Christian Liberty, Limited Government, & the Call to Build

Does anybody need a copy of the handout from this morning? Did they lose theirs? Raise your hand if you need one.

OK.

Ethan's handing those out. Anybody else? Hand up. Hand up.

We've got one over here.

Raise your hand.

More. OK.

Great.

All right, so we've got two over there. Oh, two up there too. OK, raise it high. Raise it high if you're still waiting for it.

Good.

All right.

The Origin of Civil Government and the Limits of Christian Nationalism

We started out this morning talking about the text from Luke, showing the fact that there's this effort to silence Christians with the idea that there's a zone that is Caesar's outside of God's jurisdiction.

We went into why that's wrong, but also talked about the origin of civil government in the Noahic Covenant in Genesis 9. And I want to emphasize a few things for you so you can avoid some significant errors that are going around in terms of discussion of civil government in Christian circles right now.

As people discuss what's called Christian nationalism, the label Christian nationalism is a label that is open to a number of interpretations or meanings. The most popular interpretation of it is being advocated by a man named Stephen Wolf.

And Stephen Wolf is advocating for Christian nationalism that is based upon natural law. So when we talk about nationalism, what he thinks of as a nation is something that is knowable based upon an ethnic history, based upon borders and language and a shared culture.

And he'll talk about a nation as being more than the state. He'll talk about the state as being a part of the nation, but the nation more broadly is the people. Now, when you talk about a people and that people being identifiable, that makes it so that you're emphasizing this idea of a campaign or a program that involves more than the state.

It involves the culture more broadly. And one of the things that's happened as people discuss Christian nationalism is there's the good piece, which is we ought to have a Christian state and we ought to be a Christian people.

Praise Lord.

Hallelujah. Absolutely.

But that is not all that is meant by Christian nationalism when you look at what is being advocated. When we think about a Christian nation and you go beyond what the government does, you begin to think about how the government can control more than simply punishing crime.

And so what I want you to understand is there is a way in which the title Christian nationalism is excellent. We want a Christian nation. We want a Christian state. And there's a way in which it's dangerous.

And the way it is dangerous is to have a program of the state that is more extensive than what God has given in his word. So that the language of theonomy, law coming from God, theos, God, namos, law, is a language that has started to be mocked by many people who call themselves Christian nationalists.

And here's how they mock it. They say that theonomists are simply libertarians and that they do not have the backbone to stop the evil that runs wild in the streets. Now, I have not typically had to deal with being called too liberal.

But it has been an interesting experience for me recently in Christian nationalist circles that my belief that there ought to be criminal penalties for blasphemy and sodomy and all that is apparently not enough to restrain the evil.

Instead, what there's a need for is some sort of positive program to shape the culture. When you give to the state a positive program to build things and to make things, you smuggle in all sorts of powers to the state.

And you strangle the jurisdictions that you steal that power from. God has given us dominion as men. He's given households the duty of teaching and building and passing on inheritance. He's given the church the duty to teach and to lead in the worship and to see discipline maintained.

When the state comes in to punish all sorts of things that are not crimes in the Bible, it displaces the discipline of the church and of parents. When it has a positive program of building, it displaces the household and parents.

So when we talk about Christian nationalism and we try to say that natural law allows us to determine what the state ought to do, and we displace the clear teaching of scripture about what the state ought to do, what happens is you simply allow the state to do whatever rulers want, as long as they do it in the name of Christ.

So Christian nationalism, if it is anti-theonomic, is just the old danger of papal tyranny. Our Puritan forebearers had to fight off Christian nationalists under Charles I. Our Reformed forebearers had to fight off Christian nationalists under the control of the papacy in the Holy Roman Empire, in France, in Spain, in Italy, in Poland, and they lost in almost all of those.

Where restrained and limited government under the control of Christians, attempting to apply God's law happened, in Switzerland and the Netherlands and Britain, and to some extent its Commonwealth. Those are the places where Protestantism flourished long.

We must be aware of the difference between a general effort to give power to government and call it Christian versus the definition of the state in the Bible. Big government for the state or big government for the church are both dangerous, and we must recognize that the limits on the church and the state are extensive.

