Sermon: Christ or Chaos

Christ or Chaos: No Neutrality Before God

Good afternoon, Apologia Church. Thank you. I'm very grateful for this opportunity to preach today. Today's topic is one that has been very heavy on my heart over the last 18 months or so, especially really since the beginning of COVID.

In fact, if you were here, I guess it was in February, I think I gave a message titled, Battling the What Ifs, and the message I recently gave at the OSA national event in June was also titled, Christ or Chaos, which funny enough, we didn't do this intentionally, but that message we just dropped this week.

So if you happen to have watched that, some of this may be a repeat. But I wanted to repeat some of those concepts, and I'm taking them and expanding upon them greatly. So I apologize, I had a time for repeating myself.

But with all the new members that we have, and just due to the importance of these issues, I did feel it was necessary to reiterate a few things. And again, I'm going to greatly expand upon those topics.

All that to say, the main verse I want to look at, it's a simple verse, but keep this in mind throughout the message, it'll come up a lot. First Corinthians 1440, but all things should be done decently and in order.

There was a Presbyterian pastor, Peter Marshall, he lived from 1902 to 1949, this quote's in the bulletin if you saw it. He famously said, the choice before us is plain, Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise, discipline or disintegration.

I am rather tired of hearing about our rights and privileges as Americans. The time is now, it has come, it is now, when we ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship. America's future depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God's government.

This was 80 years ago, and it could not be more true today. Before I go any further, let's go ahead and pray. Lord, I am just so thankful for this opportunity today to teach. I ask that you would get me out of the way, that you would speak through me and clearly.

Lord, I ask that you would use this message for the glory of your kingdom, that you would use it in our body here locally and globally as well, in your church. And I ask that you would be glorified, and in Christ's name we pray.

Amen. So again, Christ or chaos. We've probably all heard this phrase, but I'm not sure that we have all really thought through the implications. The idea is that there is no neutrality. In this life, we must view all things through either the lens of Christ or the lens of chaos.

We must either presuppose order or disorder. There is no in-between. We cannot attempt to appeal. So again, we talk about this all the time, you hear the myth of neutrality, that's what this idea is.

There is no neutrality. We all know Matthew 6, 24.

It says,.

Although the specific context here is obviously money, the basic principle still applies. You cannot serve two gods. Here, I kind of rephrase it here. You cannot serve two masters, for either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both Christ and chaos. Order leads to life. Disorder leads to death. And in Christ, we find life. In chaos, we find death. So I want to look at some examples in history.

The Fall, the Serpent, and the Battle Between Theonomy and Autonomy

We'll start at the garden.

Since the fall, the battle over sin has ultimately been a battle of theonomy versus autonomy. And this isn't going to be a message on theonomy, just bear with me. Pastor Jeff's done plenty of those. Adam and Eve had the opportunity to obey God's law.

Genesis 2, 16 -17 says,. So right from the beginning, we had that opportunity. Adam, obey God's law, or conversely, obey his own law. As we all know, according to God's perfect plan, they listened, Adam and Eve, to the temptation of the serpent to be a law unto themselves.

So in verse 3, 1, when the serpent said to them, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? Eve's response to the serpent in verses 2 -3 ultimately was a lie. Verse 2, You guys see that?

God's law was very clear, do not eat of the tree. But Eve, given in to this temptation, created her own law, by including the command to neither touch it. The serpent then sweetened this temptation in verses 4 -5.

But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So his lie then was an appeal to autonomy, to be like God, is to determine what is right from wrong, to establish one's own laws, to decide what is good and what is evil.

This is precisely what we see when we minister at the abortion mills. We hear this all the time, a lot of women know it's a baby, they know full well they're going in to murder their child. They just want the right to do so.

They want to decide for themselves that it is a morally good thing to do. Verse 6 shows us the satanic appeal to Eve. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. The temptation to be wise in her own eyes was too much for Eve to turn down. What then was the result? Verse 7,. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

The immediate result was chaos. It was disorder. It was death. Not just for themselves, but for all of mankind. So even before the fall, before sin entered into the world, humanity still needed an external law to determine what was right and wrong.

Ever since this point in time, mankind has been attempting to figure out on our own what right and wrong is. We have found life through the order of God's law manifested in Christ, and death through the disorder of the chaos of man's law.

