Myths of Marriage: It's not important to agree with your spouse on politics (Should women vote?)

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All right everyone, all right everyone, if I can get your attention please. Is this on?
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Can I get your attention, please? Okay, testing, testing.
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All right. All right, everybody. I don't have amplification. This is just for recording. But if I could, yeah, if I could, yeah, let's do that.
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Maybe I can get like a dinner bell or something. All right. Once again, my name is Conley.
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I'm one of the pastors here. Welcome to Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church. If you do not have a church and you're looking for one, we'd love it if you could join us.
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We're a church that cares a lot about marriage, cares a lot about the pursuit of marriage, cares a lot about the
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Word of God. And so we hope that everything you experience here tonight will be things that will give you a taste of the things that our church cares about.
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All right, a few more announcements. As you know, this tent, well, as you may know from previous years, this tent can get pretty cold in the winter.
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So in the winter months, we will likely be located, still a few things to confirm, but we'll likely be located at a first OPC in Sunnyvale.
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So this will likely be hosted there in subsequent months up until March or April, basically.
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Okay, so just if you have signed up for the email list, you'll get a notification letting you know where it is.
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All right. Well with that, each month we do a different myth about marriage.
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Now this week's myth, this month's myth, is it's not important to agree with your spouse on politics.
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And the fact is that spiritual unity entails political unity. Okay, so a lot of people, a lot of people don't like talking about politics, right?
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It's very awkward. There are two things that you're not supposed to discuss in conversation, polite conversation, right? That's religion and politics.
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Now Christians, at least mature Christians know, they have an obligation to talk about religion.
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It's kind of what Christ commanded. But when it comes to politics, it seems like, well, that's something that maybe we shouldn't touch.
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And then other people just don't even care about politics at all, right? They just wish that they never had to deal with it.
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They don't, they don't pay attention to any of it. They don't care. Did you know that it's about a third of eligible voters don't vote every year?
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That is the degree to which a lot of people really don't care about politics. And as you know, in a couple of weeks we have an election coming up and just like every election before, we've been informed that is the most important election of our lifetime.
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So I thought I would go ahead and address that very timely topic. So why is this important for you as a single?
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Well, because, because there is such an overlap between spiritual things and politics, it's important that you would have unity with your spouse.
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So it not only determines who you would marry, but even how your marriage would operate so that that unity would be maintained.
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Okay, so it's not just that you would agree on the same things, but that you would know how to interact with one another in order to maintain that unity.
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All right. So let's start off with some biblical basics. Is voting, is that even in the
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Bible? Not voting for kings or or presidents as such.
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However, there is a notion of suffrage, okay? And by suffrage I don't necessarily mean the act of casting a ballot, but of the people giving their consent to a king.
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Okay, now there's a lot of people who think that this isn't in Scripture at all. In fact, we shouldn't even, we shouldn't participate in any kind of voting.
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If Jesus' kingdom is not of this world, then to participate in the kingdom that is of this world would be rebellion against his kingdom.
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That's what a lot of people think. Well, the reality is that we are in both kingdoms. Yes, we have a primary citizenship, but we can't avoid the fact that we are a part of an earthly kingdom.
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Now there's another view that's known as Erastianism. Now Erastianism is less popular these days, but it was the idea that the king gets his right to govern directly from God.
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All right, so now the implication is if he gets it directly from God, well, then it's nice, a nice privilege that we have an opportunity to vote.
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But it's not necessarily something that that has any real meaning. Now, around the time shortly after the
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Reformation in the 17th century, there was a guy named Samuel Rutherford. Samuel Rutherford was one of the authors of the
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Westminster Confession. If you're familiar with that document, every Presbyterian church, that is their confession of faith, right, is the
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Westminster Confession. So this guy was one of the primary authors of that document, and he went to task with Erastianism and argued from scripture that the right to govern comes from the consent of the governed.
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Yes, all authority ultimately comes from God, but in a direct sense, it comes from the people. So it's not directly from God, but from God, through the people, to the ruler.
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Now, how did he argue that? He had many, many arguments. His book, I've actually read it, it's called
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Lex Rex. I've read some hard books. It's probably the hardest book I've ever read.
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He switches between Latin phrases and Greek phrases and Hebrew phrases like they're nothing, you know, and it is not an easy read.
