll be the head and not the tail. And so He goes to Israel and we say now we take that and we make them physically real to us in the church. And we say that God wants us to be rich, God wants us to be healthy and so on. And of course that's bad theology. Because what God speaks of literally, physically, materially in the Old Testament is spiritual in the New Testament. Our wealth in the New Testament is not in dollars or in pounds. But our wealth is in the Lord Jesus Christ. But this is the same problem. We take the physical promises of God saying to Israel that if you will pray and humble yourself then I will heal your land. And we apply that and we stretch it to apply it to some kind of physical nation. You just cannot do it. It's bad theology. It's bad hermeneutics. And let me just be very honest that any preacher who likes to quote that verse, I would not trust him. Because if he's willing to twist the word of God on such a simple, straightforward, blatant verse, then what's he doing with the rest of Scripture? I think that you may be able to apply this, it's a little bit of a stretch, but you may be able to apply this to the things that I've spoken about earlier. And that's that we want to see morality in the world but we don't have morality in the church. We want the Ten Commandments on the wall of the courthouse but we don't have it written on our own hearts. I think we can apply that to this verse a little bit and I'm going to close on this for this session. We need healing in our churches. Every one of our churches. We need sin to be dealt with. We need self-centeredness to be crucified. We need holiness to become real. We need healing. Our churches are sick. Maybe your church is not but mine is and most churches that I know are. And I think that we can stretch this verse to say that if we, the church, the local church, will humble themselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways, He will hear and He will heal our church. That's as far as we can take that verse. No further. Father, I pray that you'd help us to understand. Lord, it's hard when we've been born into a country and we have national pride and we have some investment. Lord, particularly for those like myself and others who have fought in the military, maybe even gone to war for our countries, to recognize that those things don't matter at all, but that we are members of a heavenly country. And Lord, it's easy to want to pull the plank, sorry, the speck out of the eye of our politicians when in fact there's a plank in our own eyes. Lord, forgive us for judging the government when we don't judge our own churches. Forgive us, Lord, for trying to fix everybody else out there, but we don't fix our own homes, our own walk with you. Lord, I pray that you'd help us to get right with you first, and then to worry about the rest. But Lord, I also want to pray that you'd forgive us individually for not preaching the gospel, because Lord, that is the commission we have. We don't have a commission to preach against homosexuality. We don't have a commission to preach national repentance. We have a commission to preach the gospel. Help us, Lord, to get back to the gospel. Help us, Lord, to believe the gospel, to live the gospel, to preach the gospel. That men and women's lives may be changed through that glorious and powerful gospel. As Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God unto salvation. And so Lord, I pray that you'd help us to see these things correctly, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.