2002-11-05 - Votive Offerings

Leviticus 7:16,17 But if the sacrifice of his offering isa votive or a freewill offering, it shall be eaten on the day that he offershis sacrifice; and on the next day what is left of it may be eaten; but whatis left over from the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burnedwith fire.

Votive offerings were offerings of value that were placed in a church inthankfulness of some blessing or in memory of someone special. They often took the form of a plaque and mainly were the practice of the Roman Catholics.  They did take many forms and one of the more remembered votive offerings was from Voltaire's brother who gave a donation in Paris, to the church were Voltaire had been baptized, to try to expiate his infidelity.

All that was for free.  My real focus today is on our need to get out and vote as Christians.  Votive offerings was simply a segue into the topic because "votive" kind of sounds like "vote."  If you are like me you will wait to vote until Wednesday to vote when there will be no lines.  OK, that won't work either.  The polls close on Tuesday and will not be open on Wednesday.  However, there is a Christian duty here for us to vote.  I have no ax to grind and no personal agenda.  It is simply the case that as Christians we should take our conscience to the polls and seek to honor God with our civic responsibilities.

Maybe I am pushing too hard here, but I am certainly not pushing nearly as hard as Christians have in the past.  In the past Christians would meet on  election days and have a day of worship.  They would fast and pray.  They would view their duty to elect godly leaders as a great responsibility.  When Christians went to the polls they went and stood before God alone as they cast their votes and they knew that they would be accountable before God concerning their vote.  Sermons were preached and published and I have several election day sermons in my library.  I was curious how available they were and found only one on ebay this morning, but they do exist and if you are curious, you can obtain election day sermons.

I have no desire to try to lead you to vote for any particular party (The Alphabet Party), or to try to get you to elect any particular candidate (Mickey Mouse), but, in all honesty, I do think that when we stand before our voting booth, we also stand before God.  We must seek to honor God in all our actions and voting is really no different from any other thing we do.  In all our actions we need to seek God's glory.  To do anything else than seek God's glory in all our actions is to live below our real position as sons and daughters of the living God.

"Vote for the man who promises least.  He'll be the least disappointing." Bernard Baruch

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote." George Jean Nathan

"I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy: 'Dear Jack, Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be dammed if I'm going to pay for a landslide.'" John F. Kennedy.

Soli Deo Gloria,
T-

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