Judas, Barabbas, and the Choice Between Christ and Chaos

So moving on from the garden, then I want to look at two other examples in biblical history. The next one will be Judas. And Pastor Jeff has recently done an excellent job of detailing Judas' betrayal of Christ in Matthew chapters 26 and 27.

So I won't spend a lot of time on this. I won't get into dissecting the details, but I do want to point one thing out. The point I want to make is this. Judas lived, slept, ate, sweat, probably bled with Christ.

He saw firsthand Christ's many miracles. He was an eyewitness to the order that Christ brought into a chaotic world. Christ himself embodied order. And yet, Judas willingly chose disorder, immediately resulting in chaos, chaos to the point of death.

The next example I want to look at is just one chapter over in Barabbas. And as Pastor Jeff finishes up the book of Matthew, someday hopefully, he will go into more depth on Barabbas. It's actually, I think, the next chapter.

Maybe next Sunday he might be getting into this. But in chapters 27, once again, I'd like to quickly point out something profound. Without getting too much into detail, we do know the story, but here's the point.

Barabbas, literally Bar-Abba, Bar meaning son of, Abba, father, or son of the father, the father's son is literally what his name meant. Many have argued that Abba is more of an intimate term that is often an endearing term used by Jewish children towards their fathers.

It's equivalent to daddy or papa. So for the sake of this point, I want to refer to Barabbas as son of daddy or daddy's boy. Stick with me here. I promise I'm going somewhere with this. So daddy's boy was a bad dude, right?

We don't necessarily know how bad he was, but we do know that the crowd definitely knew how bad he was. So verse 16 here in Matthew describes him as notorious. John 18 .40 tells us he was a robber. Luke 23 .19 says Barabbas was a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder.

This guy sounds like he's the epitome of way of the master, doesn't he? He's a notoriously lying, thieving murderer. So the Jews, being persuaded by the chief priests and the elders, as verse 20 tells us, had a choice between daddy's boy and Christ.

Like Judas, many of them had been eyewitnesses to Christ's miracles. They literally had before them the embodiment of order on one hand and the embodiment of disorder on the other. I'm not sure there has been a more depiction in Scripture of this choice for mankind between Christ or chaos.

Pilate literally gave them two options. You either choose Christ or you choose chaos.

Which shall it be?

And, of course, we all know that the crowd chose chaos and in doing so willingly accepted the consequences. Matthew 27 .25 tells us,. And all the people answered, His blood be on us and on our children.

So in choosing daddy's boy, they gladly chose death. Having witnessed the life of Christ, they understood who he was and what the consequences of rejecting him were. And yet, having hated him so much, they willingly chose death.

And not just for themselves, but also for their children. Now to tie the room together like a fine rug, I wanted to come up with a modern example of someone that hopefully makes this more meaningful for us.

What real life daddy's boy would drive this point home? One name and one name only immediately came to my mind. Hunter Biden. Now considering Pastor Jeff's recent sermons on biblical justice and innocence until proven guilty, I want to be very cautious.

I'm also hoping Facebook does in fact check this, but that's a different discussion for a different day. But here's the point. Everyone knows that Hunter Biden is a hot mess, right? He's not a good dude.

Even though he has not been proven guilty in the court of law, there are at least two to three independent lines of witness demonstrating his wicked vileness. So for the sake of this illustration, imagine for a moment that Christ lived here on earth with us now.

Imagine that we were all eyewitnesses to his miracles and the order he brought into a chaotic world. Having also been eyewitnesses to the disorder that is Hunter Biden, now imagine that both men stand here before you.

A crowd has gathered, and we have to pick one to be spared and one to be crucified. Apart from the saving knowledge of Christ, we most surely would choose Hunter. The culture hates Christ. It would not think twice to send him to his death.

In fact, they love their autonomy so much that they are willing to pay the price of death in order to keep it. They don't care if it destroys them or if it destroys their family or if it destroys this culture or even sends them straight to hell.

Rebellion against the sovereign God is worth the price of admission as long as they are able to hold onto their little piece of autonomy. It is not the culture, however, that I'm concerned with at the moment.

Entirely, I'm concerned with the culture, but not for the sake of this point. It's the church. Remember who was there in Matthew, encouraging the crowd to choose Barabbas. It was the chief priests and the elders.