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But let me give you some of the the primary arguments, and before I do that, let me say that this idea led theologians to agree with it, and eventually is what led to the
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American Revolution, right, because if the right to govern comes from the consent of the governed, and you have a whole body of people who have not consented to be governed, well, then that authorizes them to form their own nation, right?
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All right. So in scripture, you see different kings be anointed as kings.
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Now, the first inclination you might see is that Erastian inclination, right? The idea, well, this authority is coming directly from God.
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Take, for example, Saul. I'm just going to go through the first several kings of Israel and Judah.
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The Lord said to Samuel, this is 1 Samuel 16, 1. The Lord said to Samuel, How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected you from being king over Israel?
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Fill your horn with oil and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.
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All right, so Samuel is supposed to go, and he is supposed to anoint Saul as king, right? So this looks like, okay, we've got a priest who's anointing him.
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It's God who is deciding, his authority is coming directly from God. But what we see in the next chapter, excuse me, that was a,
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I looked at the wrong one. That was about David. Okay, so that was, that was about David. So David is anointed, is anointed by Jesse, right?
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Or excuse me, not by Jesse, excuse me, by Samuel while he's in the house of his father, Jesse. Verse 13 of the same chapter says,
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Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward.
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And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. Okay, so you have, you have David being anointed here, and you see something very similar with Saul.
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Let me go back to the tab I thought I was going to. 1 Samuel 10, 1. Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on the head, on his head, this is speaking of Saul, and kissed him and said,
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Has not the Lord anointed you to be prince over his people Israel? Okay, so in both of these situations, David and Saul, it looks like, okay,
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Samuel's anointing them, it looks like that authority is coming directly from God. But then, later on, what you see for Saul in 1
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Samuel 10, 10 -19, it says, Set a king over us.
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The people say, Set a king over us. And then later on, And Samuel said to all the people, Do you see him whom the
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Lord has chosen? There is none like him among all the people. And all the people shouted, Long live the king.
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Okay, so here, even though God has anointed the people, later on, it requires the people to affirm it in order for him to actually be king.
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And we see the same thing with David, right? David is anointed as king, or anointed by God to be king, when he's just a child, right?
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It is many, many, many years before he actually becomes the king of the people. In 2
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Samuel 5 -3, it says, So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the
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Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel. David was 30 years old when he began to reign.
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Okay, so initially, he's anointed as king. He's anointed to be king, right?
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And that happens many years before the people actually make him king. So God's anointing to be king is not the actual making of kings.
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So the actual making of king happens when the people gather in order to make that one king. 1
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Kings 16 -21 Excuse me. I keep pulling up the wrong ones here.
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Rehoboam, 1 Kings 12. Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king.
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Okay, so Israel goes to Shechem in order to make him king. It's through the consent of the people, through the will of the people, that he's being made king.
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And then one last one, 1 Kings 16 verses 21 through let's see, through 22.
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Then the people of Israel were divided into two parts. Half of the people followed Tibni the son of Gnath to make him king.
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Half followed Omri. But the people who followed Omri overcame the people who followed
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Tibni the son of Gnath. So Tibni died, and Omri became king. Okay, so here are the people who are divided on who's to be king.
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And which one is it that wins out? Well, when one dies, the people's consent is only for the one king.
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So that king is the one who becomes over Israel. So you see in the Bible, the authority to become king is not coming directly from God.
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It is coming indirectly from God through the people who are making that one king. Okay, so this notion of voting, while voting is not in scripture, the notion of the people being obligated to hold the ruler accountable and to be the ones responsible for who the ruler is, is present in scripture.
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Okay, so this is a real thing. Okay, now secondly, moving on from the biblical foundation for caring about, you know, having our voice be part of, you know, who is in power.
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Secondly, why is it important for you to be united with your spouse when you are married on this matter of politics?
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Well, first of all, let me just observe what is manifestly obvious. Most matters of voting are spiritual matters, right?
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They're matters of good and evil, of right and wrong. And they are things that, if you were to be spiritually united, you need to be united in political things as well, right?
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The Bible says that it's important to marry in the Lord. So that would be to marry another Christian. Now you might say that, well, someone could be another
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Christian but have different politics than me. That's true. But if the point of being united, being married in the
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Lord is to have the same primary objectives, but all your, but those primary objectives are so narrow that they only address the highest points of orthodoxy or whatever it is, right?