Their powers are small. They have small areas they are to govern, but the church must deal with behaviors that become public through process of Matthew 18 or just by being public in their original act.

So the limits of power are very important to maintain, and I need you to be aware of certain arguments that are made in support of natural law in the state and in support of an extensive view of government.

Crime, Sin, and the Regulative Principle of Government

First of all, I need you to understand that a view of natural law as regards the state says this. Something observable in the creation tells us not only what is sin, but what is criminal. What's the difference between crime and sin?

A sin is something that is either what God has forbidden or at least not what He has commanded, any transgression of or lack of conformity unto the law of God. But a crime is a sin that deserves a coercive punishment.

What sins ought to be coercively punished? Apart from the revelation of God in His word, we do not have any way of knowing which sins are crimes. So people want to outlaw or penalize or fine all sorts of things they don't like, and what that is is the desire to dominate their peers and to usurp authority over them, to impose their will at their leisure.

We come from a licentious time where men call wickedness liberty and dance around in it for a long time, preferably to them in front of children. That wickedness makes us sometimes think that liberty is overrated.

Liberty is not overrated. Liberty has been a popular word in the recent past, and I expect as the rise of people realizing that states must be Christian increases, the word liberty will fall out of fashion.

But liberty is a word to be prized, and rights are to be guarded. Rights are things that come from God when He commands us to do our duty. He gives us a right. Overbearing and overreaching powers take away rights and liberties that are given by God.

It is the almost universal experience of the race of man that men are all too happy to order their fellow men around whether they have legitimate authority or not. Wars throughout history are largely the efforts of some men to dominate and enslave others, to take their goods and to take their land.

We should not throw off the language of liberty or love for it. The law of God is the law of liberty. Theonomy is derided by the left because they hate the law of God, and they hate that God wants us to punish things that He defines as crimes.

Theonomy is derided by the right because it is too weak, too insipid, not vigorous enough, not demanding enough. It will not come in and tell men what to do. It tells men, if you do this, there are consequences.

It does not come in and tell men what to do in detail. Now, when we think about the law of God, we look at the case laws. The case laws do not have an administrative state that goes around and investigates people proactively.

The biblical system of government relies upon probable cause or the testimony of witnesses to have government intervene or for an ongoing public disorder to be evident and require night watchman intervention.

If we have people running around just looking into people without any cause, what you have is interference into your own peace, and what you have is excuses to abuse people. There's the famous Russian line, show me the man and I'll show you the crime.

If there's infinite searching by an authority without any cause, you can find some way to punish almost anybody, especially when you have lots and lots and lots and lots of laws. So what I want to make sure you understand is that there's a regulative principle of government.

In the civil sphere, penalties, the Bible provides for us a definition of crimes. Do you know the difference between a crime and a sin? Sins are things that God has not commanded or that he forbids. Crimes are things that God says, if this happens, here's the penalty.

If this happens, here's the penalty. That identifies a crime for you. The crimes have penalties attached, and that shows us what a crime is. It also shows us the just penalty. The first question is, what sins or crimes?

The second question is, for politics, for political philosophy, what punishments are just? So those things are answered for us in the scripture. And when people want to go around and make random things they don't like into crimes and invent penalties for them, that's a lust for power.

When people invent penalties that are too high beyond what God has commanded or too low, that is a pretense to be wiser than God. So here is a sure tell that a person is opposed to theonomy. Here's the marker.

The State After the Fall and the Need to Resist Tyranny

When did the state begin? If a person believes that the state began before the fall, that person believes that there's authority to order people around and not just an authority to punish crimes. In Eden, there were no crimes to punish.

Charles I, in support of his absolute monarchy view, had his scholars argue that he had a right to rule men because of his birthright from Adam. The divine right of kings is the divine right of inheritance passing down with fief simple over a certain jurisdiction.

Charles apparently had a very clear and obvious lineage that he could demonstrate all the way back to Adam. John Locke's first treatise on American government, by the way, in America, the second treatise by John Locke is the one that's real famous.

Nobody ever asks, what's the first treatise about? Second normally implies there's a first, right? So what's the first one about? The first one, he attacks the idea that absolute monarchy can be defended on the basis of a proven lineage from Adam or Noah.

