Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, what is the State of the Union from the perspective of the Bible and our founding fathers? Oh, this past Tuesday night, President Donald Trump delivered one of the best State of the Union speeches that I personally have ever heard. It was filled with so much good.

I don't know if you heard it too. He pointed out that our economy is roaring back, that ISIS and militant Islam is routed and on the run. A strict, excuse me, constructionist has been appointed to the Supreme Court, and more importantly, the entire speech. And it was filled with so much content too, wasn't it? It was almost an hour and a half long.

We cannot dwell on it here, but the entire speech was filled with good old American optimism and enthusiasm that was very infectious. If President Trump continues in this vein, and the country continues to thrive and prosper as it is, his presidency will go down in history as one of the greatest. I would predict that. What I'd like to do today is step back a minute, step back, and put all of this into the larger perspective of the Bible, our founding fathers, and the three great spheres of life in which we live. Those three spheres are that of the spiritual, the political, and the economic.

Every nation participates in those three great spheres, the spiritual, the political, and the economic. While we walk this pilgrim way together, dear listener, our paths intersect in many ways, but the three great spheres are that of the spiritual. That is that invisible, but nevertheless, very real realm of God and angels, of faith and religion, of morals and behavior that regulate our lives. But there is not only the spiritual, there is also the political, and that realm is that in which we govern ourselves and make much of the spiritual physical.

But there is also the economic sphere, and the economic sphere is that realm in which we exchange goods and services and the products of our labor with one another that we might thrive. So these are the three great spheres, the spiritual, the political, and the economic. So for ease of remembering, and the ease of my memory in particular, I have given America's mode of relating in those three spheres to be Christ in the spiritual sphere, the constitution in the political sphere, and capitalism in the economic sphere. Christ, constitution, constitution, and capitalism.

What has replaced and competes with these three founding bedrock principles in these three spheres in the United States of America presently are three contrasting modes. First of all, we have the tyrannical secularism for our spiritual lives together instead of Christ. We have statism for our practical political lives together instead of the constitution, and we have socialism for our economic lives together instead of capitalism. We have three C's versus three S's. This is for my ease of remembrance, and I hope it helps you remember as well.

The three S's and the three C's are in direct conflict with one another too and cannot be brought into peaceful resolution. Don't be a dreamer, dear listener. That will never happen. There will be conflict in America as long as long as people are blinded and fooled by progressives to believe the lie that secularism, statism, and socialism are good for America. There can be no coexistence.

There can be no cooperation. The only alternative for our survival as a Christian constitutional republic to see that we return to Christ, constitution, and capitalism in their respective spheres. Christ in the spiritual realm, the constitution in the political realm, and capitalism in the economic realm. We must return to these three founding principles, and let me show you why. Number one, in the spiritual sphere, the presumptive reality for America to work at all is that Christ inhabit America's spiritual realm rather than anything else.

Here is America's greatest failing in the present time I submit to you. Because the presumptive reality for America to work at all is that Christ inhabit America's spiritual realm rather than anything else, Christ has been crowded out of the hearts, minds, and souls of many Americans for generations. And the vacuum created is being filled with other spiritualities. For example, secularism, one of the three S's I articulated for you. Secularism as the official stance of the progressive who abhors America's past, Christian past, and fears as well that Christianity will be revived in the near future, as I sincerely hope it is.

And this is how he keeps it at bay, by substituting secularism. And the progressive tries to distract America's attention from our history and the necessary component that Christ is to our national integrity. Well, not only secularism, but Islam is also fast gaining a foothold in this formerly Christian nation. Islam reigning supreme in many Muslim ghettos in major cities in America. How long, dear listener, before Islam completely dominates our judicial system?

For example, the judicial interpretation of the Quran is Sharia, Sharia law, based upon the Quran rather than constitutional law based upon the Bible. Sharia law is given tacit approval in these communities as law enforcement and federal marshals, et cetera, are afraid to impose the law of the land upon these zealous protective enclaves of Islamic jurisprudence. It is very dangerous to do so, I would also add. But we also have to ask ourselves at some point, is Islam compatible with a Christian constitutional republic? Would Christ, for example, sanction honor killings of a daughter for dating a non-Muslim?