How many of our religious leaders and even evangelical pastors would do the same? How many would be saying, give us Hunter? How many people in the modern church would readily condemn Christ to die via crucifixion and declare, may his blood be on us and our children?

That's a very scary thought, isn't it? It's one thing to watch the culture destroy itself through its rejection of Christ and willingly accept chaos, but what scares me the most is how quickly and easily this has infiltrated the church.

Go down the list of cultural idols and think about how many of them are now considered acceptable by those claiming the name of Christ. Transgenderism, homosexuality, gay mirage, lesbianism, pedophilia, abortion, euthanasia, genital mutilation, cultural Marxism, critical race theory, wokeism.

These are all a result of disorder, not of God-ordained order, due to a rejection of Christ and a celebration of chaos. How is it then that they have been so cheerfully welcomed through the front doors of our churches?

How have they even been tolerated? It's because the church overall has become antinomian. Christ's bride has abandoned God's law and substituted it with man's law. Those claiming to love Christ have ceased acting as a prophetic witness, and therefore the people, within and without the church, have cast off restraint.

But notice the second half of Proverbs 29, verse 18, where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. But blessed is he who keeps the law. Without returning to God's law, the church will continue to become more and more chaotic.

Worship, Spiritual Warfare, and the Defeat of Death

And this brings me to my next point. The decision between Christ and chaos is a battle for worship. Worship of Christ produces order. The worship of chaos produces disorder. As Christians, in Christ, we find our Sabbath, we find our rest, and we find our comfort.

Unbelievers are also looking for Sabbath rest. They, too, desire comfort and know that a sacrifice of innocent blood is required to achieve this comfort. The problem is that instead of submitting their lives to the God who is comfort, who sacrifices his own innocent life, they're willing to sacrifice any and everything, including their own precious children, to Molech, the cultural false god of comfort.

Have you ever noticed that there are very few instances of demonic activity in the Old Testament? But the moment Christ arrives in the New Testament, you see demons everywhere. Specifically in Matthew 8, you see a demon-possessed man.

He approaches Christ, and he cried out, What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time? Why do you think this is? It's because they knew what the arrival of Christ meant.

They knew what the implications of the proclamation of the gospel was for them. It marked the undoing of their temporary reign over the earth. Christ made it clear in Matthew 12 that he had come to plunder Satan's house.

As my dear friend Andrew Sandlin has said, we live in a cosmic war zone. Being faithful to Christ means trying to regain Satan's territory. And attempting to bring order to disorder means engaging in a spiritual war for worship.

This is not just for physical, but also for spiritual life and death this battle is. If you remember earlier, I mentioned that neutrality is a myth. Proverbs 8, 35 -36 says, For whoever finds me finds life, and obtains favor from the Lord.

But he who fails to find me injures himself. All who hate me love death. Remember the mob we just discussed in Matthew 27? They hated Christ so much that they intentionally chose death. The culture that worships comfort hates God, so they therefore love death.

They love everything about death, the taste of it, the smell, the color, the way it looks. They love to watch death in 4K HD and long to romance the idea of it. Death, of course, is the result of chaos and not of order.

But why is this? Why is the culture obsessed with death? Scripture is pretty clear why. 1 Corinthians 15, 25 -26 teaches us that Christ must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Did you catch that? Christ is currently reigning and will do so until every enemy has been put under his feet. The last being death. Why then, as Christians, are we so surprised that the God-hating, chaotic, comfort-loving evil forces behind the demise of our culture promulgate death?

Why are we so shocked that death is their selling point? They know full well that death is the last thing they have to hold on to. They know what the Scriptures say and believe it. They know what Christ intends to do and they fully intend to fight tooth and nail.

1 John 3, 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Let me repeat that last part.

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. To be fully transparent here, I had previously completely missed this. Christ did not come just to save us from hell, but also to vanquish Satan and his works.

At this point, Andrew Sandlin said, Christ's work on the cross was designed to reverse the effects of sin in every single area of life and thought and culture. Christ is currently and actively defeating Satan and we should not for one second think that his minions of disorder will at any point give up without a fight.

They will literally fight to the death of death, attempting to bring as many as they can with them, all the while appealing to death as something righteous and good. The only way to defeat this is by proper, orderly worship.