The second one involves all sorts of arguments relating to limits on government where he tries to turn Presbyterian civil theology into a sort of natural law, right? Because John Locke's parents were covenanters.

So he was trying to, if we could just kind of pull back on the first table of the law stuff, that'd be real swell. And so that's what America gets from John Locke is a, let's just back off on the first four commandments and let's focus on the last six thing.

So that first treatise, John Locke argues against this idea of being able to prove that you have the right to rule over some jurisdiction as though you're the father of the people there by an inheritance of jurisdiction.

So the argument back to Adam for the idea of a absolute monarchy and for the existence of government is a telltale sign of a view of unlimited government. And let me remind you what I just said. There were no crimes in Eden to be punished.

The state is necessary after the fall in order to punish crimes. And the whole story from the fall to the flood is a world where there's fall but no civil government. That's what Genesis four up to nine gives to us.

And the flood is a response to wipe out the wickedness that comes if nobody is restraining the wicked. It is true that men must be governed. It is true that might must be used to restrain wickedness. It is true that criminals must be punished.

Let us not be soft-headed about this. Let us not be cowards or weaklings. It is also true that governments are often filled with criminals and that if men were angels unfallen, they would not need magistrates to punish them.

The limits on civil government are limits on criminals with badges and guns. Restraints on the abuse of power. And government is a restraint on the evil of men. The same truth about the nature of man makes restraints on men and restraints on governors necessary.

Genesis nine verses five to seven is the origin text of the state. It gives authorization. It gives a mandate for the exercise of coercive power to punish murderers by taking their lives. Romans 12 teaches us about our duty as individuals to be careful, to be willing to suffer wrongs in order to bring about peace.

And Romans 13 teaches us about the importance of rulers to punish criminals and praise the good. If we will not restrain power, we end up with all sorts of horrific abuses. It is important for us to see godly men enter power and it is important for us to resist ungodly men who would use power for tyranny.

And so the whole system of decentralized government, limited government, the possession of arms by individuals, all of these things, the distribution of powers across multiple jurisdictions, the existence of multiple governors inside of each level of government, all of these things are designed to limit the power of men.

Government must be powerful enough to wage just warfare and to be able to punish criminals. And it must be weak enough that it is possible to resist it when it is tyrannical. The principal way of allowing for that is the compartmentalization of the state into covenanted lesser governments.

God designed Israel to have tribes federated together. And the founding fathers had states federated together. Remember the word federal is just a Latin word for covenant, covenanted government. We are living in a reactionary period.

This reactionary period is looking at the excesses of people that are destroying everything. Literally government schools are taking tax dollars and trying to secretly trans kids away from their parents.

If this is not a dystopian novel, I don't know what is. Like this is a real thing that's happening. We have governments like California taking children away in order to force one parent to allow the other parent to be able to do some sort of horrific irreversible surgery.

Those kinds of things are actually happening. Babies are being murdered in mass. Money is being stolen in mass. The constitution is broken constantly. The oath breaking in our land is beyond measuring.

And not only in the state, but also in the church. How many people swear to uphold doctrinal standards with their fingers crossed while they take the oath? The amount of covenant breaking, the chaos that's here.

When chaos comes, people start to scream for a strong man. And the strong man starts to promise to do strong things. The exercise of power against enemies becomes a thing people start to cheer. The crowd becomes tired of trying to apply rules even handedly.

Partiality in justice becomes boring. They seek to rule us. They want to oppress us. Let's oppress them. This is the lie that becomes tempting to believe. But civil power is not meant for us to favoritistically punish those we dislike and reward with spoils those we like.

Civil power has limits given to it by God. And civil power has power given to it by God. Both must be respected. When we think we can pragmatically choose candidates that we can control, and they will fight our enemies for us, oh, give us a king to go before us and fight our enemies like the Democrats, or like the nations.

Give us a king, make him a fighter. Those tigers are hard to ride. They're difficult to stay mounted on. And we may find that we think we have reins of steel to control this tiger wherever we desire, and we may soon find they are cobwebs that hold that beast little.

The only bonds that restrain men effectively are the bonds of God's law. The law of God is a mirror to show us our need of a savior, a chain to restrain the evils of men, and a lamp to show us the way that we should go.

