Tony Evans - God and Conscience
We've been talking about "Kingdom Voting". What we're doing is we're trying to challenge Christians to think heavenly even though they have earthly preferences. That in spite of the conflict, when an election comes up and is in our face and we're being hit by both sides, we still have to speak and declare in terms of the kingdom of God. We're challenging you to be a kingdom voter. That's a Christian who accepts the opportunity and responsibility to partner with God for the advancement of his rule in history through the institution of civil government.
And regardless of where you lean, Democrat or Republican, you take your messaging and you take your stand with heaven, with the King, and that becomes the dominant influencer of your belief system and your declaration. But I do not want to be insensitive to the problem of different people having different preferences. How do you navigate for whom to vote? No matter which election you're talking about, locally, statewide, or nationally, congressionally; how do you decide, particularly when nothing is definitive? You could perhaps have an argument one way or the other, person versus policy, policy versus personality.
For whom do you vote? How do you vote? Well, let me cast the answer to this question in a theological reality. Proverbs chapter 16, verse 33 says: "Men cast lots, but God decides the outcome". Did you hear that? I'm sure some are asking, "Well, if God's gonna decide, why vote"? Because it's a partnership. And God wants his kingdom men and his kingdom women to partner with him. Simply says, God rules and he overrules. For example, Job 23, verse 13: "God is unique. Who can turn him? And what his soul desires, that he does". Job 42:2: "I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted".
Psalm 135, verse 6: "Whatever the Lord pleases he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all the deeps". Isaiah 45, verse 7: "The one forming light and causing darkness, causing wellbeing, creating calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things". Ephesians 1:11: "Also we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to his purposes, who works all things after the counsel of his will". Romans 11:36: "For from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be glory forever".
Revelation 19, verse 6. It concludes with: "The Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns". Or we could go to Daniel chapter 2, verse 21: "God bestows authority on whoever he chooses". Or John 19, verses 10 and 11 when Pilate tells Jesus, "Don't you know I've got the authority", he's the government. "I've got the authority to crucify you? Don't you know who you're dealing with, Jesus"? Jesus says, "Uh-uh, not. The only authority you have is the authority my Daddy gives you. He's in charge up in here". We quoted for you Proverbs 21:1: "The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord, and he meanders it, moves it, wherever he wills". Or 2 Chronicles 20, verse 6: "No one can stand against his sovereignty".
God has a conditional will. These are the things he decides to do in concert with whether we do what we're supposed to do or not. But he has a sovereign, unconditional will. Those are the things he's going to do regardless of whether you do your part or not. That's why you pray. You pray because certain things he's only gonna do if you meet the condition of prayer. That's why you obey. Because certain things he's only gonna do if you meet the condition of obedience. So you can delay things or even deny yourself things that God would have given you, but it was predicated on the condition. One of the conditions is voting.
If you don't vote, God will take that into consideration and still accomplish his sovereign plan. Because if you don't vote, but he wants that person to win, he'll wake up somebody that never voted, tell them, "This year is the year for you to vote," in order to override your refusal to vote. See, God has got this thing down to a theological science. So, let me be clear. Your vote matters, but God is still in charge. So that raises the question: how do I make a decision? I go back and forth. I don't know how much to weigh one issue over another issue. Well, what we are seeing today, especially among Christians, is us building walls against one another because of government. We've allowed government to divide the church and that is an agenda from hell.
We have established from Romans 13, verse 1, that God created government. But notice chapter 13, verse 5: "Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection," that is the government, "not only because of wrath, but also for conscience sake". Ah, there's our word. For conscience sake. You see, what I want to explain to you is the role of your conscience in your decision for for whom you should vote. Within the boundaries of God, you are free to vote your conscience. And everybody's conscience won't vote the same way when you've got two legitimate or two illegitimate forces at work.
Now if it's biblically clear all the way, then of course that makes it easy. But what happens when there's some right, some wrong? Some wrong, some right? Which way do you go? Well, the Bible says you go based on your conscience, and everybody's conscience won't be equal when the issue is not perfectly biblically clear. What is your conscience? Your conscience is your heart regulator. It is the thing that regulates between right and wrong, good and bad, up and down.
The Bible says the heart is deceitfully wicked so you can have uninformed consciences that make uninformed decisions but they're still operating on wrong consciences. That's why it is critical that your conscience gets the right data in order to make the wisest possible decision. But everybody's consciences won't register equally to every circumstance because every Christian is not at the same spiritual level. That's where Romans 14 comes in and I hope you read the chapter in full. He says in chapter 14, verse 1: "Accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinion. One person has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only".
