Why Sit Here Until We Die? — Michael L. Brown

We pray for your grace and power to be in our midst this day as we open your word. Lord, you know those that are here. Lord, even in a small gathering this day, Lord, of hundreds and not of thousands, you know each life, you know the people from each nation, you know each situation, each need, and I pray you would speak with clarity that your word would come with power and leave a lasting deposit in our lives.

And Lord, for Ben and Vera who ministered to us and for the work of the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem and around the world, I ask you to pour out more grace in a more substantial and lasting and wonderful way that the name of Jesus would be powerfully glorified in them and through them.

We bless your great name, God, in Jesus' name. Amen. You can be seated. And I want you to turn with me to 2 Kings chapter 7. This morning as I drove to the car and had a worship tape on and was praising God and rejoicing in him, my throat's still a little scratchy so I couldn't sing the way I normally do, kind of the way Ben just sings.

That's the way I normally sing in my car. But God began to stir my heart with some other themes that I believe some of you need to hear today. So I'm going to start going in the way that I was planning on going and then see if we take some turns along the way.

The Siege of Samaria and the Four Lepers

2 Kings chapter 7. The background really begins with the sixth chapter of 2 Kings. The Arameans were harassing the Israelites and God would speak to Elisha and tell him to let the king know that the Arameans were about to set an ambush with their raiding troops.

And each time they'd go and check it out and it was so and the king of Aram got frustrated. Who's telling secrets? You know, who is it? Somebody's betraying the confidence and they said, well, it's Elisha.

God tells him what you say in the bedroom. Well, they end up actually bringing in armies of Samaria. They end up bringing them in to the very city of Samaria, the armies of Aram. How? Because God blinded them and Elisha led them right into the here.

There's the enemy camp. They lead them right in to the Samaritans and instead of killing them, instead of the people of Samaria, the Israelites killing the Arameans, they say, no, we'll make a feast for them.

They fed them. They gave their own food. Think of this. Here you've got the Arameans, the enemy. God blinds them, brings them right into the city of the Israelites and now they make a feast for them. Now they go out.

So the raiding troops and that comes to an end. But now the king says, we're just going to take the whole city of Samaria and they besiege the city and there's a terrible famine. And the king gets angry with the prophet Elisha when he hears that people are actually cooking their own children and eating them because people are starving to death in the city.

He says, I want Elijah's head. I want him dead. Now, why was he so upset with Elisha? It could be just because this guy was a prophet of God and when something goes wrong, you get mad at the prophet. If you're mad at God, you blame his representative.

But it could also be that sometime before this, God brought the Arameans right into the Israelites' hands and the prophet said, don't kill them, make a feast for them. And now those very people have us besieged all around and we're dying of famine.

Just sometime before, we fed their own troops. Now they're starving us out. It's all Elisha's fault. And when they come to get him, the king's messenger, Elisha has a word for the king that tomorrow about this time, there's going to be a feast in the land.

We'll put it in today's terms. Today, a loaf of bread costs $100. Tomorrow, it'll cost a quarter. Today, a head of lettuce costs $30. Tomorrow, it'll cost five cents. And the attendant to the king said, even if the Lord opened up the heavens, it couldn't happen.

And Elisha said, you'll see it with your eyes, but you won't partake. By the way, that's what happens with skeptical unbelief. This is not what I'm talking about today, but that's what happens with a skeptical, unbelieving attitude.

You see it with your eyes, but you don't partake. Now, here's where we pick this up in verse three of chapter seven. Now, there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, why stay here until we die?

King James, why sit we here until we die? If we say we'll go into the city, the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let's go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender.

If they spare us, we live. If they kill us, then we die. They're basically looking at their lives, and they're saying, you know, we're just sitting here. We're outside of the city because of our leprosy.

We just sit here. We're going to starve to death. If we go into the camp of the Arameans, the worst they can do is kill us. We're going to die anyway. The worst they can do is kill us. It's like you're in a plane with a parachute.

You don't know if it works. And the plane is going down, and you know for sure if you stay in the plane, you're dead. That's certain. But maybe if you jump out, maybe that parachute will work. Maybe you'll live.