We are not wiser than God, and we ought not pretend to be. I am a Calvinist, and so I laugh at the days to come, but if I were not, I would be fearful about the rising tide of screaming for the use of centralized power to take vengeance on our enemies apart from due process of law.

Beloved, we are called to a work of building Christian culture without the coercive power, and the coercive power is supposed to protect it. We do not know how much time we have before the strong man comes.

We do not know how much time we have until limited government becomes so unfavorable in our land that it is able to be swept away with the stroke of a pen. We do not know how much time we have until perhaps some new constitution is written.

We do not know how much time we have until somebody somewhere starts to lead a drive to secession. Whether there is balkanization and the division of civil power into multiple zones, or whether there is a concentration of power in Washington or some other center, yet undeclared.

We have limited time. We must build. It is our duty to build. Now there is a call to balance. We must sleep and rejoice. We must take the Sabbath. We must do these things. But beloved, we must be purposeful with the limited energies and time and resources that we have.

We must build. As we build things, others come and look to take shade under what has been built and seek to be discipled by those who build those things. We must take the effort to advance and mature and build.

Only by advancing and building during the time that we have can we hope to have significant influence with the changes that come. We work applying God's law. We pray asking for his blessing. And we do not sit in anxiety or fear.

We recognize it is the God of heaven who determines the boundaries of empires and the rising and falling of kings. The arm of the flesh is not the device to use. Instead, the hand of God seeking to use that which is spiritual is the power by which evil is overcome.

The performance of good works done in faith, prayed over, powerfully overcomes the world. We can think that preaching is foolishness. We can think that cultivating the souls of children and washing wives in the word is foolishness.

We can think that dominion work, seeking to do honest labor and gain honest wages seems foolish and weak. But these things are the things that fill the earth with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

The sword is a defense. The sword is not that which builds. The blessings you find in the era of the gospel are that every man sits under his own tree, by his own vine, and none of them will be afraid.

Plant vines, plant trees, build houses, have children, buy vineyards. Have I ever told you that for a very limited time, and it was miserable, I worked for Republican candidates? I remember at one particular campaign where I was told, I remember, the Republicans are supposed to run on limited government and in opposition to welfare statism and all that.

I was told to pass out from house to house pamphlets that said, vote against this Democrat because he voted to cut Social Security. Do you think it is a good long-term strategy for a people that believe in liberty and limited government to campaign against socialists because they aren't socialist enough?

Do you think that encourages people to believe your candidates have integrity, are honest, are lovers of truth? Do you think that helps to spread the doctrine that you think people need of limited government to go and campaign against socialists by saying they're not socialist enough?

It's like the cowardly signs you've seen around town. Vote no on Prop 139. Abortion's already legal up to 15 weeks. God have mercy. How about this? The Lord says to not take innocent blood. How about this?

Abortion is murder. How about this? The Bible says, pick any one of the verses I've given to you in the handout to prove that children are people before they are born. A fear to put forward God's word will not give us courageous men.

We must be willing to lose for a time. We must be willing to fight valiantly, rear guard actions until a decisive moment when the last stand turns into the first advance. If there is no retreat point to rally around, then retreating is in vain.

If we long-term just take on the worldview of our enemies, we become propagandists that pull along the laggards in their direction. This is why it is necessary that we nominate men of truth who fear God and hate covetousness, men of valor.

This is why we must choose wise men, men of understanding, knowledgeable men from among our tribes. And if there are no civil governing powers, then perhaps the Lord will raise up some Jehoiada, some man like that priest of old who would rally men to form a civil covenant and to resist tyrannical power and usurpers.

I do not want you to be enamored with power for power's sake and I do not want you to be defeatist and to believe that there is no way forward. It is our duty to exercise power vigorously in our homes and to build.

That is not a call to weakness. It is a call to the kind of diligence that men often have no taste for. We ought not to be diffident and effeminate in our failures to exercise power and we ought not to be conquerors who dominate for a short time so that we can then live off of the slave labor of the people that we have usurped.

Romans 13, Christian Democracy, and the Duty to Elect Qualified Officers

The limits of government depend upon God's law. Now I mentioned earlier on here, Stephen Wolfe and Christian nationalism and I am not saying that he is advocating for the outright enslavement of other people and the extracting of wealth from them and that sort of thing.

