- 00:05
- All right, all right, all right, all right. Well, just a quick video today.
- 00:10
- I wasn't actually gonna even do one, but I just had a quick thought. So I thought I'd put it out there. But if you had a good week, then congrats, the week is over, you've enjoyed your reward.
- 00:21
- And if you haven't, next week's a new week. So we're all set to go either way. The Lord is good.
- 00:28
- What I wanted to say was, go to church on Sunday. You know, like that's important.
- 00:34
- And every time I mention, you know, church, I get a few different kinds of responses.
- 00:39
- And some of them are like pretty obstinate. Oh, what are you, it's a churchianity. What do you, you think the church is a building?
- 00:44
- You know, stuff like that. And you know, whatever. And then, but sometimes I get people that push back on it and it's not obstinate, but it is pushing back on going to church.
- 00:54
- And basically it amounts to something like this. They say, well, I don't have a good church. You know, it must be nice. You know, you have a church that's within an hour away.
- 01:01
- It's actually exactly an hour away. Which kind of stinks. They say, you know, you're lucky enough to have a good church that teaches well.
- 01:08
- You know, I don't have one that understands that the law of God, you know, applies to the civil realm and things like that.
- 01:14
- And you know, a lot of times guys will come to me and they say, you know, I've turned post -millennial. I've turned, you know, into a theonomist.
- 01:20
- Or even if they haven't turned into a theonomist, they take the law of God seriously. And they know that the law of God answers a lot of the questions that our country is just failing at.
- 01:28
- They see that the constitution is completely fundamentally flawed. And we're getting, we're reaping what we've sown for all these years.
- 01:36
- We're reaping what we've sown. And this is what the constitution produces because it produces a secular government, which is just a fancy way to say a polytheistic government.
- 01:47
- That's what we have right now. A polytheistic government. Everyone's got their own idea of what justice is and what law to follow and stuff.
- 01:54
- And you know, we kind of have this mix of representatives that all kind of fighting for their own interests instead of honoring
- 01:59
- God and setting apart Christ as Lord in their hearts. You know, we've got, you know, Muslims, we've got the
- 02:04
- LGBT cult, we've got the COVID cult and all this stuff. We see the failure of this. And they're like, well,
- 02:09
- I can't find a church that teaches well on this kind of stuff. You know, and I've been thinking long and hard about this because that is a problem.
- 02:16
- I, you know, I believe that that is an area that we have been deficient and we are reaping that in the church, the deficiencies of, you know, really unbelief in the civil realm.
- 02:27
- Unbelief in the civil realm is what we've promoted as an ideal for so long in favor of, you know, freedom of religion and polytheism, a polytheistic government is what we have.
- 02:40
- In any case though, I've been thinking along about this. And though I don't think our situation is ideal,
- 02:46
- I wonder if God is giving us exactly what we need right now.
- 02:52
- We've got so many new Christians and I've mentioned, you know, how enthusiastic I am and how encouraged
- 02:57
- I am about seeing so many people get baptized and they post the video of their baptism on Gab and they're just so excited.
- 03:04
- And I've seen so many people saying, Christ is King, King, no King, but Christ, King of Kings, the
- 03:12
- Lord of Lords. And it's just like this rallying cry and it's so good. And it's true, probably some of them don't know what they're saying, but still like it's better to have a rallying cry behind Christ and you're not quite sure what you're saying than to have a pagan polytheistic, you know, freedom of religion, rallying cry and stuff like that.
- 03:30
- And that pluralistic stuff doesn't work. And I'd rather have people not quite understand, but be, you know, rallying behind Christ than people not quite understand, but be rallying behind Satan, right?
- 03:40
- But here's the point though, here's the point. I wonder though, if Christ is giving us and providing us with the leadership that we need right now.
- 03:51
- Look, I'm not saying our leadership is perfect, but it's no excuse to not go to church if all you can find is one of these pietistic sort of movement guys, where all they want to do is focus on personal devotion and personal holiness and, you know, personal, you know, disciplines and stuff like that.
- 04:08
- And they don't want to talk about the outside realm because they think that it doesn't apply over there. They only think it applies to you and maybe your wife and family and stuff like that.
