Sunday, June 13, 2021 PM

That has never happened.

We're too rambunctious. We got here at four o 'clock and been going strong. Yeah, but it felt like a couple of hours, we ran out, so. Too many cookies. Let's open our Bibles to Romans 13, Romans chapter 13.

Christian Resistance to the State in Scripture

Recall that we are finishing up a study on the doctrine of Christian resistance to the state. When is that appropriate? How do we go about it? What does the Word of God have to say? And we surveyed Christ's teaching on the matter in Matthew chapter 10 when he was giving basic instructions to his disciples.

Here's how we're going to do things. He said, beware of men, and he talked to them. You're going to face councils and synagogues, and people are just not going to like what you have to say sometimes. And you're going to have to face opposition from civil magistrates.

What do you do? What should your perspective be? We looked at some of those wise sayings of Christ. The famous one of, I send you out as sheep among wolves, therefore be harmless as doves and as shrewd as serpents.

And we looked at a variety of things that Jesus had to say. And then we went to the book of Acts and surveyed various famous stories in the book of Acts, where the Christians faced opposition from civil magistrates of different kinds for different reasons that were stated.

And then how did they conduct themselves? In what ways were they putting into practice the instructions that Jesus gave them in Matthew 10? And there are many other places that we could go in the Word of God.

We talked about early on, we talked about the Old Testament and talked about the midwives of Israel. We talked about Rahab. So we talked about some of those things from the Old Testament. There's a lot there.

And we just got an example tonight of how David sent Hushai in as a spy. That's a great case study about submitting to your magistrate while also not submitting to another magistrate. What a great case study, a rich portion there that we could consider.

And I believe that sometime in the future that we can come back to this topic and study more of the approach of Christian resistance when necessary to the state. Right now we're talking about the theology of Christian resistance.

We'll talk about the tactics, I think, sometime down the road. How do we actually obey Jesus in these difficult situations? What does that look like? What about those particular troubling, hopefully only hypotheticals?

But what if we actually have to do this? So I think that's in the future, Lord willing. For now I want to go to Romans 13. I want to read this text and I want to apply what we've learned from Matthew 10 and the book of Acts and what we've already studied to this passage so that by analogy of Scripture, Scripture interpreting Scripture, we can have a healthy understanding of this passage.

So let's have a word of prayer and then I'll read the text. Father, I thank you for our time together tonight. How blessed it has been. I pray that you would give us clear understanding of your word and that we would apply it in our love for Christ.

Give us both understanding and desire and ability to follow him. Through your Holy Spirit we pray. Amen. Romans 13, beginning in verse 1. Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.

Therefore, whoever resists the authority, resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority?

Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid. For he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.

Therefore, you must be subject, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For because of this, you also pay taxes. For they are God's ministers, attending continually to this very thing.

Render, therefore, to all their due. Taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. And so, having proclaimed and defended and explained this great gospel of Jesus Christ in Romans 1 -11, Paul has begun to apply what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus in real life.

That all of our labor, all of our interactions, everything about us is to be presented to the Lord as worship to him, serving Christ, recognizing that he cares about every aspect of our lives. And at the end of chapter 12, Paul has addressed this particular issue about vengeance.

Being made in God's image, we all desire justice. We all desire that wrongs be righted. Everybody made in the image of God has that desire. There's been a wrong done. We feel it, especially when it's to me, you know, wrong done to me, wrong done to my family.

We feel it most fervently. And we want that wrong to be righted. And so, what does God say? Repay no one evil for evil, he says. He says, give place for wrath. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.

Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, he says.

So, we see something wrong being done, and we want to make this right. And so, there's the desire to take justice into our own hands and do vengeance. And God says, no, no, no, vengeance is mine. That's my department.

I will handle it. Right? And doesn't he handle it? Every single wrong act ever committed in the history of time dealt with either at Christ's cross or Christ's coming. Justice for all. Because this is misunderstood or overlooked or ignored, there are many people today whose passion, their most ardent desire, would be to resurrect the dead of previous generations and haul them into the court of public opinion and do vengeance on them.

Since they can't do that, they just topple statues and stuff. Who's going to raise the dead, sort it all out, and execute justice? Jesus is. That's his department. People stop believing in Jesus, all of a sudden we've got a lot of issues, don't we?

God says, vengeance is mine, I will repay, and he does. He does. Now, one way that God takes care of these issues in the here and now is through his minister, Greek word diakonos, deacon, God's deacon, the civil authorities.

The minister, the civil magistrate, is God's minister to you for good. And he says, you're not supposed to be resisting this authority that God has ordained, you're to be subject to the governing authorities.