There's a record of this here recently. Would Christ honor the arranged marriage of a nine-year-old girl to a 30-something Muslim man like Muhammad did with one of his many wives? That's been done recently in one of these enclaves as well. Would Christ put his stamp of approval upon the killing of one who fell away from following him like Islam demands of one who falls away from following Muhammad? Well, it is particularly disturbing to point out how we must also reveal the increasing evidence of the honoring and the worship of Lucifer.

It's shocking to reflect on this and to note it, but there is in America the honoring and worship of Lucifer among many of the power elites, especially in America. Hollywood and both the left and right coast of America are filled with it. And I would just refer you to Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut, which documents many of this and dramatically portrays the worship of Lucifer among many of the power elites in America. And Washington, D.C. is also filled with Luciferianism.

And Julian Assange and WikiLeaks revealed in a variety of emails during the election that many in the Clinton campaign regularly engaged in Luciferian rituals involving blood and children and sacrifice. John Podesta in particular, Hillary Clinton herself is rumored to be a fourth degree witch. How close we came to electing a witch to the White House. How far from her roots America has fallen, dear listener. Christ and his gospel were at the center of the reason for being for the early colonies in America.

How far we have fallen. For example, when Thomas Hooker led his small band of colonists from Massachusetts into the wilds of Connecticut in January of 1639, they drew up this constitution, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, it was called, with this preamble that I'm going to read in part to you, the preamble that stated its very purpose for founding the colony of Connecticut. And it reads in part, we do for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter enter into combination and confederation together to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

Let me read that again. The purpose for the founding of Connecticut to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus, which we now profess as also the discipline of the churches, which according to the truth of the said gospel is now practiced amongst us, as also, there was a second purpose for the founding of Connecticut, as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed according to such laws, rules, orders, and decrees as shall be made, ordered, and decreed as followeth. And then from there goes the constitution, the particulars of the constitution of the fundamental orders of Connecticut.

So we see indeed the purpose for the founding of Connecticut was to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Generations later, our founding fathers understood the necessity of Christ and his gospel also to the founding and framing of America. George Washington puts it this way. He says, of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.

In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, that is, religion and morality, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens, unquote, from George Washington. Now, the religion and morality of which Washington spoke was not Islam. It was not Buddhism. And it certainly wasn't the secular religion and morality that we see before us today. It was only and exclusively the Christian religion and the Christian morality of which Washington spoke.

It was all that America knew. It was all she wished to know. Now, Supreme Court Justice Josiah Brewer, who sat on the Supreme Court in 1892, said in his adjudication of a case before the Supreme Court, he puts it this way. Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, Brewer says.

And in this sense, and to this extent, our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian, unquote. A Supreme Court justice who would be drummed out of the chambers today if he were to say anything so bold. But Brewer did at the time, and it was true, and it still is true. The American Constitutional Republic is a Christian Constitutional Republic. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, as Brewer might say.

Christ is the spiritual center of gravity who enables us to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to ensure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, as the preamble to the Constitution says. When one examines honestly the history of the spiritual motivation for the founding of our Republic, it cannot be otherwise than Christ. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, for example, put it this way.

In their very first Constitution, they said, we are a company professing ourselves, fellow members of Christ, knit together by this bond of love. We are entered into covenant with him for this work, for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, unquote, from their Constitution. And this phrase of Jesus Christ uttered in his Sermon on the Mount, you shall be as a city set upon a hill, it reverberates throughout American history as a metaphor for America.

I remember most recently Ronald Reagan using it to describe what America had been in our past with the hope and aspiration that she could be such again. Reagan tried, as best that he could, to raise America to the level of a city set upon a hill. We must pray for and exhort Donald Trump to this hope and this aspiration again. Pray for this most important of points as well, dear listener. If anything else you do coming from this message today, do this.

Pray that Donald Trump come to know the Redeemer of mankind, as Brewer puts it as Donald Trump's own Redeemer, and then Trump self-consciously leading us towards Christ-centered purpose in America again. Well, the argument that America was secular or religiously neutral is patently false. There is no neutrality when it comes to religion and spirituality. She loved, America loved Christ and followed closely the Christian religion in all her principles and ways. It is to this reality that we must return if we are ever to thrive again.