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That is not really much unity at all. And another analogy scripture uses, and this isn't talking specifically about marriage, but it says in 2
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Corinthians 6 that you should not be unequally yoked to unbelievers.
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Now that has implications for marriage, right? Because what happens when you're unequally yoked? What happens when you're not in agreement with someone that you are supposed to be united with?
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The animals, right? If they're unequally yoked, you got an ox and a donkey, they end up just going in a circle, right? You can't go anywhere.
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You just go in a circle. And so this is what happens. Now, this is where, this is where the problems begin.
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Because what happens when you disagree? What happens when man and woman have, have different views of political things?
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In fact, men and women do have different political views. I have, I have some statistics here.
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So these are from 538. If you're not familiar with 538, it's, they do a lot of political statistics.
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So this was from the 2018 midterm elections. If only women voted, 275 districts would have been
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Democrat, 160 districts would have been, would have been
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Republican. Now, this is flipped if only men voted, okay? If only men voted, it would have been 186 projected
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Democrat and a majority Republican, 249 Republican districts.
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So men and women have very different ideas on political things. Now, I don't know if you all can see this, but this one is a lot bluer than this one is.
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You know, remember there's a lot more people around the edges here. So yeah, so the, the edges mean more than the, than the middle does in some sense.
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I'm going to throw that at the camera there so I can make sure that it's seen later. All right, so what do you do?
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What do you do if you're, if you find yourself married and you disagree with your spouse? Okay, let me give you several options, okay?
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One is you each just vote for who you're going to vote for, right? No effort at political unity. You just each vote for your own candidate for your own policies.
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Well, that's not very unified, is it? You could also say, well, Philippians 2 says
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I'm supposed to consider others greater than myself, so I'll vote for your candidate and your policies, and you vote for my candidate and my policies, and we just swap it.
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Well, that doesn't really accomplish anything, does it? You could also say, well, if we disagree, maybe there's no point in us voting.
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We could just stay home and watch a movie instead. All right, once again, you're not, you're not really going anywhere.
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You're not doing anything or accomplishing anything in a marriage if that's your, if that's your approach to things. Now, there are other ways of deciding this, right?
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You could decide arbitrarily to compromise where you flip a coin. You could end up going with the husband's view.
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You could end up going with the wife's view, right? There are all different kinds of things you could do, or you could say, well, it's just important to be on the same page about this beforehand so that we never have any disagreements.
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That's, that's not going to work, okay? There will be disagreements in marriage. There will be disagreements in your marriage, and it will be the case with, with politics unless you have, unless you have some way to avoid that.
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So what should be the approach? All right, what I'm going to propose to you today is it should be the man who decides how his family is going to throw their support behind a candidate.
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I'm going to give you five reasons and then a bonus reason afterward, all right? So these are five reasons for the man deciding how the family should vote together, for how his wife should vote.
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The first one, very simple, Ephesians 5, it talks about husbands being the head of the wife and having authority.
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Ephesians 5 22, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior.
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Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Okay, this is not in some things to their husbands, this is everything to their husbands.
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Now obviously this is conditioned in the Lord, so if an authority says to do something simple, obviously you shouldn't do something simple.
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All, all authority is conditioned in the Lord, but this is something where it says submit in everything and if this is true, why wouldn't it also be true in the matter of national suffrage?
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Why wouldn't it also be true in voting? The second, the second reason that I'm going to give you is that men are especially, especially equipped to make these kinds of decisions.
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All right, so if you consider what 1 Timothy 2 says here, now a lot of, I'm going to read a couple of verses that most people are used to thinking of only in the context of the church, but these have implications outside the church as well, they have implications for the family.
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It says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather she has to remain quiet, for Adam was formed first, then
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Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Okay, so it says
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Adam was not deceived and the woman was deceived, and this has implications for the kind of roles that they would take, for whether one would be a teacher or the other would, right?
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It is, one was deceived and the other is not, and this is a truth that continues today and has implications for those roles.
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Okay, now what was the, what was the serpent in the garden? Okay, the serpent was a reptilian creature, had legs and it could talk, right?
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It's a reptilian creature that could walk and talk and it told lies. Now, with the potential exception of being a reptilian creature, does that not sound exactly like most politicians?