So I've described what false worship looks like, but what does proper worship look like? I'm not limiting this just to Sunday worship in a public setting, but also to daily worship with our lives. In our current day and age, we daily feel pressure from the culture to disrupt our worship.

But what separates us from this pagan culture? I stole this from Joe Boot, but I often say that the culture is nothing more than religion externalized. So what defines our worship and what defines worship for the unbelieving world?

For the believer, worship starts with God and is ruled by order. For the unbeliever, worship starts with chaos and is ruled by apparent order. We all know, believer and unbeliever alike, that the world is broken and it needs to be repaired.

The problem for the Christian is ethical. The world is broken because of sin and rebellion. Civilization is fragile because of the sinful hearts of men. The only solution is the gospel and right, orderly worship.

The problem for the unbeliever is that civilization is also fragile, but because of chaos and structural defect, the world is built upon a foundation of chaos. The unbeliever has no ultimate standard of order.

His only hope is to drive things back further into chaos, hoping to get lucky for better order on the next go-around. They desire a tabula rasa, a blank slate, to be able to start over and recreate themselves, society, even nature itself.

They want to be self-created, to be self-governed through self-law, finding true meaning in self. In their worldview, everything has been constructed by man and therefore can also be deconstructed by man and be rebuilt from the ground up.

For them, this is utter autonomy. This is what chaotic religion and worship must do out of necessity. The desire to burn everything to the ground is driven out of this delusion. Christians want to live ordered lives because we serve the God of order.

Pagans want to live chaotic lives because they serve the gods of chaos. This is why proper and ordered worship is so important to everything that we do. Foundationally, God created this world for us to dwell in and to dwell in it in such a way as to make it more and more orderly.

Likewise, he wants us to worship him in such a way as to repair the broken world. According to 1 Corinthians 1440, this was the main verse, this is our duty. But all things should be done decently and in order.

As Christians, we should want nothing to do with disorder because it is contrary to God's created order. Orderly worship must start with the individual. It starts with self-government and moves to the family government and then to the church government and lastly to civil government.

We are currently facing a secular view that it is not possible to have a just society without destroying the family government because a strong family structure eliminates radical individualism and therefore autonomy.

Strong orderly families require self-sacrifice which drastically conflicts with disorderly autonomy. The civil government then must destroy the family government because they are competing governments when in reality they should be complementing governments.

Strong family governments threaten the absolute strong arm authority of the state. And in a world of chaos, competitors must be destroyed. In an orderly society, each sphere of government has its own God-ordained role.

Scripture has clearly laid out those rules for us. Quickly, I want to look at 1 Timothy chapter 3. This is the list of qualifications for an overseer. Verses 4 -5 it says, He must manage his household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive.

For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? This is precisely what I'm referring to. Proper orderly worship begins with the self-government of the head of the home and then is incorporated within the family governmental structure.

It is very telling to me that Paul realizes that there can be no orderly worship within church government if the overseer of the church is unable to maintain order at home. Many Puritans actually believed that homes were like many churches.

Dads and husbands were viewed as pastors of their own little churches. It was his responsibility to lead his family in worship, to lead them in the word of God. But much of the church today has forfeited the idea that men are called to be mini-shepherds of their homes.

Ultimately, we can trace this surrender all the way back to the garden. That does not mean that there have not been faithful men since then or even periods of time in history when this was the prevailing thought.

But if we are going to regain this mentality, we must trace the failure back to its roots. Let's take a few minutes. I want to go back to Genesis chapter 2. Everyone always wants to blame Eve for the fall.

But do you remember who God's command was to when he said, do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Who was that given to? He was speaking to Adam. Eve hadn't even been created yet. This was in chapter 2, verses 16 through 17.

And immediately after that, God put him in the garden of Eden to work and keep it. I'm sorry, this came after verse 15. So God put him in Eden to work. Then he told him not to eat of the tree. And then in verse 18, God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

I will make him a helper fit for him. So after he told him, do not eat of the tree, then he made Eve. So before Eve ever ate the fruit, Adam had already failed to properly shepherd his wife. Either he failed to correctly relay what God had told him, or he allowed Eve to believe a lie.