They said, what's the use of staying here in the plane? It's definitely going down. So they go out into the camp of the Arameans, figure, hey, if they kill us, we're dead. But if they feed us, at least we live.

We got nothing to lose. At dusk, they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, not a man was there, for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said one to another, look, the King of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us.

So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left their camp as it was and ran for their lives. The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents.

They ate and drank and carried away silver, gold, and clothes and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also. Then they said to each other, we're not doing right.

This is a day of good news and we're keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once and report this to the royal palace. So they went out and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them we went into the Aramean camp and not a man was there, not a sound of anyone, only tethered horses and donkeys and the tents left just as they were.

The gatekeepers shouted the news and it was reported within the palace. The king got up in the night and said to his officers, I will tell you what the Arameans have done to us. They know we are starving so they have left the camp to hide in the countryside thinking they will surely come out and then we will take them alive and get into the city.

One of his officers answered, have some men take five of the horses that are left in the city. Their plight will be like that of all the other Israelites left here. Yes, they will only be like all these Israelites who are doomed.

So let us send them to find out what happened. So they selected two chariots with their horses and the king sent them after the Aramean army. He commanded the drivers go and find out what has happened.

They followed them as far as the Jordan and they found the whole road strewn with the clothing and equipment the Arameans had thrown away in their headlong flight. These guys were terrified. They didn't even go by horse, they ran.

So the messengers returned and reported to the king and the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of flour sold for a shekel and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel as the Lord had said.

Now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate and the people trampled him in the gateway and he died. That's the guy that said it'll never happen and Elisha said you'll see it but you won't partake.

Now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate and the people trampled him in the gateway and he died just as the man of God had foretold when the king came to his house.

It happened as the man of God had said to the king about this time tomorrow a seah of flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria. Why do we sit here until we die?

Examining Spiritual Stagnation

There is a time in the life of every believer where you must come to grips with yourself honestly and see where you are going, see how you are living, see the state of your life spiritually. Examine yourself and be ruthlessly honest with yourself and if you're on the wrong path, if you're stagnating, if the same habitual things keep getting you down, if you're never moving forward, if it's always tomorrow and tomorrow never comes, if all the dreams and all the visions and all the prophecies are still nowhere near being fulfilled, if you're in the same rut today that you were in a year ago or even deeper today, there's got to be that point where you come to grips with yourself and say something has to change and it's not changing.

Something different has to happen or I'm going to end up in the same rut again. You may have done the same thing with dieting. You may be one of those self-deceived people. I've often been one of them.

I want to take some weight off, get in better shape. My wife will say, well, what's your plan? Well, you know, I'm just, I'm just working at it. Well, you're working on it a month ago, you're working on it six months ago, you're working on it a year ago, you're working on it two years ago, you're working on it five, you know, whatever it is, but always in my mind, I've got this thought.

Well, no, it's going to be a little different because, you know, I've lost a couple of pounds here. Of course, I found those couple of pounds and lost them again, found them again. Some of you can relate to that, but my wife is a realist and she'll bring to my attention when I'm in one of these self-deceived cycles.

Again, I must say, I don't always thank her for bringing these things to my attention. Years back when I was heading up a Bible college in Graduate School of Theology in Maryland, we were always under severe financial pressure, the way the thing was set up, the way the thing was run, the size of the student body.

And each semester, I would think we'd have a breakthrough. In fact, I took very little income from the school most of the time. I got to the point where I pretty much supported myself out of outside ministry to relieve the school of paying most of my salary.

But each semester, I'd say to myself, this next semester, there's going to be a real increase and the financial pressure is going to lift that our whole office and our small staff is under. And I remember one time talking to my wife about finances because even though we lived in a nice home through money that had been put into real estate for us some years before that, you know, it was always hand to mouth.

I'd go overseas to minister and sometimes my wife would call the office to find out if we had a hundred dollar check because she needed grocery money. We didn't have a hundred in the account, okay? So I'm not saying that we were living in poverty, but I'm saying that the financial flow is often hand to mouth.

Some of you live like that. So we talk about things, you know, what's going on with finances, what changes are coming. And I'd say, and I really meant it, and I really believed it. This next semester, I really think there's going to be a break.