Well, what is all this business, then, that we've been looking at in Matthew 10 and Acts and other parts in the Bible where God-fearing, Christ-loving people are resisting the state? Paul himself resisted the state from time to time.

How is he writing this, then? Through the analogy of Scripture and by paying attention to what is actually here in the text, it becomes clear. Our default position concerning the civil magistrate is respect.

Give honor to whom honor. We pay our dues to whom they are owed. We are good citizens. We give respect to those who are in authority because we understand that all authority is of God and is only derived authority expressed in this church, our elders.

This is derived authority from Christ. We don't hold this authority of our own two hands. This is only derived authority from Christ. We are under his authority and accountable to one another and to you, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We don't get to just state whatever we want to state because I'm an elder because I'm an elder. No, our authority is derived. The authority in the home, fathers, your authority in the home, parents, is derived from the Lord, derived from God.

It is not yours just intrinsically because you are husband or intrinsically because you are father and mother. It is derived from the Lord. All authority is from the Lord. That's why obedience of a wife to her husband is as under the Lord.

Children to their parents is as under the Lord. And the same thing with the state. Any authority that the state has is from the Lord. It's derived from the Lord. Jesus told Pilate you would have no authority except what was given to you from heaven.

All authority expressed in the state is only derived. It is entrusted as a stewardship. And evil men who use this authority for evil purposes, God says, I'm going to judge. And he's going to take care of it.

And at the end of all things, we're going to be applauding and saying, you did good. Oh, God, you did it right. You brought all of this to justice. Excellent job. Praise be to God. And we're all going to give an amen to the way that God deals with justice because we never got close to making all things right, did we?

Or will we? So, seeing this, that the government is a minister from God, the authority is derived from God, we give honor and respect. Give honor and respect. And so we strive to be good citizens and recognize that if we are afraid of the authority, we should only be afraid of the authority if we do what?

If we do evil. If we do wrong. Now, who owns the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? God owns that tree. Is anyone allowed to eat from it? No. Nobody gets to determine good and evil for themselves or for anybody else.

God owns that. That's his territory. He determines good and evil. So when we look at this, he's not saying only be afraid of the government if you do what is evil in their eyes. What does he mean? You should be afraid of God's minister, the civil government, if you do what is evil in God's eyes.

Why? Because he says that God's minister, this state, is an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. You see? God is using the state as his instrument to punish evil in the here and now. Some states do it better than others.

Some civil governments do it better than others. But that's what it's there for. So if you do evil, if you go rob a bank, you don't then get to say when the authorities are coming after you, well, as a Christian, I'm going to resist the state.

Jesus is my boss, and he told me to go rob that bank, as some insane people probably have said. No, God says be afraid if you do evil. Now, if we do good, and this is part of the question we've been asking, if we do good, if we do what is good according to God's definitions, and it's plain and obvious that what we're doing is good, and the state then misuses the sword that God has entrusted to them and points the sword at people doing good and says, you're doing evil, and we are going to punish you with our sword, should we be afraid?

No. We shouldn't be afraid. We only should be afraid if we've done evil. If we have done good, and the state misuses the sword, we shouldn't be afraid at all. We shouldn't be afraid at all. We should only be afraid if we've done evil.

Do we see that in the text? When the state says to those who are doing good, you're doing evil, and comes after them, that is not what this text is talking about. We have plenty of other passages in the Bible that talk about what to do then, and we've looked at a lot of them.

This passage is saying our default response to the state is to give respect and honor and recognize that it is a minister of God to punish evil. Rather than taking vengeance into our own hands, we are to appeal to God's minister to punish evil, even as the church, to instruct the state, in interest of making disciples of all nations, to instruct the state as the church how they should punish evil.

Don't you know this is evil? State, you should be punishing this. This not only dishonors God, it destroys the society that you say that you want to see flourish. You should punish evil. This is evil.

God says it's evil, and you see the evil working out in our society around us. You should punish this. We should instruct the state. We should bring the attention of the state to the word of God as the standard, because Jesus is in charge of the whole thing.

When we read that the state is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil, we understand that this is not talking about people going to church. This is not talking about people who are trying to disciple their children at home.

This is not talking about preachers standing in their pulpit trying to pass through their flock. This is not talking about people gathering to sing hymns. When we read Romans 13, we should not read it in an absolute version, as some have read it, or in the divine right of kings tradition, and say, well, Romans 13 says that whatever the state determines, we have to do, because it says do not resist the state, do not resist the government, do not resist the governing authorities.