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So who is, who is equipped in the relationship to handle that deception? You know, politics really are this, this game of deception.
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Very few politicians are honest people, you know, and they, even the ones that are honest are very carefully choosing what they are going to say, right?
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And so this is something that requires being able to see through deception, and God has spoken and he has said who is more equipped in a relationship to handle that, and a marriage to handle that.
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Okay, consider also the next reason. The next reason is that men are commanded to teach their wives about spiritual things, and so if they aren't to instruct their wives about what is right and wrong, that would apply to voting as well.
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Once again, this is a verse that most people only think about in terms of the church, but has implication elsewhere too. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in all submission.
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As the law also says, if there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home.
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All right, so that was in first Corinthians, beginning halfway through verse 33.
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Okay, so this talks about the importance of husbands teaching their wife. This is, yes, this is talking about spiritual context, it's talking about the church, but the implication is that the husband is commanded to instruct his wife in what is good and evil in spiritual things.
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Now, if that has significant overlap in politics, does that not also apply?
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That he should teach her what is right and wrong, what is good and evil. Shouldn't he be the one who is charged with instructing her and not her him, or that they each go their own way with no one instructing each other?
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It has implications, once again. The next, the next reason is that it is the husband's job to protect.
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Okay, it's the husband's job to, it is the husband's job to protect the family.
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You see this many places in scripture. One very, one very simple thing is that in first Corinthians 16, 13, it says, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
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Okay, so the essence of manhood is strength, and God, throughout the history of Israel, it's men who are going to war, it's men who are protecting the nation, etc.
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Right? Men are supposed to protect their wives. Does that not have implications for choosing how his family is protected?
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Right? Is not the question of politics and candidates and policies have to do with the use of force in order to protect.
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It does, and so if one party in that marriage relationship is tasked with protecting, and with deciding how the family is protected, then that has implications for matter of protection, even at the national level, and who would decide these things?
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The man in the relationship would, the husband would. Now, it also speaks in the
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Old Testament of justice for widows and orphans. Have you ever considered why it is that so frequently it talks about widows and orphans?
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It's not just because they are an arbitrary class of helpless people.
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Okay, there's more to it than that. Consider Deuteronomy 27, 19. Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, and the people shall say amen.
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Okay, so fatherless and the widow, what, what marks the fatherless and the widow? The fatherless has no father, right?
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The orphan has no father. The widow has no husband. They are both ones that can be easily taken advantage of because they have no one to protect them, but notice that this has to do with justice.
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You see the widow in Jesus's parable, you know, asking for the judge to give her justice, and he doesn't feel like he has to listen to her, etc.
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This is not just talking about physical protection neatly considered in the, in the raw confines of physical fighting, but it has to do with all the nature of protection as it would involve law that protects people in that physical way, right?
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So, so the husband, if he is the one who is taking care of his children, if he is taking care of his wife, if the fatherless and the widow do not have that protection, and here in this context of justice, right, whoever perverts justice, then is it not the man who has the special responsibility in the court of law, who has a special responsibility in the civil sphere to provide that justice, to advocate for that justice, and notice who also is included here.
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The sojourner is included here. Why is the sojourner included with the fatherless and the widow? The sojourner might be strong.
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The sojourner might be rich. Why would the sojourner matter? The sojourner has no say in the land.
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He has no say in the course of, of government, and so this is identifying the sojourner as similar to the widow and the child in this circumstance.
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Who is it that should have the say? Not the sojourner, right? Not the, not the child, and not the widow.
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It's the husband who is supposed to have the, have the say. All right, so you have, you have their protection, so that was that, that was the fourth reason.
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Now the fifth reason follows after that, is in order to implement rule, it requires consent from those who are equipped to protect, okay?
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So these kind of go hand in hand, right? If it's men who are supposed to be going to war, etc., what would it look like for a king to have consent apart from those who are able to wield the sword for him, right?
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So the, the force of government, the Bible describes as wielding the sword, okay? If the king is to, to wield the sword, now even a king over as small a country as a hundred people could not do that apart from having people to wield the sword for him, having people to enforce the law, right?
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The law doesn't mean a thing if there's no enforcement of the law. So if it doesn't mean anything, if there's no enforcement of it, then this consent of the governed is not just some arbitrary biblical principle to tell us that, oh okay, there is some, there, this is how we should think about the power of government, that it's coming from the consent of the governed.