Here's what I'm saying to you. He is destroying the safeguards of liberty by advocating for natural law for the state and advocating for a pre-false state. The state was made in Genesis nine and God defines the limits of the state in his law.

Written in the scriptures. Take a look at the handout. Go to page four. I want to walk through with you to understand Romans 13 verses one to seven. Let every soul, this is the qualifications reading at the bottom of page four.

Let every soul be subordinate to the lawful authority that is in higher authority. For there is no authority except from God and the authorities that exist are appointed under God as an ordinance under God's authority.

Therefore, whoever resists the authority, the lawful authority, resists the ordinance of God, the law of God. And those who resist the law order of God will receive judgment on themselves. It is not the resistance of men with power that brings judgment.

It's the resistance against the law of God. And if you resist the law of God in order to simply impose unqualified men, you usurp authority over other men. For rulers, those who use lawful authority are not a terror to good works.

You know about Hitler, you know about Stalin, you know about Mao, you know about Pol Pot, you know about Charles the First. Lots of people with crowns or badges or thrones have abused power. But you know the difference between a legitimate ruler and an illegitimate ruler based upon whether they're a terror to good works.

Legitimate rulers are a terror to evildoers. Beloved, are our magistrates a terror to evildoers? They're not. They're not. They're not. Do you want to be unafraid of the lawful authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same.

Our governors do not praise what is good. They give a month at the White House honoring every kind of sexual perversion. Verse four, for he, the lawful authority, is God's minister to you for good. Most of our governors have no idea what your good is.

How could they?

If they don't care about God's law, do you see how ridiculous the general arguments are for pragmatism to vote for unqualified men? We're just saying let's give the nuclear briefcase and the sword to men who know nothing.

Men who don't know their right hand from their left. But if you do evil, be afraid. For he, the lawful authority, does not bear the sword in vain. We don't use the sword to execute murderers. We use the sword to defend the concentration camps of abortion mills.

60 million dead. That's five times the high estimates for Hitler. But if you do evil, be afraid. For the lawful authority does not bear the sword in vain. For he, the lawful authority, is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.

The magistrate is a minister of God, a deacon of God, a servant of God, and his job as a servant of God is to avenge, to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore, you must be subject. Notice the therefore.

When you notice the therefore, the important thing to do is to ask, what's it there for? Whenever you see therefore, it's a statement of logical connection. The logical connection is this thing follows from the prior premises.

So let me tell you what. The argument for why you have a duty to be subject is because they are enforcing God's law. When they're not enforcing God's law, when they're not defending the righteous, when they're not punishing the wicked, the therefore goes away.

The only reason to obey then is because sometimes it's more convenient to hand a mugger your wallet than it is to fight them. But when the mugger goes for your children, or when the mugger tries to draft your daughter or your son for some unjust war, suddenly disobedience to tyrants becomes obedience to God, and obedience to tyrants becomes rebellion against God.

Beloved, I am a betting man, like I'm absolutely a betting man, and I would bet and bet my whole life and the trajectory of my time and many lost hours of sleep to the idea that the strong man is coming.

And so we must work hard to be ready to resist that. We're in a time of reaction against the licentiousness and depravity and absurdity that fills our streets and airwaves. And that reaction is not the reaction of, you know what, let's repent and turn back to God, and let's seek God's law in the land.

There are some people that's happening too. I think the church is going through reformation at a low level. I think there's a lot of local churches and lots of people that are going through reformation, but we need time, and we need to accelerate the process of reformation.

That involves governing yourselves well, governing your houses well, getting resources, building things, discipling, evangelizing, seeking to enter into public service at a low level in the church, and then seeking to rise.

Therefore, you must be subject not only because of wrath, but also for conscience sake. Four, because of this, because the lawful authority exercises lawful judgment in avenging wrongs as a service to God and to the governed, you also pay taxes.

Notice the argument for why you owe taxes is they're doing their job. When they're not doing their job, do you owe them the taxes?

No.

Did the Jews owe Caesar the taxes that Jesus said it was lawful to pay? No, but he said it was lawful to pay it because it's lawful to pay a mugger when he's mugging you.