Well, yes, it definitely does say that, but let's read the whole passage, and let's read the other passages so that we understand the meaning of it. And notice it says, therefore you must be subject not only because of wrath, not because we're just trying to, I'm not going to steal because I don't want to get in trouble.

That's not the primary way Christians should think, right? Now, pagans will think that way. Hmm, can I get away with it? Probably not. If I do get caught, it'll be awful. I better not do that. Well, that does retard evil, doesn't it?

Stiff punishment would retard evil. For example, when the punishments are taken away, does evil decrease or does it increase? When Seattle stopped enforcing all misdemeanors, what happened? The state says, we're not going to use the sword to punish evil at this level.

We're not going to do that. We're going to step back and we're going to just let whatever happened happen. What happened to the city of Seattle? What is still happening? Same thing is happening in metropolises all through the left coast.

People step back and say, we're not going to enforce misdemeanors because that would be unjust. This is how crooked and perverse it is. It would be unjust for us to be just. Now, if that ain't judgment, I don't know what is.

You talk about a spirit of confusion. But we should do so not because it's simply a wrath, because of conscience sake. Because we love Jesus, because we're following him. Because when we follow Jesus, he's not leading us in opposition to God's law, the expression of God's character by which we know right from wrong, good from evil.

And so when we follow Jesus, we don't steal. This is what Paul says to the churches. Those of you who are in Christ should stop stealing. You should stop lying, bearing falsehood, providing false witness for a price.

Hey, stop that. You're following Jesus. When you follow Christ for conscience sake, you do what is good. And depending on what kind of state there is, they're either saying, oh, thank you for being a good citizen.

Or they're just saying, we don't have to worry about them people. Depending on how harried they are. Christians make the best citizens, the absolute best citizens of any nation. And any nation that doesn't have a lot of them is hugely impoverished.

And all we've got to do is read history to see what that looks like. Those who fear the Lord. I'm talking about Christendom in general. People who have had, sprinkled as a baby, and now you're Christian.

I'm talking about God-fearing people are a treasure to a nation. And you can read about that in various parts of Proverbs. Therefore, render therefore to all their due, taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

So since the state is the deacon of God, the servant of God, to punish evil, they're doing God's work in that regard. Pay taxes. Pay taxes for that. We'll come back to that in a moment. Customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

I had a couple of police officers come by the house the other day, hanging out. Of course, Becca is the hostess that she is, and so she brings out, what do we feed them, watermelon? Yeah, we gave them cups of watermelon and hung out and talked about gardening and encouraged them.

We got to pray for them and so on and teaching my children to be respectful to these police officers and so on. Honor to whom honor, fear to whom fear, reverence to whom reverence is required. Peter talks about this as well.

Honor the king, honor the person that God has in charge doing his ministry. But we do not honor those who don't deserve honor. And we do not fear those whom we should not fear. Right? Right? We don't.

Nothing in this passage is saying that we must become the champions of those who are evil. Nothing in this passage is saying that we must stand up and praise and give glory for those who are doing evil.

Nor is anything in this passage telling us that those who are evil, when they tell us to do evil things, that we must, in the name of Jesus, do that evil. Right? So nothing in this passage is saying that.

I hope that you see that. One more observation and then I'll do a little bit of Q &A. When it says, because of this you also pay taxes, go back to Genesis 9, the first time we have God talking about instituting an approach to dealing with evil, namely murder.

Prior to the flood, it says in Genesis chapter 6, the reasoning for the flood that God gives to Noah is that the earth is filled up with violence. People killing each other, murdering each other, and so on.

So God says, I'm going to fill up the earth with water. God brings vengeance. At the end of the flood, God deals with this issue by talking to Noah and saying, here's how this is going to work. If any animal kills a human being, the animal has to die.

And if any man murders someone, sheds blood, by man his blood will be shed. In Israel, we have the example of the kinsman-redeemer, the one who was responsible for the safety of his family members, and if anybody killed, murdered one of them, he was responsible under the law to execute that person, and it was approved of by the community.

If it was an accident, that person could flee to a city of refuge and stay there after a hearing by the elders of that city and stay there until the death of the high priest, and then it reset. If there was a dead body that they found, nobody knows how he died, they would measure off the closest city, they would have a hearing and try to find out what happened.

They didn't just go hang somebody for the heck of it. Well, if somebody dies, we have to hang them. They had sacrifices and they appealed to the Lord that they would not be guilty of the blood that was shed on their land.

So this develops, we see the very distinct need of this civil government, the state government, being responsible with the sword to retard evildoers, those who would harm the state, was to stop it. And God says for this reason you pay taxes.