So of our three ruling principles for America, Christ, constitution, and capitalism versus secularism, statism, and socialism, the three S's that we are battling in these realms right now, this first principle, Christ, is the chief principle, and it must suffuse the other two as well. Without Christ at the center of our governing system and Christ at the center of our economic system, they too will degenerate, as they have already, into statism and socialism. Only when Christ is made to be the center of national endeavors altogether will America return to her greatness, that is, being that city set upon the hill.

Well, that brings us then to our second principle in the great realm of our political life together, and that is that America was founded as a constitutional republic, not a status tyranny. Dear listener, in the realm of the political, our political lives together as a people, America was founded as a constitutional republic, not a status tyranny. Very few people in America today appreciate how utterly unique our constitution is in all the world and throughout all of history.

From our very founding, our fathers drew up a charter that self-consciously vested power, not in a man-king, not in an aristocratic class of men to be an aristocracy, or in the hands of a wealthy few, which would be a plutocracy, but rather they vested power in the people. Our preamble begins. We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, and then makes its way through the rest of the preamble. Well, all other nations and states throughout history owe their founding to bonds of race and ethnicity, for example, or perhaps familial kinships, as the tribal Israel was, or perhaps accidents of geography and conquest.

In those days, in ancient world, power was held and applied from the top down. Not so America. Our founding fathers conceived the idea of a republic and then put it down on paper as a charter, a written constitution. Power flows from the bottom upward in America from the people who temporarily lend their representatives the exercise of that power on behalf of the people. They are, in principle, our elected representatives.

They are servants of the people. They are not rulers and officials over us. Those representatives are stewards of power who relinquish that power back to the people when they are done. They are not permanent holders of power who lord it over us, the people. But that system of government I have just described to you by of the people, by the people, and for the people is now corrupt, almost beyond redemption, I submit to you.

It's very close to being over because in the decades passing, the lean, efficient, limited republic of our founding fathers that they gave us, it has morphed into a corpulent, corrupt, gargantuan tyranny that we now aptly refer to as the deep state, right? We still maintain a veneer, a surface appearance of a constitutional republic, but just below that surface lurks the real and abiding government that is the deep state.

It is as if our republic bobs up and down on the surface of the vast ocean like a little dinghy, and our rulers point to it and say, see, we still have a constitution, while just underneath the surface lurks the great white shark of the deep state, prepared at any moment to snatch that dinghy of our republic in its jaws. This is precisely because over the decades since our founding, Americans have fallen prey to the seductive siren song of big government. Oh, woe is us. And it hasn't happened overnight either.

Little by little, we have added this program and that program, this agency and that agency, this administration, that administration, each with its own bureaucracy and its rules and its own agenda, and God help the citizen who crosses those rules and agenda. But we have no one to blame but ourselves, dear listener. This is the way we want it. This is what we the people have allowed. To this, we the people have grown accustomed.

Oh, dear listener, how sad it is. We the people like the illusion of a free lunch with our meager fare of social security or welfare or food stamps or Obamacare. We the people like the illusion of being protected from the big bad world by creating the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the environment. We have the Food and Drug Administration to protect our food and medicine, ostensibly. And then there's the NSA, the National Security Agency, to guard our national security.

Well, also, since World War II, we have felt the need to take on the burden of being the world's policemen. And consequently, our military has mushroomed out of all proportion to our real defense needs. And since 9-11, we have felt the need to surrender some of our liberty in order to be a little more secure from terrorism, ostensibly. And therefore, we need the Homeland Security Administration and the TSA, right, to restrict our travel and to track our every move, purchase and keystroke. There is no more privacy, dear listener, is there?

Well, it is these elements of government that make up a permanent ruling class. That is the deep state, that great white shark working just beneath the surface of our political system ready to devour what is left of our constitutional republic. Congressmen come and go every few years, as do presidents and their fleet of cabinet officials and assistants. Even the Supreme Court justices, though they are appointed for life, they die and retire faster than the deep state has or ever will.

Now, all of this turnover I have just mentioned in the three branches of constitutional government was deliberately created by our founding fathers to ensure that there would be no abiding power except the people. All other power and representatives would be transitional. But right under the very noses of the people over the decades, look at what has happened. Behold, a permanent ruling class, the vast Leviathan monster of bureaus and agencies, the inertia of a shadow government that lumbers on long after the people's representatives have come and gone. Our constitutional system is broken, dear citizen.