Chapter 15, verse 7 says: "Therefore accept one another just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God". When your political vote causes you to reject, demean, ridicule, curse, cuss others who differ from you, but are not abandoning Scripture to do so, they just have a different set of priorities, vegetables versus meat. Vegetables are legitimate, meat is legitimate, but everybody may not feel the same about vegetables and meat. And everybody may not feel the same about Democrats and Republicans or this candidate versus that candidate. But he says don't let that issue get in the way of your fellowship in the program of God.
The Bible says in James chapter 3, it says: "How can out of your mouth," or with your finger, "come blessing and cursing"? Verse 9, he says, "How can you do that"? How can you talk about, "I'm a Christian, I love the Lord, praise the Lord," but then you turn around and you use the most vile kind of communication, putting down, kicking to the curb, negating others in the body of Christ and even doing that to non-Christians, showing you a terrible Christianity. Oh, it's not wrong to disagree. It's not wrong to vote differently. It is wrong, he says, to be contemptuous.
Verse 3: "The one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat. And the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him". Democrats, you're gonna have to accept Republicans. Republicans, you're gonna have to accept Democrats, because God has accepted them. So when you attack another person in the family of God because they voted differently, you have attacked God. So this is no small thing when it comes to this issue. He says, how dare you regard in contempt because they can do what they do for conscience sake. For their conscience sake, he says, you must accept them and not force them to violate a legitimate conscience.
Now the Bible is to set the boundaries for your conscience. You know if you disregard a direct command or precept of God because of your conscience, your conscience is wrong, not the Word of God. But if you're within biblical boundaries, God allows you to play calls. Why? Or make your own play call, because every Christian doesn't start in the same place. What he is saying is you must allow for differences within the boundaries of scripture when there is room for those differences because there is not a perfect word in one direction or another. If there was perfect words, it'd be one vote.
That's why Christians need to get together. Christians need to come together, Democrats and Republicans, and libertarians, all Christians, whatever. We need to come together and say, "This is our platform and y'all gonna have to come to us because we not adjusting. We're dealing with the whole counsel of God because we're not gonna let y'all divide us anymore. Oh yeah, we may vote differently but we will not be divided. You got to come to find out what we say because what we say is gonna be the whole counsel of God, not those partial counsels that y'all deal with in the secular world". It is until believers align themselves together, recognizing that God accepts different conscience levels. God can deal with the differences. And we need to learn to deal with the differences while raising people to God's standard.
See, that's the problem. We're not raising people to God's standard, so people are living with weak consciences. Because if their consciences grew, then their decisions might change, or how they view the other side might be adjusted. So you grow the conscience, but you don't ignore the conscience. That's why he says in verse 22: "The faith which you have, have in your own conviction before God. Happy is the one who does not condemn himself in what he approves". Don't go do something against yourself as long as you're not violating the Lord, because you still have to live with you. You don't have to live with all them other people. You got to live with you.
Verse 23 says: "But he who doubts is condemned if he eats," that's the vegetable-meat thing, "because his eating is not from faith. Whatever is not from faith is sin". There's another theological principle here. He brings it up in verses 8 and 9: "For if we live, we live for the Lord. Or if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end, Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living".
We don't have enough Christians who have made Jesus Lord. He's Lord of all. And that's why Christians who vote differently should still be unified because he says he's Lord of all. God has accepted him, in spite of their political differences. And until we do that, God won't work. In Luke chapter 6, Jesus comes down for prayer and in verse 13, he brings his disciples. When he names Simon, he throws up a word. He says, "Simon the Zealot". Did you hear me? He doesn't just say "Simon". Those other guys, he just give their names. But when it comes to Simon, he says, "Simon is the zealot".
Now let me tell you the zealot. The zealot was the revolutionaries of the day. Like, when Jesus was on the cross, they said, "Who you want us to crucify, who you want us to set free"? And they set free the zealot. They set free the revolutionary, and crucified Christ. Simon was a revolutionary. He roamed the hills, the hills, looking to overthrow the government. Matthew is a tax collector. Matthew is part of the establishment. Matthew is part of the swamp.
Matthew would have been one that Simon was after, because Simon was a zealot and Matthew was a Benedict Arnold. He was a turncoat. He worked for the system. And yet, when Jesus comes down from prayer and he comes down from the mountain, he says, "Come here, Simon. Come here, Matthew. We got some kingdom business to do". He could take a zealot and a man in the system, two different sides of the political divide, and bring them together. Why? Because he brought them together under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
So don't tell me a Democrat can't sit next to a Republican, and everybody loving the Lord and loving each other and serving the Lord, although their consciences caused them to vote differently. Why? Because like Simon and like Matthew, they all belong to the kingdom and they submit to the Lord. And until we get that kind of radical acceptance in the church, that's why they got upset in Acts chapter 17, verse 7, because they said these things, "Well, there's this group of people out here, running around talking about Jesus is king, not Caesar".