This next semester, I really think the pressure is going to lift. This next semester, this, this next semester, that. And I had good reason in my own mind for thinking that. We had another faculty member coming on.

We're offering some additional courses. We were doing this, we were doing that. We were praying more for God's blessing on the classes and so on. And one time she just said to me, that's what you say before every new semester.

Just like a light went on because I tell you honestly, up to that point, I didn't realize it. And it must have been a good three years into me heading up this school that we had raised up. I had to say to myself, what is going to change this time?

What's really honestly, tangibly, root level, any different? You need to look at your life and ask yourself, are the same things that enslaved you or brought you down or chipped away at you in your walk with God, are they still strong in your life?

The same things that were there five years ago, are they still there now? Or is there a clear growth in grace, growth in your relationship with God, growth in your discipline over the flesh, growth in your maturity in the Lord?

Is there clear growth in your passion, your desire, your knowledge of the word, your outreach to the lost? If you're in ministry, if you have a church, is there growth in numbers, souls being saved? Is there growth in the health of the church, people growing and getting stronger in God?

Is there growth in finances and your ability to bless others and help others? Someone said, if it's alive, it grows. There's got to be growth somewhere, somehow for the glory of God. Now, let me say that I fully understand that we being complex human beings and life being full of challenges and situations often changing, it's possible you may have grown in three or four major areas, but fallen back in one.

And that's going to be the course for the rest of our lives. It may be that you just had twins and you just don't have as many hours alone with God every day that you did before the kids were born. But boy, the character of Jesus in you shines like never before.

And the developing qualities in you of compassion and long suffering are tremendous. And many other areas you may have grown in and reaching out to other young mothers and different things like that. And you're excelling in the Lord.

Boy, I wish I had some more time to spend with God. Some of those things are understandable. But overall, you should be able to look at your life and say, I'm moving forward. Overall, you should be able to look at your life and say, God can trust me with more today than he could a year ago.

Overall, you should look at your life and say, boy, if I had the wisdom I had today five years ago, I wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have made that mistake. Overall, you should be able to say God knows the secrets of my heart and he's pleased with my life.

Yes, sometimes I even surprised myself. I can't believe I got angry. I can't believe I allowed that thought into my life. I can't. And those things will happen. But the pattern, the overall course of your life should be something that God looks at and says, you're moving forward.

I'm pleased. Now what happens with many of us is we get into a place of spiritual stagnation. We get into the place of simply maintaining. We get into the place of going around and around and around and around.

We're active. We're moving. See the children of Israel. First, God said to them, you've been sitting at this mountain too long. Get up and go. So they, that's it. We're moving. Then what does he say to them later on?

I'm going around this mountain too long. They were moving, but they go around in circles. They were going nowhere. Some of us are active. Some of us are busy. Some of us are doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, and we go around in circles.

Some of us have just leveled off, man. We got saved. We were on fire. We got turned around. We were going after God and we hit that plateau. We have just leveled off. I believe we need to come to grips with our lives and ask some serious questions.

Measuring Progress by God's Calling

And I'm going to give you some serious measures to take. Not so much a how to, as much as an attitude of heart and mind and will. You need to ask yourself honestly, if you continue on the course that you've been on for the last six months, the last year, the last five years, however long it's been that steady course.

If you continued on that for 50 more years, where would it end you up? Closer to Jesus or completely lost? More effective, more on fire, more used for the kingdom, more anointed, more empowered or backslidden or lethargic?

Are you getting hotter? Are you getting colder? You say, I think I'm basically perfectly neutral. I'm not getting hotter. I'm not getting colder. Friend, if you're stationary and God's kingdom is moving on, you're going backwards.

I was sitting on an airplane the other day, ready to push out. The plane was a little late and I thought, good, we're pushing out already from the gate. We're ready to go. Well, it wasn't us that was moving.

It was the vehicle next to us that was moving. That was going one way. I thought, good, that's pretty quick. We're pulling out. No, we weren't going anywhere yet. Friend, if you're stationary and something else is moving, you're losing ground.