That's why.

We must think straight about this. We must think straight about this, and behave in ways that help us to prepare to deal with greater excesses of tyranny that are likely to come. For because of this, you also pay taxes, for they are God's ministers attending to this very thing, the avenging of wrongs in service.

Render therefore, notice all of the therefores and the fores and the becauses. Do you see how the reasoning chain, when it breaks down, the duties break down? This is true in all covenantal relationships.

When ministers will not preach the word of God, you do not submit to them. When magistrates will not punish criminals, you do not submit to them. When fathers and mothers will not provide, children need not submit to them.

You do not have a duty to sit in squalor and hunger in nakedness, in obedience to a tyrannical parent. You have the right to leave. You have the right to leave tyrant ministers. You have the right to leave tyrant magistrates.

Every covenant relationship has mutual duties. And if one side breaks the covenant, the other side is not bound to keep up the duties and pretend like the covenant still stands. Verse seven, render therefore to all their due.

Taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. But verse eight helps us to understand what the do is. The do, the owed thing, is obedience to the law of God.

Owe no one anything except to love one another. For he who loves another has fulfilled the law. The rest of it explains what the law is. This text is a manifesto of civil liberty. And if you believe that the state has powers that are not revealed in the scriptures, then you have no idea what you owe to the state until you've observed gophers enough to draw out from that portion of nature the appropriate things that gophers teach you about civil government and your subjection to it.

This is not the way of knowledge. This is not the way of truth. The state derives its powers first from God and secondly through the democratic representational system in the scriptures, which is what the principle of the Declaration of Independence says when it talks about deriving its just powers from the consent of the people.

The consent of the people is not as a contract, it's a covenant with a democratic election of officers. We live in a time where democracy is equated with liberty. Merely electing people and merely having the majority of people choose laws is not liberty.

If the majority votes to execute Socrates, are they right or are they wrong? Well, if the voice of the people is the voice of God, then of course they're right. And if the voice of the people says to make abortion a constitutional right and the voice of the people is the voice of God, then of course they're right.

But if God's word rules men and kings and the voice of the people is merely a fact-finding mission to determine if officers are qualified. Oh, the heights of democracy and all of our worship of it. Democracy in a Christian state is a fact-finding mission merely to see if men are qualified.

That is the limits of Christian democracy. Christian democracy must be a republic where officers are under law and they rule seeking to apply God's law. And you have the serious duty of nominating and electing men fit for the office who will not wield the sword in vain and will not wield the sword as tyrants, but will wield the sword to suppress the wickedness of the wicked.

Building Christian Culture, Beauty, and a City on a Hill

Comments, questions, and objections from the voting members and those with speaking privileges. Mr. Boyston. Yeah, so a vineyard is used as an example of a industrial work to create items of pleasure, right?

You grow the vine principally to make wine and the wine has some benefit to the body, but the wine is principally a drink for rejoicing that makes life more delightful. And we do good works in the economy.

We make grain and bread and we make olives and olive oil and we make grapes and wine. And so the bread is our daily consumption. The oil is to give strength and the wine gives joy to the heart. And so we do the work of building a beautiful culture.

If we just have bread, we may survive, but we will not be beautiful. If we have bread and oil, we might be strong, but we will not be beautiful. If we have bread and if we have oil and if we have wine, we have what we need, we have strength and there's rejoicing.

So we need to make beautiful and productive homes and lives. And that's what vineyards are about. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would help us to have right thoughts about the magistracy and help us to build and help us to be aware that there are limits on our time and resources and to not be afraid, but instead to build and work and to seek to see a Christian zone, a Christian enclave, a borough, and to see it be strong and beautiful and to see others rally around it.

Father, we ask that you would help us to stop men's mouths as they say, oh, it's only productive, only possible for us to go and rally around the wicked and we just have to choose the best of the wicked.

Father, we ask that you would help us to have something worth rallying around that men would say, let us repair to that place where the Christians are. Let us gather there under their banner. We ask, Father, that you would bless us in this work, that you would help us to build a city on a hill that others would rally to, that in the darkness they would see the light and desire to take shelter.

We ask, Father, that you would help us to provide shelter, to give a wing under which others might come.