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What it means is, in reality, there's no, there's no way of truly accomplishing any kind of political power other than the consent of the governed, right?
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There's no, if you don't have the consent of the governed, if you call yourself king and no one else calls you king, it doesn't mean a thing, right?
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I could go out on the street, call myself king, that doesn't make me king. I need people to enforce my laws.
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If you do not have the consent of people who are equipped to enforce laws, all right, that'd be people equipped to go to war, people who are strong and able to do that as men are able to, and that being the role of the man to be the protector, you do not have, you do not have a way of, of, yeah, the consent means nothing.
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So yeah, in a sense, in a sense, it really is the consent of men that matters for elections.
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Now, let me also throw in there that you see this throughout scripture too. In those scenes where the people are coming together and they're consenting to the king, these are the men who are coming together.
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It's not always pointed out, but sometimes it is. So you see, for example, in 1
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Samuel, when Saul was made king, do you remember what happens at the end? At the end, there's one guy who says, who is this guy?
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He shouldn't be king, right? And so afterwards, after Saul leads the people into victory, there's a question about this.
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Then the people said to Samuel, who is it that said shall Saul reign over us, bring the men that we may put them to death.
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Okay. So these are, these are warriors who are out in the fields, right? They've just defeated the
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Ammonites and they're together. Okay. Women and children are all at home, et cetera.
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But Paul said, not a man shall be put to death this day for the Lord, uh, for today the
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Lord has worked salvation in Israel. Then Samuel said to the people, come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingdom.
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Okay. So they're going to renew the kingdom. They're basically going to do this consenting once again. So all the people went to, uh,
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Gilgal and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they sacrificed peace offerings before the
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Lord and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoice greatly. Sometimes it calls them the people of Israel because people in the
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Bible is another word for nation, right? It's the nation of Israel deciding this, but who particularly in the nation is the men who are deciding this.
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And so the men are putting their force behind Saul saying that we are willing to support you as King.
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And so it is the men who are deciding, who are deciding who are going, uh, who is going to rule over them.
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All right. Now, uh, it's, this is, this is something that, uh, in a lot of ways is very intuitive.
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Um, we're part of a generation that doesn't see that as intuitive and we're taught throughout school that it's, that that's not intuitive.
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Rather, the intuitive thing is that all should be participating in national suffrage. There was, uh,
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I mean, that's what I was taught in school. I don't know if you all, I assume you all were too, you know, that basically, uh, women were oppressed for, for thousands of years and then suddenly, you know, people righted that wrong and now they're not oppressed anymore and they were just clamoring and crying out for, for their voices to be heard.
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Uh, let me read you an article from, or the, uh, opening page of an article from, uh, the
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Atlantic. Uh, this is in 1903. I know the Atlantic is a very different magazine now, but this is, this is that same magazine.
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This is 1903. It says in 1895, when the women of Massachusetts were asked by the state whether they wished the suffrage, in other words, whether or not they wanted to vote, of the 575 ,000 voting women in the state, only 22 ,204 cared for it enough to deposit in a ballot box an affirmative answer to this question.
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That is in round numbers, less than 4 % wished to vote, about 96 % were either opposed to women's suffrage or indifferent to it.
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That this expresses fairly well the average sentiment throughout the country can hardly be questioned. So even at this time in 1903, when they're having these discussions, uh, it was generally opinion, even among women, that this was the role of men.
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And I would encourage you to look up this article. It's called why women do not wish the suffrage. And it just outlines the reasons that women were thinking back then that this was the role of their husband to participate in government.
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And it's a lot of the same arguments I'm making here, right? A lot of the same biblical sorts of arguments. Uh, that's the kind of thing that was in, uh, that was in the
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Atlantic at the time. I've only looked at this on the web. This is the first time I've ever printed the PDF of this, which is the original, uh, like the original typesetting and everything.
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And so it has a little bit of the article after. The next, very next article is the Bible in public schools. Uh, you know, so there's very, uh, a lot of, uh, theological themed articles in the
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Atlantic. All right. So now, uh, now the bonus reason, the bonus reason that the husband should decide for the family how the family is to vote.
