As we approach the 2020 presidential election, I see a troubling trend. Actually, I see many troubling trends but this is an article, not a book, and so I will focus on only one. To that end, I have a question for the followers of Christ.
Who do you really trust to help and take care of you? Is it God? Try to answer honestly.
Consider these thoughts and these verses.
God is our helper.
Psalm 121
1 I will lift up my eyes to the hills— From whence comes my help?
2 My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He who keeps Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day, Nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.
8 The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in From this time forth, and even forevermore.
Isaiah 41
10 Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.
God is our provider.
Matthew 6
25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;
29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Even when we don’t understand how, God will work out everything for our good in the end.
Romans 8
28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
God is our helper, our provider, the one who takes care of us and insures that everything will be OK. Do we trust Him to do that? Most of us would reflexively say “yes” but do we really? What do our actions and attitudes say? Do we fully trust Him or do we only trust Him to take care of us when He does it in the way that we would like, by using the people who make sense to us? It is tempting to project our way of thinking onto God. Too often, I find myself doing that. However, we must remember that Isaiah 55:8 tells us that God doesn’t think the same way we think.
Proverbs 21
1 The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, Like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes.
God can use whoever he chooses to accomplish his purposes. Sometimes we assume that God has to use someone who meets a certain standard. That way of thinking is certainly somewhat understandable but it is not Scriptural.
Consider the story of Cyrus, king of Persia.
Around 600 BC, the people of Judah were conquered by Babylon and carried away into captivity that would last for 70 years. This was God’s punishment for the idolatry they had fallen into and His way of curing them of that idolatry. They ended up coming back to a right relationship with God but it took time. God did bring them back out of captivity, after 70 years, once His purposes had been accomplished. Persia conquered Babylon and the king of Persia, Cyrus, ended the captivity and even facilitated the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple. God raised up Cyrus specifically for this purpose. This was for-told by God over a century before the birth of Cyrus.
Isaiah 45
1 “Thus says the Lord to His anointed, To Cyrus, whose right hand I have held— To subdue nations before him And loose the armor of kings, To open before him the double doors, So that the gates will not be shut:
2 ‘I will go before you And make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of bronze And cut the bars of iron.
3 I will give you the treasures of darkness And hidden riches of secret places, That you may know that I, the Lord, Who call you by your name, Am the God of Israel.
4 For Jacob My servant’s sake, And Israel My elect, I have even called you by your name; I have named you, though you have not known Me.
5 I am the Lord, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me,
6 That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting That there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other;
There are a few notable things here. In verse 1, God refers to Cyrus as “His anointed” and He goes on to explain that He will cause Cyrus to prosper. God says that He will do this for the sake of His children, for the sake of Israel. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. In verses 5 and 6, God says to Cyrus that God will do this for him despite the fact that “you have not known Me”. Cyrus was pagan. He did not worship God. And yet, God raised him up and used him. God can do as He pleases. In verses 5 and 6, God says “I am the Lord, and there is no other”. Again, He is God and He can do as He pleases, even when it doesn’t make sense to us and when the way that He does it isn’t the way we would do it.
God’s people back then were like His people now, like I too often tend to be. They were often slow to really trust Him and they liked to argue with Him. God knew that they would not like Him raising up someone who wasn’t one of them, even if He did it in order to free them. He addressed their objections in the following verses.
Isaiah 45
7 I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.’
8 “Rain down, you heavens, from above, And let the skies pour down righteousness; Let the earth open, let them bring forth salvation, And let righteousness spring up together. I, the Lord, have created it.
9 “Woe to him who strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands’?
10 Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What are you begetting?’ Or to the woman, ‘What have you brought forth?’ ”
11 Thus says the Lord, The Holy One of Israel, and his Maker: “Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons; And concerning the work of My hands, you command Me.
12 I have made the earth, And created man on it. I—My hands—stretched out the heavens, And all their host I have commanded.
