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Disobedience- When, Where, How, and Why?
Being disagreement. Yes, I think if nothing else, our group signifies the fact that it is perfectly normal to disagree, but your disagreement can't cause division in such a sense that there's anything other than a Christian behavior that comes out of it.
So if it is okay to disagree with the government or to oppose the government in any capacity, what does that look like? When does that happen? I didn't know we were going to use this scripture so much, but I've got to memorize 28 and 17 of Matthew, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Christ.
The word all, very small word, very big meaning. How much does that leave for anybody else? None, right? So if Christ has all authority and all power and all dominion, then that means that no one else does unless he allows something to happen.
So then it brings in the concept of God's will, whether something is directly ruled by God, directly willed by God, or indirectly willed and ruled by God. And this is, I suppose there's probably a theological debate that can be had about God's will, whether it's indirect or direct and how things work.
However, there are things that our government does that God would heartily approve of, like protecting life by administrating to the widows and orphans the way that they have. And then there's things that we know that God would directly oppose, like the taking of innocent life, about the civil unions that they call marriages between two people of the same gender, about the mass confusion with that very topic of gender.
God clearly would not condone these things because not only are they chaotic and demonic, but they're also clearly pointed to in scripture as we talked to earlier. These are things that God gives us absolutely no reason to draw into the question.
Do not be deceived. These things will not inherit the kingdom of God. He's given us clear and adequate instruction. So when we see the government doing something that directly opposes God's word, then we are to be opposed to whatever it is they try to create or to try to govern in that manner.
Now, Brother Dan was talking about something earlier, at least best I understood it. You have areas that are God's areas and areas that are the church's areas. I've sort of struggled with this topic to some degree, but there's a guy by the name of Todd Friel, and I listened to a podcast of his or a thing called Wretched TV some years ago, and I thought he did a great job articulating this.
I'm stealing this from Todd Friel. Go look at his stuff. It's interesting. He said there's things that are to be ruled and governed in the family. There's things that are to be ruled and governed inside of the government structure, and then there's things that are to be ruled and governed by the church, and God has established all three of these things to be something that works out for the good of those who are called according to his purposes.
He was talking about in Romans 8 and 28 in there. So when you see the government step into areas where the government has not been given permission, now you have friction in that zone. For instance, let's take something that everybody in this room would understand well, the family.
In the family, God has uniquely chosen the father to be the head of the family. The father's job is to ensure that the family is protected, that the family is raised in the fear and abomination of the Lord.
He's to teach his children, and he's to govern his wife in all areas. He's not supposed to do anything that causes friction that shouldn't be there, for starters. Obviously, there will be friction when it comes to discipline, but he's not supposed to push his children to wrath, and he's not supposed to govern his wife in a way that's anything other than we see Christ governing the church.
He's supposed to give himself to his wife the way that Christ has given himself to the church. So when you see the government step into the family, now they have no authority in the family. The government has no rule or reign or right to tell you how to raise your children or how to govern your wife, with very, very few exceptions, I would say.
If you see a man abusing his children or his wife, you would see the police step in and remove the man from that. However, these, we would agree, would be fringe and very isolated topics. And to some degree, my thought process is that's really still not the government's job.
Brother Jonathan said something in there a while ago that we don't teach a lot of anymore, and that's church discipline. The church should be the people who step in when the family's not being run correctly, not the government.
As leaders inside the church, if you noticed something was wrong with the father's relationship with his children, you're to grab that man because you love him too, and pull him aside and say, I've got cause for concern.
And you should have the freedom to do that. And that man should give you the freedom to say, I'm questioning the way you're running your household. Right? And that's, well, that'd be a tough subject to have with people, but that's what God has given people the authority to do inside of the church.
Church discipline is a thing that's not, not widely taught. So many problems that we have today in terms of the way the government is running the thing is because we, sadly, as a church have given them a place to do it.
Taking care of widows and orphans, ministering to the homeless, disciplining people whenever they start to slip. We shouldn't have ever taken these problems to the magistrate and to the court and to the judge and give them the leg or the finger to put inside of our organization.