Your problem may be that you're measuring yourself by someone who's going backwards. Your problem may be that your church is so frostbitten that being cold looks hot. You understand that? The words I always quote from Watchman Lee, by the time the average Christian gets his temperature up to normal, everybody thinks he's got a fever.

How many of you know what pygmies are? How tall do you think you have to be to play center on the pygmy basketball team? Man, that guy might be giant. That guy might be huge, but you put him in the National Basketball Association, they think he was a little kid coming to play.

Have some fun with the little kids before the game starts. You might be a giant of the faith because of all the pygmies around you. I'm talking about your own life between you and God, not compared to me, not compared to the person next to you, not compared to your family.

You and God. God knows what he gave you. God knows what he called you to do. You know, if you take someone gifted musically like the Carlsons and they don't practice, they don't work at it, they just get up and sing.

People will be dazzled by their ability, but they'll know, wow, we are way, way, way below our potential. We didn't really work at it. We haven't really been diligent. You can take a musician. He doesn't practice.

He doesn't work at it, but he's so gifted, man. He's way ahead of people. But if he only really worked at it, man, he knows where he could be. See, the race you're running is against yourself. Paul tells each of us individually in 1 Corinthians 9 to run our race so as to win.

I've got to win my race. I'm not competing with you or anybody else. God's given me a task. God's given me an assignment. God's called me to do things. I've got to be responsible to do those. And you might be dazzled by me operating at 10 of my capability, or you might think I'm going nowhere if I'm operating at 100%.

Either way, your evaluation is ultimately not what matters. You know what God's given you to do. You know what God's gifted you with. You know what he's called you to do, who he's called you to be. Which way are you going?

Are you moving forward or backward? Are you growing? Are you becoming more like Jesus? Are the essential things in your life being worked out in greater and greater conformity to his will? Is his gifting and empowering in your life increasing?

Again, I understand God may move in you in a certain way, and you may flow in gifts of healing for a period of time. And then it may seem that lets up, but every area of your life is growing with God and becoming more like Jesus, and you're being used more effectively.

And why that particular flow of the Spirit doesn't seem to be as strong? That may be something only God knows at that time. But you can see the overall course of my life is moving forward. What is going on with the overall course of your life?

The time has to come where you speak to yourself just like these men here and said, why do we sit here until we die? What are we waiting for? You know what hurts me when I think of this? I was doing this radio interview yesterday and the interviewer said to me, well, why do people have to go to a place like Pensacola to be blessed?

And I said, oh, you can meet with God anywhere at any time. If you know the Lord, you can seek him anywhere. He can touch you anywhere. You don't need to go to a place to meet with God, to receive from God.

I said, but if God is moving in a particular place and he is working specially and he's chosen to do it, why not go and be blessed? Why not go and be encouraged? Why not see people waiting online to get into a building to hear a message of repentance?

They may not have come to wait online to hear a message of repentance, but that's what they're going to hear. Why not be encouraged by people that just want to worship and go on with God for hours? Why not be encouraged by an open heaven and why not receive a fresh touch from God?

Why not? Maybe it's pride or competition or envy or unbelief that stops someone from going. Well, somebody called me. I'm getting to the thing that hurts me in a minute. Somebody called and he said, well, I really have a problem with this pride thing that that everyone has to go to your place and that's the only place that God is moving.

I said, I guess you weren't listening earlier in the show. I said emphatically, you do not have to go to a place to receive from God. And I must have said five times what's happening here is just part of what God is doing all over the world.

I said it seems to be the hottest and most known spot in America right now in terms of a place of outpouring, but it's just part of what God's doing all over America and all over the world. There's an outpouring taking place all over.

Well, I have a problem of going to a place. Maybe the most spiritual thing anyone could do is go off to a monastery and be alone. Go for it, buddy, and save the whole world while you're at it. I didn't say that to him.

But, you know, he just couldn't see why you think, man, isn't there a body? Don't we need one another? You mean if Paul was teaching somewhere, you'd say, well, I've got my Bible who needs Paul. You wouldn't go to hear the man, hear what God had given him.