13 I have raised him up in righteousness, And I will direct all his ways; He shall build My city And let My exiles go free, Not for price nor reward,” Says the Lord of hosts. The Lord, the Only Savior
This is my paraphrase of what God said there:
“I am God. What I say is righteous is what is righteous. It is I Who bring about the good things and the bad things and it is I Who determine what is good and what is bad. I created the Earth and I created you. As it is I who define righteousness and it is I who created you, you have no right to question Me about what is right or how I bring about goodness in your life. I will take care of you but I will do it My way. I am God and you are not. Remember that and trust Me.”
God, of course, did as He had said. His profit Jeremiah said that His people would be brought out of captivity after 70 years (Jeremiah 29:10) and His profit Ezra said that it would be Cyrus who would do it. That is exactly what happened.
Ezra 1
1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying,
2 Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me. And He has commanded me to build Him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah.
3 Who is among you of all His people? May his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel (He is God), which is in Jerusalem.
We see in verse 1 that God caused Cyrus to do this. God “stirred up the spirit of Cyrus” and caused him to do His bidding, just as had been for-told. This despite the fact that Cyrus did not know God, as was also for-told. Notice that, in verse 3, the proclamation says “May his God be with him”. Cyrus said “his God”, not “my God” or just “God” but “his God”. Cyrus did acknowledge God but he acknowledge Him as the God of Israel, not as his personal God. Cyrus did not personally worship Him. However, God used Cyrus anyway and He first blessed him so that He could use him. God will bless who He wants. He can use who He wants. He is God.
God used the man of His choice to bring His people out of captivity, even though that man was not one of His children and His children would have preferred that He had used someone else. Do not misunderstand what I’m saying here. I am not comparing any current political candidate to Cyrus and I am not comparing the United States to Israel. You cannot legitimately take promises made and things said about Israel in the Old Testament and make blanket application to the United States or any other nation. That is a topic to cover another time. What I am saying is that God can do things any way He wants, using anyone He wants, and that sometimes doesn’t fit with our preconceived notions of how things should work. We need to loose some of our attachment to those preconceived notions.
In this season of COVID and declining race relations which falls within an election year, we have what seems to be the perfect storm of events which causes many people to want to politicize absolutely everything. There is certainly no shortage of negative things out there to politicize but the problems are not political and politics is not the solution. The negative things going on in the world today have two causes. Some of these negative things are just a result of living in a fallen world. Those things are no one’s fault, including the politicians, and even the best politicians can’t make them go away. Many of these negative things are the result of a slow but steady turning away from God which has happened over the last several decades. These things can only improve through revival and politicians are not going to bring revival. In general, we place way too much blame and seek to find way too much hope in the political arena. Y’all, that isn’t where it’s at.
I’m going to be honest. I absolutely hate politics. Right now, I think both sides have a number of things they’re just flat wrong about. I’m not big on political labels. I don’t call myself left or right, liberal or conservative, Democrat or republican. Some of my opinions would fit with some of these labels and some would fit with others but that really doesn’t matter. My primary identity is a child of God with Christ as my Master. Do I think one side is more aligned with Christianity and thus with Christ than the other? Yes, absolutely. Do I think if the other side wins then God’s plans have been thwarted by something as simple as an election? No, absolutely not. God is bigger than that. He can do as He pleases, using who He pleases. I will vote for the candidate that I believe is more aligned with Christ. Then, I will do as Christ commanded and not worry about tomorrow (Matthew 6:34).
I would encourage you to spend some time with God, talking to Him through prayer and listening to Him through His Word, getting to really know Him, who He really is, not who some people say He is. Let Him and the things found in His Word, not the rhetoric of some politicians and their supporters, inform your choices. Vote according to His wisdom. Then, leave the situation in His hands, truly trust Him, and don’t worry about tomorrow. I’m not saying it makes no difference. The days ahead will be different, and probably darker, if one candidate wins Vs. the other. How ever things go, it is all in God’s hands. Trust in Him, not the men on the ballot. He can use who He chooses how He chooses, He can glorify Himself in any situation, and He can work things for our good in ways that we can’t possibly imagine. He is God and, if you are His child, no matter what happens in the coming days and years, you have nothing to fear.