Because if you do that, then by God's own words, you've given them authority over something. And now you have to surrender to the authority that you've given them in that place. So in order to say there is a time to oppose the government, you have to first establish what the government has done.
And does it draw a clear and significant difference between what Christ has already told us to do? For instance, is it lawful in this country to share the gospel of Jesus Christ? Sure. So the moment that it is not lawful, are you therefore free of the obligation of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ?
No, at that moment you are against and opposing the government and the sanctions of the government. Because Christ's authority will always superb, will always ride over the government, will always have authority and be sovereign over all of the world because it is his.
Then if the government tells you to do something that is contrary to what the word of God has clearly given you a command to do, at that point you go with Christ, let the consequences be what they are, and he will support you in that.
But to go against the government because you don't like the party that's in office is not to have Christ's support when you do that. You know, I'm purposely not going to tell you my political affiliation from behind the pulpit, not because as a licensed minister I'm forbidden to, which believe it or not I am.
As a licensed member inside at least my denomination, I'm not allowed to get up here and talk to you about my political affiliation, and the state actually forbids that and allows you to carry your 5013C.
But that's not the only reason why I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that because I do believe that the people inside my political affiliation are wrong on some very key issues. And if I make a blanket statement that I support this group and I don't give you all the reasons when I wouldn't support them, then you might think it's okay to always support these kinds of things because it's got stamped with a certain letter or a certain mammal beside it or whatever, right?
We have to let the word of God be our primary source and the ending of all of our decision-making. That makes sense. So we do not oppose the government where the government isn't causing us to have to walk contrary to God's word.
Only when the government asks us to walk contrary to God's word do we oppose the government or when the government tries to usurp authority over God because God's authority is final. At that point you have to almost look at it the way Jesus looks at it when he talks to Pilate.
Jesus surrendered himself to Pilate, not because Pilate was authoritative, but because according to God's will and the predetermined counsel of Almighty, he was supposed to be crucified for our sins, right?
He says to Pilate, Pilate questions him back and forth. So you're a king. He says, you've rightly said I'm a king. He said, well, then where's your kingdom? If my kingdom was of this world, my people would fight, but my kingdom was not of this world.
So we have to kind of keep in remembering that we're dual citizens, y 'all. We're dual citizens. We're in the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, which is not seen with mortal eyes, and we're also members of the United States of America, but we have to have a leading, a leading rule.
You can't serve two masters. So we have to be primarily followers of the king of kings because we're citizens of the kingdom of heaven. And the only time that we associate ourself with the laws of this land are whenever they don't draw a contradiction with the kingdom of heaven.
And that's, that's simple. Sir. Okay. The question is, in case it didn't pick it up on camera, how do we apply this to my employment at work? Employment at work is simple to, if I were to say I work, I'm not going to say which company I work for.
The company that I work for promotes a massive homosexual push. They, they sponsor and they hold all kinds of rallies for these, uh, this movement. They are a, they are a voice supposedly for the people who don't have a voice is what they consider themselves.
Right? So first of all, I don't, it all participate in any of those activities. I go to work, I draw a paycheck, I go home. The other Avenue they have because they extend themselves in a charitable way to this group.
I serve on a board that has the power to spend monies that come in in any way we vote on. So the only ones that I vote on and the only ones that I bring up are organizations that support, support the family that God has established that support churches and organizations that reach out to the homeless, to the needy.
I will not give a vote to any, anything that supports a same sex agenda or a agenda that would otherwise be contrary to the word of God. There's organizations out there that claim to give to all manners of different subs, subsidiaries inside their organization.
But if one of those subsidiaries is an organization that promotes abortion, I'll not send a cent that way. And I won't say I won't give one vote for that in that direction. I'll vote contrary to it every time.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah, just to further, uh, um, you know, identify the company tells you how you're supposed to identify these people to know it's a lie.
Sure. Sure. So the question is, if the company forces me to refer to somebody with a pronoun that the person identifies as, it's clearly not their biological pronoun. Did I, did I capture the, okay. So in that case, which has never happened to me, but I would refer to them by their legal name.
And if the company were to take legal action or fire me, then when I'll go to court, I'm going to say, you fired me for calling them their legal name. That's on their ID. You have to answer for that. I would conduct myself in a manner that leaves nowhere.