As we have already discussed, when faced with a service temptation of, did God really say? Eve responded with, at worst, a deliberate lie, and at best, a partial truth. To make things worse, have you ever thought about where Adam was during this debacle?

He was sitting right next to her. Genesis 3 .6 tells us that as soon as Eve ate the fruit, she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. So not only did Adam fail to shepherd his wife prior to the fall, but also, like a coward, he failed to shepherd her in the midst of the fall.

Is Eve responsible for her sin? Absolutely. 100%. But as we can see, as head of his home, Adam ultimately bears this responsibility for the fall of mankind because he failed to properly lead his family.

There was such a lack of genuine worship in the church because we do not have strong men with faithful wives properly following and assisting them in leading and shepherding their families. Instead, we have the Garden of Eden.

Strong families do not magically occur just because churches have strong elders. Strong families occur because they have strong fathers and strong husbands. Many deep-seated sins in the church are a result of a lack of faithful men.

Extended singleness, porn addiction, laziness, cowardice, men acting like boys, effeminate men, pride, these all stem from faithless fathers. Recently, I did an Apology Radio episode. We had Andrew Sandlin on.

He said this. The spiritual level of the church will never rise higher than the spiritual level of the families that compromise it. And that's why I'm so thankful for our church because we have such amazing and strong families.

I recently heard a very intriguing statistic. In unbelieving families, when the mother comes to Christ first, the children and the husband also come to Christ 17 of the time. When the husband comes to Christ first, the children and the wife also come to Christ 93 of the time.

That's utterly astonishing. Why is this? You do the math. At some point during the 18th century, there was an inward turn. In other words, everything turned inward towards man. Instead of the standards for truth and morality coming from outside in, they now came from inside out.

Instead of God's transcendent and objective laws coming to man from outside of history, they now came from within man, out into the culture. This philosophy has, of course, infiltrated the church. In much of our modern churches, the standards of worship, of the worship service, have become, I felt or I feel instead of he said.

The standard is no longer, was the word of God preached or did the worship bring glory to God, but how did it make me feel? The church has a standard, the word of God, and it has failed because it has not returned to its source.

Proper Christ-honoring worship involves a heart given completely to God, but a heart given completely to God is a heart that is completely immersed in the external word of God. You cannot have true devotion to God in worship without devotion to the external word of God.

Andrew Sandlin also said this in the radio show. He said, if our minds are not biblically saturated, then our minds will be weak. They will constantly be at prey to secular, neo-pagan thinking, and the church will continue to fail.

It all starts with submersion and in obedience to the word of God. So Christian worship then, whether it be individual, at home, at church, or in the public sphere, should be disciplined, it should be intentional, it should be trained, it should be powerful, and it should be reverent.

The pagan world, on the other hand, wants everything reduced to chaos, but we as Christ's bride are the dam holding back the chaotic waters of destruction. We stand as the barrier between creation and chaos.

Just as Elijah slain the 450 false prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18, the gods of chaos will be slain, and it's going to be Christian worship that ends them. We want to introduce worship into the chaotic world, while at the same time, the pagans want to flood our ordered world with chaos.

And just like faithful Gideon in Judges 6, we need to tear down the culture's grisly idols to their chaotic gods of comfort, and rebuild them in a way that produces orderly worship to the God who defeats chaos.

God has established this church and promises us that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. We, as Christians, often get this promise wrong. What do gates do? They protect. They are not offensive, but defensive.

The gates of hell will not prevail against us just because they will not be able to withstand our offensive charge. We do not defeat the gates of hell by keeping our worship within the four walls of our churches.

We defeat the gates of hell by charging forward, bringing our right orderly worship to the unbelieving world, until those gates are left no stone standing. So the last thing I want to get to here, Christ versus chaos.

Practical Contrasts Between Order and Disorder

I've shown you why we must choose either Christ or chaos in every facet of life. But practically speaking, what does Christ versus chaos look like? As the culture actively tries to deconstruct what God has sovereignly structured, what does order versus disorder look like?

So, order versus disorder. Just be warned, I have intentionally tried really hard to make sure that I leave no man standing here. This hopefully should hurt, and I can assure you that even I have gone unscathed.

So I have a list here of things, order and disorder. You may have seen after the OSA talk, I did a little mini chart we put out on intermortion now of some of these things. I've expanded it. So, order is glorifying God and enjoying him forever.