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Uh, it's just natural. It's just what happens anyway. And so what I'm saying is not, um,
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I'm not just saying that this is, this is, uh, something that's so unintuitive and, uh, but you need to force yourself to think this way.
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Think this is, this is typically what happens anyway. Uh, uh, another chart that I can't really, uh, show you that well,
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I'm going to put this up here, show this. Okay. So this is, uh, this is voters in the 2022 midterms.
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Okay. So this one all the way in the far, that's your left, all the way in the far left here, uh, is married men.
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Okay. Married men are voting 59 % Republican, 39 % Democrat. Okay. Over, over half
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Republican, married women, 56 % Republican, 42 %
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Democrat. Okay. Over half Republican, single men, 52 %
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Republican, 45 % Democrat, over half Republican, uh, single women, 68 % or 31 %
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Republican, 68 % Democrat. Okay. So basically men tend to vote a certain way.
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Married men tend to vote similarly. Women who are married to men tend to vote similarly.
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The only one who's vote differently than that is single women. So what this is showing is it is naturally the case that once a husband and wife are united together, uh, the man in his role of leadership, whether or not he's, uh, and I know that in a lot of ways, people are rebelling against God in the way they order their lives and their marriages.
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But even here, even here, people recognize that the typical pattern is for the man to lead the wife and to instruct her in what is right and wrong.
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And this is just what happens naturally, uh, even in non -Christian homes, this is what happens naturally.
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Okay. So that's the bonus reason. This is just what's going to happen anyway. Uh, and it's only in, uh, the really bad situations where that unity doesn't happen, where the man isn't, uh, isn't leading because this is just, uh, yeah, even, even in non -Christian homes, this kind of dynamic happens normally.
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All right. Uh, so now the matter of voting in general, uh, what, okay, if it is important to, uh, to care about this stuff, to think about this stuff, what should you think about, about voting?
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I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. Uh, but I will tell you some biblical principles about the, the foundations for government.
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A lot of people don't ask what the foundations for government are. They just ask, you know, what do I like more? Do I like this policy more?
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Do I like that policy more? Uh, you should be asking yourself, what is the government supposed to do? What is it not supposed to do?
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Genesis 9, 6, this is a Noahic covenant. God makes the rainbow. He says a bunch of stuff to Noah and to his family.
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This is something for, there's only, you know, eight people on the whole earth at this point. This is a covenant for the whole earth.
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One of the things that God says, whoever sheds blood by man, his blood shall be shed for God made man in his own image.
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Okay. So he's, he's providing man a mechanism for protection. Okay. That there will be, uh, justice enforced, uh, retributive justice.
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Okay. Whoever sheds blood by man, his blood shall be shed. This is exactly what Romans 13 affirms later on.
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Uh, and you have to start in Romans 12 if you really want to see it. In Romans 12, it says, beloved, never avenge yourself, but leave it to the wrath of God for it is written vengeance is mine.
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I will repay, says the Lord. Okay. So it says, don't, don't seek your own vengeance. But then in 13, when it's talking about the government who wields the sword, it says, for he is
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God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid for he does not bear the sword in vain for he is a servant of God, an avenger who carries out
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God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Okay. So don't seek vengeance for yourself. But then who is
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God's servant? Who is seeking vengeance on the earth, right? It is the ruler. It is the governor is the government.
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And so, uh, you see Genesis 9, 6 affirmed by Romans 12 and Romans 13, that this is the role of government.
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It is to, it is to perform retributive justice to protect and to punish those who do, uh, wrong to one another, you know, a harmful force for wrong.
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Now government today does all kinds of things. It goes way outside these boundaries. Uh, and Deuteronomy, it says to the people of Israel, justice and justice only shall you follow that you may live and inherit the land that the
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Lord, your God is giving you. Okay. So justice and justice only, but governments today pursue all kinds of things other than justice, or they, uh, rename other things to be justice so that they can include it, right?
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Like social justice. Okay. And then, then you can do all kinds of things. If, if that's justice, then it's, then it's the role of government.
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So what you should be asking yourself is not what do I like more? What do I want happened to happen more?
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It is what is the role of government? What should it be doing? What policies and persons will be pursuing that the best?
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Uh, so let me give you a few specific advice targeted directly at men and women. Okay. So first of all, men, what should you do?