If you heard that the Lord had come down in a certain city, the apostles were there and the Lord had come down, the sick were being healed. You wouldn't bring your sick there. So I fully agree that although God's moving all over and you can meet with him anywhere and the most significant breakthroughs that have come in my life have been when I've gotten away with God, sought his face for three days, four days, five days, six days, just alone, seven days, just alone with God, prayer or prayer and fasting.

Still, I know I wouldn't be where I am today without what God's doing in the corporate body and what he's done in me in the corporate body. And I believe that God brought you here, that you're not just curiosity seekers, that you didn't just come for the latest spiritual high.

You didn't fly from around the world to drive from around the country or take time out of a busy local schedule to be here just to get the latest spiritual high. You're serious about God. That's why you're here.

But here's what hurts me. Listen, some of you will come here, go through all the expense, all the effort of getting here, spend vacation money to get here, take a leave of absence from work to get here, make all types of difficult decisions in your schedule to get and make arrangements for someone to watch the kids and do this and that, you know, drive four states out of the way to drop the kids off with the in-laws to then come down here and some of you did that.

And yet you'll come and instead of saying, okay, listen, if something doesn't happen when I've gone through that kind of effort here, when is it going to happen? Some of you will leave and think as you're leaving, boy, next year I think I'm going to go to this and such a place.

Oh boy, I got to get back to Brownsville in six months. And not because God did so much in you, but because you missed the moment while you're here. What I'm trying to say is this, if coming here and making the effort to be in meetings like this, it could be wherever it is that you went because God was moving in a special way.

If that's not going to impact your life, what is going to impact your life? You've got to get serious to the point of holy desperation and think, all right, enough is enough already. I've been looking for this.

I've been waiting to break through here. I've been hoping next year will be different. Next year we won't have strife on our church staff. Next year the leadership will be in harmony. Next year my family will be on fire.

Next year I'll really be going after God. Next year we're going to have revival in our city and you're no closer to it now than you were 20 years ago or two years ago or two months ago. You've got to say, God, whatever it's going to take, if my whole lifestyle has to change, whatever you have to do in me, even if it's just to speak the things to me here that I need to change or if it's just to touch me, once and for all something's got to be different.

I cannot and I will not continue to live the way I'm living. You got to come to that point, friends. You know, I got home last night and it was, you know, Friday towards the end of the week. Well, it's never towards the end of the week because life just keeps going around and around and around.

I fly out of here tomorrow morning to minister in New Jersey for a few days. See, I have to get up there every so often to hear people that speak normal English, but I've got to be up there for a few days and I'll come back Tuesday night and then the schedule starts again Wednesday and, you know, just life continues.

But I got home tired like normal. Then my wife and I had to talk about some issues. I thought she was ready to sleep. I saw her leave service a little early. She wasn't feeling that well. I figured she'd already be asleep.

No, she wanted to talk about some things and then some serious issues and so on. And well, then that, okay, we're done with that. Now it's like 1 .30 and I said, listen, I am just frustrated because I had an exceptionally busy week.

Schedule is normally very busy, but because I had to compose this, I don't like 4 ,000 word factual rebuttal to scandalous errors that were circulated by local newspapers. We felt for the sake of the community to put truth out to help them.

And God moved on me to do that. So every, I mean, I'm telling you, every waking minute was just, it was wildly busy. I'd be doing a radio interview and then they'd say, now we'll just take a break. You know, we'll be right back with our guests after these announcements.

So they're going to take a two minute break for announcements and commercials. And during that two minute break, I'm getting other calls with other information that I got to put in the computer, you know, for this thing I'm writing.

And then someone else is faxing this out and then call this. And it was just, it was continual perpetual. Okay. Got to stop. Got to go to school. Got to teach. All right. Got to stop. Got to get here to meet with the, okay.

Got to finish this. Got to. And it was, it was perpetual. And I had very little time to really get quiet and alone with God as much as I wanted to. And it was late. And I just said, I am not going to sleep like this.

I used to tell people when I administer overseas words, I learned to regret many times when they'd say, well, brother, how busy can you be while you're here? You'll only be here for a week. So, Hey, you just, whatever meetings you want me to have, I'll have.

And I would say to them, listen, I can always sleep on the plane coming home. You don't know how many times I learned to regret those words. Going to Korea one time to minister my first trip over there.

