I'm Tom Askel. I'm the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, president of Founders Ministries and president of the Institute of Public Theology. And when Scott asked me to do this, I immediately had my mind go to the doctrine of God, because what has been weighing heavily on me the last four years and especially from December 2019 to this very moment is the reality that God seems to be pretty light in our world today. He seems to rest rather lightly, even in our churches today. And certainly on our governmental institutions today.

I've been drawn to Psalm 50, where God calls His people together, and then He admonishes them. And he goes over the litany of their sins and says, why do you take my covenant upon your lips when in reality you're far from me? And he describes the various sins of which they are guilty, basically just playing along with the role of religion while forgetting God. And he says this to them. These things you have done and I have kept silent.

And you thought I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. Mark this then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart and there be none to deliver." In 1983, when Alexander Solzhenitsyn was receiving the Templeton Award. In his speech, he said that when he was a young boy in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, he listened to the elders of his city, his town, Talk about what all was going on and why Russia had fallen so far. And he said they always came to this same conclusion.

We have forgotten God. That's why all this has happened to us. And he said at that time, he said, I've now spent the last 50 years of my life studying that question and I've written eight volumes so far contributing to try to understand what happened in Russia through this horrible revolution. And he said, I have no better explanation than that. We have forgotten God.

That's why all this has happened. But Last year, as I watched our cities burn, and I saw our evangelical leaders one after another offer up horrific excuses and explanations when they would dare to speak at all about these things. My heart continued to just burn and weep within me. I thought about my own life and how I've come to this stage of life, 64 years old, and I've let these things happen under my own watch in so many of the circles of influence and responsibilities and fellowship that I have. My own heart has burned with a sense of God have mercy on me, forgive me, don't let me live the rest of my life without calling your people and all people to deal with the God that is.

There is a God in heaven. We are His creatures. We exist for Him, by Him. The spheres of authority that He has ordained in this world are by His design and accountable to Him. Magistrates, civil magistrates are accountable to God as His deacons.

Fathers and mothers are accountable to how we relate to each other and to our children and bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord because He created us to be in those spheres of responsibility. Our churches, our churches of Jesus Christ. We don't have the option to sit around and decide whether or not we're going to speak for Christ, stand for Christ, defend the gospel of Christ. God has spoken. We have a book.

God help us when we neglect this book. God help us when we forget that we have been created in His image, and that one day we will stand to give an account before Him. God help us if we fail to fear Him and we start or continue to fear people. I'm grieved. I'm deeply grieved at what I see going on in our nation, in Western civilization, with these ideologies that have been so easily insinuated into our various institutions and even into our own churches in many places.

While God's people and the shepherds of God's people have either stood by silently, Or even worse, opened the door and welcomed the men. Sometimes people tell me I'm on a fool's errand, or like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. And I've lost friends over the last few years over these issues. But late at night when I'm trying to go to sleep and I try to understand where we are as a culture and where we are as churches, I can't help but think about my grandchildren. I want them to have God-honoring churches to grow up in.

And if the onslaught continues and God casts America on the ash heap of human history. I at least want to leave some markers for them when they dig through the rubble that they can say, oh, look, Grandpa thought this. It will take them back to the Word of God. Brothers and sisters, how can we live in this day without having deep burden in our souls for the honor of our God who has been forgotten? Forgotten in our society?

Forgotten in our civil authorities? And we need to admit it too often, forgotten in our churches. We who profess faith in Jesus Christ, who are staking our lives on His life, death, and resurrection to make us right with God. How can we think honestly about the cross without bowing in wonder, in awe, in reverence, in joy that is beyond imagination, and in fear. That's what our sin deserves.

Our sin is so wicked, it took the death of God's own Son in order to redeem us from it. How can we think of God who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all? How can we think that He will treat our sin and spiritual apathy and indifference in a nonchalant way? How can we think that we can go on living these God-forgetful ways and believe that in heaven no notice is taken of it. Oh, brothers and sisters, if I could just say one thing to us today, and I include myself in the church, I serve in this, and founders, and the institute, All that I want to say can be boiled down to this.

We need to come back to remember the God who is and fear Him and Him alone. If God will help us to do that, then we won't be easily swayed by the culture. We won't be intimidated when the civil magistrates tell us, oh, you must do this, and we know better how you can lead your churches than the way that you've been doing it. We won't be so easily duped by those religious leaders who tell us, listen, Romans 13, therefore do what the civil magistrate says. We won't be easily taken captive by these worldly philosophies that are according to the elemental spirits of this age, that are according to mere human tradition and not according to Christ.

Because we will realize that we have been purchased at too great a price. Our Lord has given up His own Son for us. And because of that, we are His people. We are free. And we have everything we need to stand against the tide that is rising against Christ and His church.

We have every reason to be full of hope and full of joy and full of the power that comes from the Spirit in order to say to this world the God who created you the God before whom you will stand before too long and give an account is the God who gave up His Son for sinners just like you. So kiss the Son, be reconciled to your God, and come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom alone there is life everlasting. That's what's burning in my soul. You