Pastor Don Mackintosh, Pastor of the Weimar Campus Church, gives his Thanksgiving sermon highlighting the importance of Religious Liberty during this time of religious restrictions. This is the Second of 3.

<p>Pastor Don Mackintosh, Pastor of the Weimar Campus Church, gives his Thanksgiving sermon highlighting the importance of Religious Liberty during this time of religious restrictions. This is the Second of 3.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

Focus on Religious Liberty Part 3

At this Thanksgiving time, where many are celebrating the freedoms that make this nation great, that we can come together and do the same.

We ask that your Holy Spirit would be here in our midst, and that you would guide and lead us.

And we thank you, we come in Christ's name.

So Thanksgiving, every year I usually talk at Thanksgiving time about something it has to do with religious freedom and liberty.

And our religious freedoms and liberties right now are under more threat than they ever have been since I've been alive.

And this is according to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito this last week, largely related to this kind of debate between how do we keep people safe and how do we also worship.

And the latitude that's been given to state governments to kind of weigh in on that has caused things that never happened really in this nation to begin happening in terms of the assembling together of people for worship.

And of course there's a tension between public health and worship and So we have social distancing and we have masks.

And we do probably a better job than Walmart.

I think we maybe do a better job than the casino, although I haven't been there recently.

And I think we do a better job than Home Depot.

And yet, we're asked to do things actually more strenuous and onerous than those places.

And this is why some people are saying, like Justice Alito, Supreme Court, that we need to be very careful about what we do as a nation because it's become very obvious that when a crisis comes, people don't think that religion is that important.

And they try and put it to a secondary level, and then sadly we kind of go along with them and act like we're not here.

This is not only part of our constitution as a nation, it's part of our belief as Christians, and it's actually very good for our mental health.

So I'm gonna talk about that today, Thanksgiving.

Edmund Burke, the famous philosopher from Ireland, men are qualified for civil liberty, an exact proportion to their disposition to put change upon their appetites.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.

Their passions forge their fetters." And so, civil government really arises to make sure people keep the last of the 10 Commandments, the last 6, or the last 5 of the 10 commandments, right?

How many of you are thankful for police officers and those that try and help us not kill each other?

It used to be that that was actually a state offense.

It was something the government talked about, and they actually decide whether or not someone was adulterous or not.

And actually it was something they actually made a decision on, made it easier for churches with their church discipline because they said, well, the state has said that you are in living in sin or adultery.

So maybe we're slipping a little there in society.

And then the next commandment, thou shalt not steal.

I'm even thankful for people that make sure that your property is safe while you're here, at least we hope so.

I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

So civil government has arisen to actually, you know, be the custodian of these very laws, which we would call the moral laws of society.

Of course, there are things that have changed.

1965, the illegitimate birth rate was 8%, 1992, 25%, now 40 to 70%, depending on where you are.

And there has been a great breakdown in the family.

The Attorney General talking about this said, along with the wreckage of the family, we're seeing record levels of depression and mental illness, dispirited young people, soaring suicide rates, increasing numbers of angry and alienated young males, an increase in senseless violence and deadly drug epidemics.

When you break God's law, you don't break God's law, you break yourself, and it hurts.

And there then are, there's a payback that comes.

As you all know, over 70, 000 people die a year from drug overdose.

This is more casualties than happened during the entire Vietnam War.

While we talk a lot about COVID and how many people have died, and that's a very sad statistic, there are many, many, many, many more people that die from other areas of lack of self-control that happen in this nation and unfortunately around the world.

I'll not dwell, he says, on the bitter results of the new secular age.

Suffice to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has brought with it immense suffering, wreckage, and misery.

And yet the forces of secularism, ignoring these tragic results, press on with even greater militancy.

And they start producing laws that are directly opposite of God's laws.

And what happens is people are just being broken as a result.

Among these militants and secularists are many so-called progressives.

We're told we're living in a post-Christian era, but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system?

What is it that can fill the spiritual void in the hearts of the individual person?

And the answer is really nothing else can.

If you've tried to get rid of God's law, his will and his way in your life, you're probably hurting in some way today, or you're about to be hurting.

And what is the system of values that can sustain social life?

Some made-up laws that are supposedly more powerful than God's laws?

The fact is no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.

So I wanna talk today about this, the biblical foundation of freedom, the biblical foundation of liberty, the biblical foundation of morality, but you already should be put on notice that what I'm talking about has everything or a lot to do with your physical health, your emotional health, your mental health, and of course your spiritual health.

And this is actually the purpose of the church.

The purpose of the church is to safeguard all those things, whatever you eat, whatever you drink, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

The church is not a reduced power in the world, it is supposed to be all pervasive in our lives and through our lives.

Romans chapter 3 says, as it is written, there is none righteous, no not 1.

So let's be clear, the church is not filled with righteous people necessarily.

Actually, no one's righteous when you look at the standard, yes or no?

So that person next to you, have they ever made a mistake?

All have sinned, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We see cropping up in Romans chapter 3, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

He looked at the entire scriptures, not just a part.

He knew the scriptures backwards and forwards.

And when he says glory, he's talking about that glory that you would see in the Old Testament sanctuary.

And he says everyone has fallen short of it.

Because if you are actually in the presence of a holy God and you're doing unholy things, you don't survive.

Because the Bible says our God is a consuming fire and there were 3 fires in the Old Testament sanctuary system.

There was the glory of that first fire, the altar of sacrifice, where the things that we had done wrong were taken care of by a sacrifice pointing towards Christ.

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Focus on Religious Liberty Part 3

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