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Uh, this means that if in your marriage, you know, as you pursue marriage, as you become married in your marriage, if you are to be the one who leads the family and the civil sphere, right in politics and voting, uh, that puts a large burden on you to think through matters of justice, to think through these biblical foundations, uh, you should be equipping yourself to know how to think about these things.
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I'm not necessarily talking about staying current on a current events or reading the news all the time. Uh, those things can be good, but I mean,
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I, it's more important to have just foundations of what right and wrong are to really know the scriptures.
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And, uh, this could involve, like I said, this could involve studying contemporary events or even studying history.
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Uh, there was, um, do you all know who Matt Walsh is? Matt Walsh said something recently that a lot of people were picking apart that I thought was, uh, very interesting.
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He said, women, if you want to know whether or not a man would be a good husband or is interesting, you should ask him what his favorite century of history is.
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And if he has an answer, that means he's an interesting person because, you know, he cares enough about those sorts of things to read those sorts of things.
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So, uh, men get, like, pick one real fast because you might get asked this question later. Now, I, I think there's something to that, right?
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There's something to a man who cares about justice enough to be thinking about history and those sorts of things. Um, uh, beyond just reading the
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Bible itself, uh, one resource that I'll recommend to you that I think was helpful, especially on understanding the Noahic covenant,
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I really liked, uh, uh, Politics After Christendom by David Van Drunen.
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Uh, don't necessarily like everything in that book, but his exposition of the Noahic covenant, I found very helpful to understand foundations of government.
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So that was called, uh, Politics After Christendom, if you want to look that up. And so what you should also be doing, men, is you should be looking for a woman who is interested in having you play that particular role in her life, right?
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And so women, what about you? Well, you should also understand justice so that you can find a man who is able to lead you in that way, right?
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If you didn't know scripture and you were not thinking about who is spiritually equipped to be my leader in a marriage, uh, you would not know, uh, you, you would walk into something very foolish, right?
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Uh, the same is true when it comes to these finer, although it's not that fine, matters of spiritual things of theology, right?
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You want to know justice well enough to be able to, uh, to discern who a good man is who would, uh, lead you and protect you in this particular way.
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Uh, and you should be looking for, you should be looking for a man who would want to play this sort of role in your life.
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Okay, so with all that, with all that considered, uh, Proverbs 146 .3, uh, says, put not your trust in princes and the son of man in whom there is no salvation.
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So the point of all this is not to put your trust in princes. It's not to put your trust in the voting system or anything like that.
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Hopefully that's not what you got from any of this. Uh, rather it's the exact opposite. It's that you should not, uh, so cling to, uh, you know, the right to vote or something like that, that you would, uh, dishonor what
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God has for you and dishonor God's purposes in your life, right? And so if what it means to not put your trust in princes and to put your trust in the
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Lord is to trust the Lord, even in what he has said about marriage dynamics, even what he has said about the role of husband and wife.
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And the one who does that, uh, is going to be so free, uh, rather than trying to, to wrestle with their spouse over these things, right?
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The one who understands the nature of this is going to be free to pursue things the way that God has said with confidence and with security.
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And if you look at the relationship between Christ and the church, you know, the Bible describes him as the groom and the church is the bride.
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Uh, what is he? He is the king. He is the king of the church. Uh, he is the one who exercises political authority.
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He is the one who exercises political wisdom, knows justice, leads the church in justice.
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Uh, this is what is supposed to be emulated in our marriages. And if we seek first the kingdom of God, all these other things, all the things about earthly kingdoms, all that will be added to us.
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Okay. The, that is not what our hope is in. Our hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he has, uh, given us, uh, a beautiful picture of that relationship between Christ and the church and the relationship between husband and wife, giving us the opportunity to emulate it and appreciate it.
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And to look to him who is the great savior, who is our great protector, who has, uh, defeated death by his strength, which is so much greater than the church's strength, which is nothing.
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Um, and to, uh, and to look forward to that day when he returns and we're joined together with him and that, uh, and that marriage is, uh, that marriage feast is inaugurated and the marriage consummated.
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Uh, let's go ahead and pray. Uh, dear heavenly father, uh, we thank you for your word. It teaches us about so many things.
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It teaches us about difficult things. I know that this is, uh, something that, um, may be difficult for people to hear.
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I pray that you would make us people who are submissive to your word in Jesus name. Amen. All right.