The bureaus and the agencies, which were designed initially to serve the legislative will of Congress, they have morphed over the years from servants into masters. As Jefferson puts it, government is like fire. It is a wary servant and a terrible master. Oh, the deep state has become a terrible master, dear listener. And unless our Congress and our executive branch reassert themselves and hold the deep state accountable by drastically reducing the size and number of these bureaus and agencies, we, the American people, will continue to see the evil triad of secularism and statism and socialism instead of what our founders intended.

That is Christ, constitution and capitalism. Well, that brings me to our third component in the third realm of our life together as a nation, the economic realm. Number three, the economic system that afforded the greatest liberty for the citizens of the new republic was capitalism, not socialism. Yes, the economic system that afforded the greatest liberty for the citizens of the new republic was capitalism. From the earliest days of the colonies, Americans relied upon their own wits and abilities in the wilderness, and they produced wealth by the labor of their own hands.

With the fruits of their labor, they exchanged goods with one another in a free market, far from the predatory whims of the parliament and king. And only much later, in the days before the revolution, did the British government begin to gain a stranglehold on the colonial economy. In the beginning, colonial governments were representative republics that taxed at the consent of those who elected them and they sent to colonial bodies. There was just enough government in those days to allow for justice and order so that the economies could prosper and the people be free to exchange goods and services at their discretion.

That capitalist economic system, as practiced in the United States of America, as it has grown over the decades, has produced the most prosperous people in the history of the world. Opportunities abound for everyone in our capitalist system to create their own businesses, to hire their labor out to an employer perhaps, or even pick up and move to a new location if things do not work out, or maybe they just have somewhere else that appeals to them more.

But the core idea of capitalism is that a man's wealth over and above that he requires to cover the cost of doing business and providing for he and his family, that over and above wealth can be used and invested as capital to create new wealth that was not previously available. This is the genius of capitalism. In capitalism, there is not one pie that's cut up and distributed equally to all as it is in socialism. No. In capitalism, there are resources available to create new pies such that the possibilities are limitless for the number of pies that can be created in a capitalist economy.

In socialism, on the other hand, the presumption is that the wealth that there is presently is all that there is, and it must be distributed to all equally, right? There can be no possibility for growth, for the creation of new pies, because any excess a man may have in order to invest as capital to create new pies, that excess, that wealth is seized by the state in order to be distributed to others. Excess capital in socialism and Marxism and communism is seen as evil because one has more than another, which is just not fair, right? We see this constantly over and over again. Oh, there's a little proverb that runs like this.

Capitalism shares wealth unequally with all, while socialism shares poverty equally with all. There's a lot of truth to that proverb, isn't there? Capitalism does create wealth, doesn't it? But it creates it unequally. Some are richer than others.

Some are in the upper classes. Some are in the middle classes. Some are in the poorer classes. But there's wealth for all. It's just unequally distributed, while socialism shares poverty equally with all in that all socialist systems eventually sink into poverty because they do not create wealth.

So there's a lot of truth in that proverb. And President Trump has gradually steered the ship of our economy around, hasn't he? To a course of capitalism from the stunted socialism of the Obama regime. How resilient must be the American capitalist system to bounce back so quickly under his leadership? Oh, but a word of caution must also be given here.

Unless and until we experience a wholesale spiritual reformation in the United States, all of these gains I've just articulated for you will be short-lived. The psalmist exclaims, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Oh, indeed. This is our history when God is central to our spiritual lives, when Christ is central to us as Americans. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

But equally, on the other hand, when we forget God, when we forget Christ, he forgets us. The psalmist also says, the wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God. Oh, may we be a nation that remembers God and does not forget God. How we need a wholesale return to Christ, constitution and capitalism. We have many signs of strength in America, do we not?

A president, many in government who love the USA. Our economy is strong, getting stronger, bouncing back from eight years of lethargy. And there are also many godly men and women still in America who love their savior and seek to see him glorified in all that they do, including the blessing of our nation. But we need this wholesale return to Christ, constitution and capitalism from the death-dealing effects of years of secularism, statism and socialism. Pray for this reformation in the United States, dear listener, and may God bless the USA.

This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for Holy Worship Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And you can call us for more information at 208-523-0196.