That was ticking folk off. Caesar's the government. You mean the government not king? No, Jesus is king. The problem is we don't have the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We got the lordship of political parties. We got the lordship of government. We don't have the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Because if we had the Lordship of Jesus Christ, you wouldn't find Christians acting a fool online. You wouldn't find Christians being illegitimately divided online. You wouldn't find Christians embarrassing the kingdom of God online.
The Bible says in 1 Peter 3:15: "Sanctify the Lord God in your heart". In other words, let's get this Lordship thing straight. Is Jesus Lord or is your political party lord? No, your conscience should govern your vote. You inform it with the Word of God. And then you vote for God's definition of government, okay? Here it is again. God's definition of civil government is to maintain a safe, just, righteous, and compassionately responsible environment for freedom to flourish. Let me say that again. God's definition of civil government is to maintain a safe, just, righteous, and compassionately responsible environment for freedom to flourish.
Now, big picture, that's what you're voting for. Who's going to best achieve that? Which party, which platform, which policies will achieve that? Now, because people are coming at this with different backgrounds and different experiences, some people are going to vote with an emphasis on safe. Others are going to vote with an emphasis on just. Some are gonna vote with an emphasis on righteous. You see, for many African-American Christians, because of history, that's created an extra sensitivity about injustice, an extra sensitivity about the meaning of life and the dignity of life.
And that may cause many not to be able to jump to the other side even though they agree with it because the sensitivity has softened their conscience in that area. For many Anglo-Christians, the moral agenda that concern is contaminating our kids. That is that they're worried about what their kids are gonna be taught in school. They're worried about that and so that governs the dominant thing that's covering their conscience. Neither is wrong. Both are right, but they've been affected differently. So what do you do? You have blacks and whites sitting next to each other in the same church, having voted differently, but under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
That's what you do. He says you don't look down on one another because we belong to another King and another kingdom. So how do you decide on who you vote for? What's the profile of a kingdom voter? One, a kingdom voter votes. Let's start with that. A kingdom voter doesn't stay home. Two, a kingdom voter prays about their vote. They don't just talk to man, they talk to God. "God, give me wisdom, give me understanding. Show me the direction you want me to go in".
Next, a kingdom voter examines the issues, based on the Word of God. They don't skip what God has to say and keep reading what the news media says. "God, what do you say about life? What do you say about justice? What do you say about nations and globalization? What do you say about immigration? What do you say about taxation? What do you say"? Because guess what? He talks about all that. "What do you say about family? Morality? What do you say"? They investigate what scripture says. A kingdom voter seeks unity, not division. They don't use this voting thing to create division. A kingdom voter looks at policy and personality, character and competence. They don't divide the two. They put both on the table.
And yeah, they've got to weigh it, but they don't ignore it. A kingdom voter looks not only at themselves and how voting will benefit them, but they're part of something bigger. We have to look at how will my decision affect others as well as me. You don't vote selfishly, you vote sacredly. When you've done that, you take the issues, you draw a line down the center of a piece of paper. And then you put the issues based on the different parties. In fact, you have three columns: The Word of God, Democrats, Republicans, or whichever ones you want to compare.
This is what the Word of God says, this is what these groups say, then you prioritize them. What's most important? Because everything won't be equally important in the same order to everybody else except the top, which is God, okay? That biblical definition of government. And then you go down the list based on the priorities accompanied by the Word of God, and then you invite your conscience to make a decision. It's okay.
God says that after you've done your work, you've set your conscience at peace, that even though I can see both ways, even though they're good and bad, I can take a deep breath and say, "Okay, okay, this is the way I'm gonna go. Maybe different than my neighbor, different than my co-worker, but this is where God gives me peace". I've talked to so many members of our church and people in the community who can argue strongly and biblically from one side to the other and I accept them and love them both because guess what? God has accepted them. So I'm not here to tell you who to vote for. I simply want to tell you vote, because the answer is in your conscience.
God has given us a conscience, a regulator, that helps us to determine good from bad, right from wrong, up from down. And many of the decisions we make, as long as they are within the biblical framing, won't be the same because people don't start in the same place, have the same burdens, or share the same experiences. That's why it's so important that we allow people the freedom to obey their conscience as long as they're not stepping outside of God's will and Word to do so. God allows for disagreements. He's had disagreements in his own Word between his servants, and they were both in the will of God because they were being led differently. So let's not let the politics of the culture divide the family of God, as long as the family of God is centered in the kingdom of God.