The De-Voted Christian Series

OPEN: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Presidential election is officially this Tuesday.

How many of you have taken part in early voting?

(About 2/3s of the church raised their hand).

Whoa. That’s a bunch of you.

But I’ve got some bad news for you.

In Indiana – if you die before Tuesday – your vote won’t count. They literally take your vote out of the machine.

Unlike some places, Indiana is one of those states where, if you die before election day, you don’t get a vote.

Anyway, as I was preparing for today’s sermon I searched through my illustrations for quotes and stories to use. I have several 1000 illustrations in my files and my computer allows me to search through them by typing in any word I'm interested in in the search box. The computer then shows me where to find illustrations that contain that specific word.

So I typed in the word “VOTE” and, of course, I got every illustration that had that word in it.

But I also got illustrations that had words that had “VOTE as part of that word.

And found the most intriguing thing:

I typed in "VOTE",

And I got "DE-VOTED”

Isn’t that interesting?

And it makes sense, because when people vote for a politician or for a political party, they often vote because they are “DEVOTED” to that specific person or party.

Now that truth got me to thinking about a question I'm going to ask you in just a minute.

Let me be very clear before I ask the question that I do NOT want you to answer in any way. I don’t raise your hand, don’t say a word… just think about my question. Got it?

(PAUSE)

• Are you a Republican?

• Are you a Democrat?

• OR… are you a Christian?

Whoa. Wait a minute.

Do I mean to say you can’t you be a Republican or a Democrat… AND be a Christian.

That’s what I mean to say.

You can’t be both.

But why?

Well, because you can’t serve two masters.

Now I’m not saying you can’t vote a straight party ticket or even be signed up with or work for a political party.

What I’m saying is that you can’t be equally a Republican or Democrat AND a Christian.

There are a lot of Church goers out there who will go into the ballot box and they’ll vote Republican/Democrat because they are Republicans/Democrats. They DON’T vote as Christians because they believe that God has nothing to do with their political decisions.

Their vote belongs to THEM… not to God.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Now Devoted means “loving or loyal”.

With that thought in mind… let’s take a look at one of Jesus’s teachings.

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be DEVOTED to the one and despise the other…” Matthew 6:24

Then I did a search through the Bible.

I wanted to see how the word Devoted was used.

And guess what?

Almost every time the word “Devoted” shows up in Scripture – it is applied to things devoted to God:

Cities, fields, livestock, sacrifices, even their hearts, minds and lives were spoken of as devoted.

For example, David wrote: “Guard my life, for I am DEVOTED to you. You are my God; save your servant who trusts in you.” Psalm 86:2

But by contrast, 1 Kings 11:4 tells us As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully DEVOTED to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been.”

The fact that Solomon’s heart was not fully devoted to God led to his kingdom being ripped apart in the days of his son Rehoboam’s reign.

The Bible repeatedly drives home the fact that our God is a jealous God.

He refuses to accept anything but our total allegiance.

Thus, if a Christian says it doesn’t matter TO GOD how they vote… they’re fools.

Whatever motivates you when you vote, reveals who you are devoted to.

And if you are not devoted to God EVEN when you vote… then you shame your God.

Now I’m going to give a couple illustrations about this from Facebook.

I’m going to leave the names of the candidates out… because they aren’t my point.

This isn’t about the candidates or parties.

This is about how Christians become devoted to politics.

ILLUS: One of the minister’s groups I was part of had a man who had a ministry to preachers. He was always advertising the products he would share with us.

I liked him. Not a bad fellow.

I’ll refer to him as “the minister guy.”

Well, this “minister guy” was seriously DEVOTED to one of the presidential candidates and he would repeatedly share questionable posts telling how great his candidate was and how evil the other candidate was. I found that inappropriate on occasions and I would often challenge him on his stands.