And they said, Reverend Brown, we have a special seminar plan. Wonderful. So we have a leadership seminar all morning, all afternoon, every day, and then public meetings at night. I said, wonderful. I said, so who'll be speaking at the seminar?

They said, you are speaking Reverend Brown. I said, no, I know I'm speaking. I said, but who else is speaking at the seminar? I mean, it's all morning, all afternoon, every day, and then meetings every night.

I said, Reverend Brown, you are speaking at the seminar. 25 meetings in a week. That's what we do when we go to Korea. And the meetings are not what you call short meetings. I've been in that situation sometimes of pushed to the limit.

And I said to myself, again, everything else is going to have to wait. I can always catch up on sleep somewhere, somehow as my body needs it, but I must get with God. I had to strike back, if you know what I had to say.

No, I can't go to sleep. And my wife and I had a disagreement about something. I think the second time in 21 years of marriage, we had a disagreement. I think first or second, I'm not quite sure. And that's why we ended up talking later.

And then, OK, look, we're done talking about this. It's 1 .30. I don't know when she's ever going to learn that I'm always right. No, no, I want to be honest. I remember one time when I was right in 21 years, once or twice, I think.

But I said, I'm getting in the word. And then I decided to do some serious study of some issues. And then I decided to do some writing. I said, I'm not going to sleep. And then when I was done, just talk to the Lord some and went to sleep feeling OK.

I took something back. Listen, you got to look at your whole life like that. And sometimes you got to get aggressive. All right, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start binding demons. I'm going to start loosing demons.

I'm going to start doing spiritual. I'm going to start. Well, you may need to do that. But first, you need to get aggressive with your own heart, mind and life and body and soul and spirit and attitude and so on and schedule.

You know what I'm saying? You can yell and scream at the devil all you want. He may not even be listening to you. He may not even be the problem. I've got a series of tapes on spiritual warfare. I remember when I taught that about nine years ago, it was the best teaching I did on the subject.

So those are the tapes we still use. I remember when I went to teach that, that one guy was expecting, you know, just some kind of out there stories about demons and deliverance and spiritual stuff and hardly using scripture.

And man, everything I was hitting on was the personal life and bringing the life in line with God and living out things spiritually, spiritual warfare in those terms, and then as it expands into other realms.

And he came up all excited because it was such a word based challenge to live right before God. I'm telling you, look at your own life and get aggressive. Look at your own life and look in the mirror and talk to yourself.

You don't have to worry about hurting your own feelings, OK? So it's all right to look in that mirror and say you're a slob. You're an undisciplined slob. You're unclean. Talk to yourself like that. And it's all right to look in that mirror and say, when are you going to get serious with God and quit blaming everybody else?

Taking Responsibility for Spiritual Growth

Here's something interesting about these four lepers. They simply made an aggressive choice to save their own lives. They didn't blame anybody for this situation. I hit on this a little yesterday, but it's on my heart to hit on it again today.

If you're going to make any spiritual progress, if you're going to do anything for God, quit blaming everybody else for your problem and for your situation. I know some of you here have had difficult lives, and I know some of you have had what seems to be everything come against you.

And I know some of you right here look at me and say, that's easy for you to say. Well, number one, you don't know my life and you don't know what I've come up against, but it's utterly immaterial. All you need to know is are you right with God?

Are his promises for you? Is he for you? If so, how can you blame somebody? I'm not going to get into all types of economic stuff now, and I don't want to get political now, but please hear me. We have made welfare victims in America.

We must be compassionate to the poor. We must help those in need. We must do what we can to eliminate social injustice and economic injustice and racial injustice, and our country is still filled with that junk.

So please hear me. If I sided with anybody, it would be with the poor. If I sided with anybody, it would be with those who've had very little in this world. If I sided with anybody, it would be those that I feel have been victimized by the system, okay?

But what's happened is those that have grown up in America on welfare, and that's the system that they grew up in, and that's the system that they knew. We're always looking to the government for a handout.

We're looking for the government to meet their needs, to pay their bills. I'm not saying that there is no place for governmental help, and until the people of God do everything that the people of God are called to do, the government's going to have to do other things.