Disorder is glorifying self and enjoying man for a short time here on earth. Order looks like finding joy and contentment in Christ. Disorder looks like finding our joy and contentment and idolatry. Order is identity in Christ.

Disorder is identity in anything other than Christ. Order looks like loving God with all your mind, heart, soul, and strength. Disorder looks like loving self with all your time, energy, and resources.

Order is loving your neighbor as yourself. Disorder is loving yourself without concern for your neighbor. Order looks like the God-ordained biological genders of male and female. Disorder looks like the alphabet people.

Order is embracing the way God created you and using that gift to his glory. Disorder is practicing self-mutilation and defiance to God. Order is proper Christ-honoring self-government. Disorder is autonomous self-love.

Order looks like the divinely decreed institution of family government. Disorder looks like the deliberate demolition of the nuclear family. Order is husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Disorder is husbands loving only themselves and giving up their wives for selfish desires. Order looks like wives submitting to their husbands as to the Lord. Disorder looks like wives submitting to no one, neither Lord nor husband.

Order is the worship of God through proper sexual intimacy of a husband and wife. Disorder is the worship of sex through improper sexual intimacy outside the confines of the marriage bed. Order looks like taking responsibility for the little lives created through sexual intimacy.

Disorder looks like sexual intimacy without consequences. Order is children, yes, children, I'm getting you too, obeying their parents in the Lord. Disorder is children obeying no one and living as a law unto themselves.

Order looks like fathers not provoking their children to anger and raising them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Disorder looks like fathers exasperating their children, raising them up without discipline and without godly instruction.

Order is fathers managing their households well. Disorder is the Bidens. Might as well just roll with it. Order looks like fathers leading their families in family worship at home. Disorder looks like fathers neglecting this duty, thereby leading their families in the practice of idolatry.

Order is parents training their children to be attentive and respectful during worship. Disorder is parents allowing their children to be disruptive and run amok during worship. Order looks like being good stewards of your space during worship, leaving it as you found it.

Disorder looks like leaving your space a mess, assuming that others will clean up after you. Whoever is our clean-up crew today will appreciate that one. Order is sacrificing everything for the well-being of your offspring.

Disorder is sacrificing your offspring for everything else. Order looks like caring for your children, no matter the cost. Disorder looks like hiring an assassin to butcher your children, no matter the cost.

Order is loving your baby, even if that means giving them up for adoption. Disorder is hating your baby, even to the point of death. Order looks like rescuing those being taken away to death. Disorder looks like deliberately helping those stumble to the slaughter.

Order is men acting like men. Disorder is men acting effeminate. Order looks like men working hard to provide for the families. Disorder looks like men being lazy, depending on their wives or even the state to provide for their families.

Order is being a good steward with the resources God has blessed you with. Disorder looks like the prodigal son. Order looks like giving of your first fruits back to God. Disorder looks like giving God your leftovers.

Order is taking dominion over the earth. Disorder is leaving it in disarray. Order looks like Christ's bride acting courageously. Disorder looks like the church acting cowardly. Order is applying the lordship of Christ over all things.

Disorder is applying Christ's lordship only over heavenly things. Order looks like having no king but Christ. Disorder looks like having no king but Caesar. And lastly, order is faithful pastors leading from the pulpit.

Disorder is unfaithful pastors saying, that's not really my thing. I've heard it. In conclusion, this is a spiritual battle, and we must not forget that. Anywhere and everywhere you look throughout the world is contested territory.

But where God is most at work, there we will find Satan working the hardest against us. We are not just fighting our unbelieving culture, but also Satan who is currently losing and will ultimately be defeated once and for all in God's perfect timing.

So I want to leave you with this quote from Andrew.

He said,.

We're going to win. Satan was definitively defeated on the cross. History itself is the outworking of the effects of the cross and the resurrection by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. The preaching of the gospel, the authority of the moral law of God in all areas of life.

We are going to win. But we can only accomplish this through order. If there's a pastor watching this or listening to this, it starts in the pulpit. Fathers and husbands, it starts in your homes. In all areas of life, we must reject every invitation to neutrality and always choose Christ over chaos.

Let's pray.

Lord, just thank you again for this opportunity to teach today. We thank you for this world that you've created, Lord.