What Can I Do Now to Bring Reformation?

Sphere Sovereignty and Faithfulness in the Lower Spheres

One other, one other real quick.

Sir?

I would like to see my town and my church reformed. What is it that I can do as one of the only ones who,.

At least from what I can see,.

Have the proper understanding of what the gospel is.

And how to present it?

What should I do? How do I go about playing my little part?

Well, notice there's two different, very important spheres that you brought up in your question. You brought up the church and you brought up your town. Those are two very different things. There's different how you, in fact, I take it, just about fell off of this.

This is not exactly a tall thing up here, Van. How do you fall off of something that's about a quarter of an inch tall? That's pretty weird. Have you ever fallen off this thing? No, you, man. All right, great.

There are, I believe in what's called sphere sovereignty. And so you have the sphere of your own personal requirements before God, duties before God. Then you have your family. If you're married, have children.

I guess I could quote Chocolate Knox and go, if you're single, get married. If you're married, have children. And if you have children, wait till they make a confession of faith to baptize them. There you go.

I'll just change the thing there. Those are not the Presbyterians clapping, but anyway. But Chocolate Knox will never debate me on that either. So that's a whole other thing. But so you have your personal, you have the family, then you have the church, and then you have your town.

So those are all different areas. And I would say that what you're gonna be able to be doing is gonna depend on what age you live in as far as what God's doing in your country or your town or wherever else it might be.

And so first and foremost, for you, and this is what I've been trying to emphasize recently to the young, restless, and reformed, you're not gonna be able to do anything at the higher levels if you're not faithful at the lower levels.

And when I say lower, I don't mean lower as in importance. I mean closer to my heart's down here. And so me, family, church, state, okay? So what I'm concerned about, what I'm seeing right now amongst a lot of young men who have beards as big as the guy next to you, okay?

And in fact, look a lot like the guy next to you. In fact, who are you?

No, nevermind.

Um, the thing that concerns me is that they're focusing up here at the cost of what's down here. And that's going to lead to severe problems. See, I'm not winning the social media war, and the reason I'm not winning the social media war is because my message to the young men like you is discipline, consistency, godliness, service.

Man, that doesn't sell.

Unless the spirit of God is involved. And when the spirit of God is involved, it does sell. And when I talk about discipline, well, at lunch today, Ken and Viv and my wife and I were talking about an incident where Ken has made up this fantasy about how I said something to him years and years ago during one of these conferences.

And we were talking about B .B. Warfield. And now if you've never heard of B .B. Warfield, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, great Princeton scholar, just brilliant mind. His stuff on The Trend, he was extremely helpful to me when I was a young person.

I'd highly recommend it to you to read it. But he never produced as much as he could have. You know why? His wife was struck by lightning, became an invalid, and he took care of her until she died. So he couldn't travel, he couldn't do a lot of things that the other guys would do.

But you see, he had made a commitment to her until death do us part, and he lived it out. And that's the kind of discipline I'm talking about. And it may cost you, you know, your popularity, or in his case, your ability to, you know, do big things.

I look back and, wow, what an example. And let me suggest to everybody in the room, but especially young men like yourself, if you want to really get an idea of what discipline and godliness and commitment looks like, read a good biography of Adoniram Judson.

How many of you have read a biography of Adoniram Judson? One, two, three, four, five. Didn't see anybody over here. Bunch of pagans over here. Well, they're on the left side, so there is something biblical there.

When I read about what that man endured, wives dead, children dead, friends dead, all in service to Christ in bringing the gospel overseas to Burma, imprisoned unfairly, unjustly, made feet put in stocks, and then they would put the prisoner's feet in stocks, and then he raised the stocks up so that you would sleep with just your shoulders touching the ground and your feet are in the air, and there are so many mosquitoes, they're feeding off your feet, the blood's dripping down on you.

I don't know about you, but I pretty much give up at that point. He didn't. And he said the whole reason that he didn't was he believed in the absolute sovereignty of God, that everything he was going through, God intended him to go through for God's glory.

That's where you get patience, that's where you get long-suffering, and that's how you change. He changed a nation, and he's changed many people who've read his story since then. Nobody at the time hardly knew anything about him.

Heaven will know, heaven will know. But that's what I say, is you wanna change your town, you get a bunch of people being obedient like that in that town, and you will change that town, because people are gonna see, look at that family, look at that family, look how they respond differently, look at those children, oh my goodness.

And if the spirit of God is moving, that's the example they need. That's a light to shine to the whole world.

The Hidden Power of Ordinary Faithfulness

It really is.

Sorry, that last sermon was not.

Thank you very, very, very much.

That last sermon was not scheduled, but you got it anyways, so. We will now sing Just As I Am, and I'll be honest with you, the only thing that's disappointing this evening, I'm glad that you're all here, but you're one of the younger people here, and there's not a whole lot of you.

No, there's not.

And that's not to say that I don't want the old folks here, because we need to, but what that also means is those of us who are older, we have a responsibility outside of this room to pass on what we learn here to our children and our grandchildren.

That's my hope, is that's what you will do, that you'll be emboldened to do that, that you'll see how vitally important it is that they have a firm foundation, because truly, I believe that these issues will be used as a source of persecution in the not-too-distant future, unless the Lord intervenes.

Unless the Lord intervenes.