Chipping Away At Our Religious Freedom
Today’s message is connected to last week’s message in part only because the President and his administration, mainly Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius are deeply involved in chipping away at our 1st amendment rights to freedom of religion.
I fully realize that it is kind of strange to have two sermons in a row in which it seems that I am taking the President to task for something but it just how the events of the day have unfolded.
A couple of weeks ago the President had HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius send out this mandate that from now on that both secular and faith based employers pay for contraception coverage even if that order directly contradicts the teachings and or beliefs of any denomination. This to me is absurd at the least and unconscionable at the worst. What’s even more troubling to me is the fact that she didn’t even bother to check with the Dept. of Justice to see if what they were mandating was constitutionally legal or not.
This is an outrageous overreach of power and it is unconstitutional and it is unbiblical as well. America was founded by people who came here from England for the sole purpose of being able to worship their God in the way that seemed fittest to them, without governmental oversight, intervention, or censorship. Many of them and their descendants shed their very blood so that we can have religious freedom in this country still today. Throughout the years, many servicemen and women have given their lives to defend and uphold the Constitution including the 1st amendment.
What does the 1st amendment say? Here it is: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
When President Obama decided to force faith based employers to pay for contraceptive coverage he knew that it was unconstitutional but he forced it upon us none the less.
Why is this issue so important to me and hopefully for you? Because if we as Christian Americans don’t stand up together and fight this breach of our religious freedoms then what will be next? And while I do have some serious theological differences with our Catholic friends, I have to stand with them on the broader religious freedom aspect of this issue or when the government comes after Southern Baptists who will be left to stand with us?
There are definitely times when people of faith, even different faiths have to come together to fight a common enemy and resolve problems that affect all of us.
While Southern Baptists as a whole or in general don’t have a theological problem with contraception used by either men or women we do take a stance against the “morning after pill” or RU486 as it is also called. It is wrong in my opinion for people to go out and get intimate and then have the woman take the “morning after pill”.
The way RU486 works is that if a woman becomes pregnant or thinks that she might be pregnant the pill, when taken, will cause the abortion of the child up to nine weeks after intimacy. And this is why most Southern Baptists say that it is wrong to make us or any other denomination pay to provide these so called contraceptives when doing so goes directly against what we believe as Christians and Southern Baptists.
Now I want to get back to the bigger picture here of how the government is chipping away at our religious freedoms in this country. If we, as faith based employers as many Southern Baptists churches and ministries are as well as the many Southern Baptist seminaries, colleges, universities, hospitals, etc. not to mention that 1 out of every 6 hospitals in America are Catholic and all of their universities, and other entities that employ people if they defy this order then the fines would be $2,000 dollars per person per year just think of how that would impact a church or any ministry for that matter. The fines would be crippling at best and they would force many ministries to shut down.
Is that what our government is supposed to be doing? Is this the way they should be treating the very entities that do the most good in our communities? The government is attempting to make us choose between how we worship and serve God and the mandates that they deem are better for us than what we know and hold dear at our very cores, our basic values and beliefs. This is wrong and we cannot let it stand.
So how can we tie all of this to what the Bible says about who we are to listen to and follow? In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 22 verses 35-40 Jesus was asked a question by a Pharisee who wanted to know what the greatest commandment was and here is the exchange that they had: 35 One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, 36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" 37 And He said to him, " 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' 38 "This is the great and foremost commandment. 39 "The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' 40 "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."
How can we love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds if the government is trying to force us to choose between what they say and what the Bible says? I will ALWAYS choose to listen to and follow God and I will ALWAYS follow the instructions found in the Bible!
And when it comes to standing up with others in this country who need support, what did Jesus just say to us? We have to love our neighbor as ourselves. I know this is true because Southern Baptists have taken stands in the past against unbiblical and unchristian practices and other denominations have stood by us when we were taking on and defending unpopular positions and now all people of faith are under attack.