- 04:16
- And it's just that very narrow area of the kingdom of God. That's not true, guys. Don't hear me saying that that's true, but let me get this straight.
- 04:24
- You've got to command your own life. You've got to have personal discipline. You've got to have personal holiness and you have to command your family and rule your family according to God's law and your dealings in your personal relationships.
- 04:37
- That has to come first before you can command the future in the civil realm, right? You have to have your life personally together.
- 04:45
- I don't mean perfectly together, but you have to be under the Lordship of Christ in your family before you can put the entire nation under the
- 04:53
- Lordship of Christ as a leader. So you got to walk before you run. You got to crawl before you walk.
- 05:00
- And I wonder if God is meeting us essentially where we're at with all of these, you know, in my opinion, way too overly pietistic type people where God's law doesn't apply anywhere except in the heart.
- 05:12
- That's not true. But I wonder if he's provided this to us because there's a harvest that's going to be reaped here and all the people that are getting baptized and stuff like that, they need to understand that personal piety is important.
- 05:27
- Right? Personal piety is not a bad thing, right? I don't agree with the pietistic movement and, you know, the only way to be holy is to write a poem about Christ and think about all that all day long and you don't do anything else.
- 05:39
- You don't apply Christ over here. You're just writing poetry over here. And like all that stuff, like, I don't agree with that, but maybe that's what we need in the interim while we're getting our feet under us, right?
- 05:50
- Like we do need to get our spiritual lives in order. We do need to practice, you know, improve our personal holiness and all of these things all under the mercy and grace of God.
- 06:00
- We understand that when we fail, Christ has covered us because he is who are, he's the only one, the only reason why we have salvation is because of Christ.
- 06:08
- It's not because of our efforts and things like that, but still we want to abide in the love of Christ. And so how do we abide in the love of Christ?
- 06:14
- We obey Christ and we got to do that ourselves and our families before we can do that in our country in the civil realm.
- 06:22
- And so I don't know if this is true. This is just a thought I've had, you know, it's no excuse to not go to church.
- 06:29
- If they teach well on some of the personal devotions and the personal holiness, but they don't teach well in the civil realm, that's not an excuse not to go there, right?
- 06:38
- That's not an excuse. And I wonder if God's providing us the exact thing that we need right now.
- 06:44
- And so if you have a church that, you know, the pastor's good and he understands the power of prayer and personal devotions, and he understands the personal piety very, very well.
- 06:54
- And he understands the grace and the mercy of God and salvation by grace through faith. And he gets all that stuff.
- 07:01
- And he doesn't downplay sin. See, that's the other thing that's important, I think, right? Yeah, you know, it'd be great if he had an optimistic eschatology.
- 07:08
- It'd be great if he had a civil realm, you know, a law that actually applied to the civil realm.
- 07:14
- It'd be great if he didn't say stupid things like, well, you know, freedom of religion is more important. The first amendment is more important.
- 07:20
- Like, you know, like that kind of stuff. It'd be better if he didn't say stupid things like somebody said to me today that our best option as Christians, he says he's a
- 07:29
- Christian. Our best option is a secular government. That's unbelief. So it'd be better if he didn't say that kind of stuff.
- 07:36
- But if he doesn't, but he doesn't take sin and he doesn't downplay it, he wants to help you destroy that sin in your life.
- 07:45
- He wants to put you under the lordship of Jesus Christ, having your sins forgiven by grace through faith in his sacrifice and all of those things.
- 07:54
- And he's, but he doesn't have all of the, you know, civil realm stuff. Look, there's no excuse. Go to church.
- 08:00
- It's important. Make those connections, build relationships with people that love Christ as well.
- 08:05
- And the other stuff I think will be granted later. I think that all the rest of that stuff is going to be coming, but we have to rule ourselves first.
- 08:18
- We have to rule our families, you know, before we can rule the country. It's just that simple. So I hope that encourages you, man.
- 08:25
- And I know most of my audience already goes to church, but I think there's a subsection of this audience that doesn't. And so for you,
- 08:30
- I encourage you to do so because it will absolutely be a blessing to you. And if you want to honor the
- 08:37
- Lord and you want to abide in Christ's love, then you have to obey his commandments. And one of those commandments is to gather regularly with the saints of God.