They can say anything negative about me unless it's a lie. If I spoke to them, say some dude named Pete come up to me and said, now I identify as Patricia and I'm a, I'm a female. His, his, uh, company ID says Pete.
Hey Pete, I told you to call me Patricia. Pete, your name is Pete. What it says on your hard hat. I work in a company that has hard hats, which says on your badge, I pull up your company portal and I send you an email.
It's going to say Pete, you haven't. Now, if he'd legally change his name to Patricia, I'm going to call him sissy Patricia. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm I'm, I would call him Patricia, but I'd never call him a her.
I'd call him Patricia. If he legally changed his name to Patricia. I think that that's probably a bad example, but, but yeah, that's fine. If he legally changed his name to Patricia, it wouldn't be. God created him a man.
I, and I, and I see your point. If I must, if the, if the employer is going to tell me how I have to shape my, my pronouns to talk to somebody, it'd be time to give them a hard hat. I mean, that's there.
Yeah. If it's, do you, so I'll give you an example of something that actually happened. That's not hypothetical. So, uh, and I'll have to, I'll have to kind of give a little bit of feedback on our little bit of, of information.
Uh, the company that I work for, that I work for deemed an essential employee. We were told we would be forced man, uh, forced vaccinated, right? Well, my understanding around at least one or more of the vaccines was, it was derived from tissue made by aborted babies.
Not, I'm not taking part in that. Not an, even though if you did, that's fine. I'm not here to throw rocks at you. I'm saying I didn't take part in it. I ain't going to take part in it. Period. Don't care who fires me.
They kept sending a survey out and they kept giving a clause. You don't have to answer because HIPAA says that you don't have to answer your vaccinated state. I just kept hitting the button and said, I refuse to answer.
Eventually it come down and said, you're going to have to answer yes to be recognized as yes. And anything else is going to be recognized as a no, which is technically illegal. So I hit anything other than that.
All right. So it turns out that, there was a court ruling that said they couldn't do that or whatever that happened right the day before I was losing my job, but I'd already cleaned my locker out. Turns out you want a little bit of hope if you want to have to be built up a little bit to know that you're not alone.
You know, I don't want to be like, like God talking to Elijah, the 5 ,000 hadn't bent their knees to bail, but there was like 14 ,000 folks inside of our company and 10 ,000 of them refused to answer.
And they looked at it and said, we can't provide the service that everybody pays us for every month. If we lose two thirds of our workforce, y 'all going to have to figure something out on the upper. So you're not alone in your convictions.
There would be 10 ,000 that would have quit very high paying job over their own convictions. So if a company forced me to do something that goes against the word of God, I'm done. I'm out of here. Like last year, I'm not, I'm not going to be a part of it because what's a paycheck.
That's right. That's right. But we want to make sure that what we do is within the realms of what's decently in order. It's always okay to quit your job. It is not okay to kick the window out on the way out the door, to break the door behind you and get all redneck about it.
That's never okay. You can just, you can just leave. You can just grab your stuff and you can leave out the door and do it in Jesus name. You know what I mean? Thank you. Any other questions? How are we on time?
Okay. Okay. Gotcha. So we want to make sure we get, okay. We'll give time for lunch. Have I covered the questions that you wanted to have covered? If there's any other questions and you don't want to ask them now, feel free to catch any one of these guys or me in a minute and feel free to ask.
John Weiser, let's close in prayer. Father, we come to you in Jesus name. Recognizing your authority over everything and surrendering to your authority first. Surrendering your love first. We want to make sure that everything that we do is done for your glory and is done in accordance with your will and your word and that you find favor on what we do and how we say.
God, I pray that if there'd be somebody who listens to this, who finds themselves in a position where their personal convictions and following you forces them to reevaluate where they live or where they work.
I pray that you give them divine wisdom how to handle that situation. I pray that that you give them favor and I pray for grace for these people, God, not just in where they're at, but if they do have to leave, that you find them something even better than they had before and that they realize that you already hold their tomorrow.
Lord, we give you glory. We give you honor and praise for everything that's done. It's in Jesus name, I pray. Amen.