When Peter and some of the other Apostles were preaching about Jesus, they were arrested by the High Priest’s guards for their activities and jailed. But an angel of the Lord came and set them free in a miraculous fashion their cell doors were still locked and the guards were still in place but peter and the rest of the Apostles were gone. And they went right back out into the streets to preach about Jesus again. They were arrested again and brought back to the High Priest and they had this exchange in Acts chapter 5 verses 28-29: 28 saying, "We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name, and yet, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and intend to bring this man's blood upon us." 29 But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men.
Also in Acts chapter 4 verse we find peter and John in the same scenario again including going to jail, these two men have been brought up before the Sanhedrin to be chastened for preaching the Gospel and horror of horrors, performing miracles and bringing people to repentance and salvation in Christ. And here is what they said to the High Priest: 18 And when they had summoned them, they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John answered and said to them, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge…
These great men were willing to be civilly disobedient when it came to choosing whom to follow, men or their God and His commandments and teachings. Again, I will always side with God because He is always right!
Will we be willing to do the same today? It’s easy to talk about standing up for the Bible, God, Jesus and our right to assemble and worship freely in this country but it is another thing entirely to put our own personal liberty on the line to stand up for what’s right!
These men and many others not only throughout Scripture but throughout the history of this great country have done the very same thing and have not only gone to jail for their beliefs but have given their very lives to stand up to governmental tyranny.
I stand here before you today as one shouting from the rooftops that Christians are under attack and our own government is one of the biggest and most powerful adversaries that we face and that is in a way, hard to believe because of how I know that this country was founded. James Madison said this many years ago: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions...upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
The things that are happening in Europe that pertain to Christianity and what we believe and even what we preach are under attack and there are laws over there already in place that make it a crime to preach on certain topics such as homosexuality. And if we think that these laws cannot and will not come here we had better wake up.
There are those in our government right now today who believe that the Constitution is no longer relevant to us today. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked for her opinion on Egypt drafting a constitution and she said this: "I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012," Ginsburg said in an interview on Al Hayat television. "I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights have an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done."
The mandate being forced upon us by the President and the Dept. of HHS headed by Kathleen Sebelius is completely unconstitutional and it is an affront to those of us of faith and we have to stop this attack on our religious freedoms and we need to do it right now.
This mandate is, as I speak today, already being challenged in federal court not only on behalf of the Catholics but also on behalf of evangelical ministries just like us here today. We have to support these efforts with prayer and with knowledge. We have to keep up with what is going on so that one day we won’t wake up and find out that we can’t go to church the way we used to anymore. And some people are still saying that this won’t and can’t happen here but I am here to tell you that when one of the justices on the highest court in America is saying that our Constitution is outdated and is not at all what it could be, then when these cases get to the SCOTUS we cannot even be sure that they will follow the Constitution that they took an oath to defend and more importantly, uphold.
And while it is obvious that the Constitution is not on the level of Scripture, I do firmly believe that God and His Holy Spirit guided the hearts, minds, and hands of the founding fathers to write what has become one of the greatest documents in human history.
So to summarize this message for you today I want you to not simply focus on the contraceptive issues here but to look at the bigger, broader picture of how the government is attempting to chip away at our religious freedoms. We have to be willing to stand up and take a stand, a very hard stand and if that means that some of us may have to be civilly disobedient then so be it.
We have to be willing to learn more about what is going on around us and educate ourselves about what is going on around us so that we can make informed decisions about what to do.
We have to be willing to obey God’s laws and commandments over the laws of men because men will do what serves them but God’s laws were created to help us to know and to show us that we need a Savior. God’s laws are always for our benefit and are not self serving. We have to be willing to stand firm in our beliefs and never compromise no matter what the government may mandate.
And when it comes to standing up with those that we may have differences with, there was a man, Pastor Martin Niemoeller, who was opposed to the way that Hitler treated Pastors and churches during the rise of Nazi Germany and he said this: First they came for the Socialists,
and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did
not speak out — Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was
no one left to speak for me.
We need to speak up now while we still have the right to and voice to before it is too late! Amen!?