So in this description, what would the optimal function, role, or scope be of the civil government? What would their job, singular, be? Punishing evil. That is the job, biblically, of the state. Punishing evil.

Retarding evil. The sword that they use is for that. Now, abandoning the fear of the Lord, abandoning the wisdom of Christ, what then does the state become? The state will turn evil. Evil is the idea of twisting or perverting, taking that which is good and making it into something else.

What does the state then morph into? If you don't fear God, you'll fear man. And then man, if you're fearing man and the state replaces God, the state replaces God and the state says, we'll tell you what right and wrong is now.

We're going to not only replace the church and be your morality, we're going to cast the vision of where this is all going. It's our eschatology now. We'll become the empire of the world in one version of a state, or we'll become utopia in another version.

Everybody has the same amount. Everybody has equity. But the state then casts the whole religious vision and we honor and worship the state. And then the state replaces the family. We'll provide the economy.

We'll provide you the jobs. We'll provide you the money directly. We'll provide education as well. And if we don't fear the Lord, then the state replaces the church and the family and the things that God has orchestrated for the church and family to do, and the state becomes this all-encompassing thing, which is the whole model of paganism.

We're all just parts of the one, emanations of the one. But the optimal use of the state to the glory of God is to punish evil. It's to punish evil. And so if there's any direction that we can have in terms of our citizenship, of the stewardship that God has granted to us as citizens of the counties in which we live, the cities in which we live, the state and country in which we live, we need to be promoting the state and honoring the state, whereas they're being God's minister, God's minister in punishing evil and giving honor to whom honor is due, saying this is good and this is right, and we're going to work and labor in defining good and evil based upon the Word of God, because he has the definition.

But wherein the state takes on the things that God has not granted them, we should not give honor to that. We should not say that that's a good thing. We should say, well, that's a shame. It would be a lot better if it was done in the fear of the Lord.

It would be a lot better like this. So by understanding now, again, the facts of the matter are, Paul is living in a very complex situation under Caesar in the Roman Empire, and the mess and the complexities of that empire, we live in our own mess of complexity as well.

What are we to do? We are to keep on proclaiming the standard of the Word of God by which we should measure our nation. We shouldn't measure our nation based on the standard of what we recall decades ago or measure our nation according to the standards that we find in primary source material from the 1800s or the very origins in the 1700s.

That's not the standard. The standard by which any state should be measured and should be measured is the Word of God. What does God say about civil government? How are we to honor? How are we to participate?

What's our role? How do we glorify God and be the salt of the earth in our capacity that we have? So there are limits to what the state should be doing, and even though the state is not limiting itself to what God says is to be limited, we can still give honor to whom honor is due, can still be respectful, but we're going to fear God, not man.

So that when it comes down to it, when the state oversteps and begins to try to replace the church or silence the church or end the church, we will happily and joyfully resist, not fearing man. When the state tries to take away the family, replace the family, to take children away from their family because Christian education is child abuse or whatever the reasoning is, we're going to happily and joyfully resist.

Why? Because we know how God has arranged things, so we know how to obey him, and so we're given the basic truths, the principles, the theology of a Christian resistance to the state. What are the parameters of that?

Why would we? But what is our default? And so on. So I think the Bible is pretty clear on that. There are an abundance more of passages that only serve to reinforce what we've said. I don't think it's a complex issue.

I think what gets complex, as I said, are those situations in which we have these principles, and now we say, how do we take these principles, these truths, these doctrines, and where does the rubber meet the road then?

What does that actually look like when we put this into practice? What does that actually look like? And for that, I want to take some time and prepare, and we're going to talk more about that under the heading of the tactics of Christian resistance.

What would honor Christ, what does that look like, and so on. So that will be a future study. For now, we can have a little bit of Q &A, observations from the elders, to close out our time.

Charity, Education, and the Limits of State Power

Yes. We went to Montana in 1978. The church I passed through to have yesterday's Sunday morning service. And I don't know how long I've been there, but one Sunday morning we closed. I'm still out in the hall, and a state trooper in full dress uniform comes through the front door and says, where's the pastor?

He says, right down there. He came down to me, and he said, I just want you to know that I agree with everything you said in that sermon this morning. Praise God. State trooper in Montana. Got a little bit of revival on the radio.

Praise the Lord. Yes, David.

I would say yes, but I would say yes in partnership with this. I forget who it was who said this, but those who run charity are dealing with a lot of power. It is the role of the church to be kind and compassionate and merciful, to be generous to the poor.

That role has been given to the church. First and foremost to our own household, the Bible tells us, but then also to others. And the way in which it's handled is very clear. There are principles. I mean, Paul goes into great detail.

How do you know if a widow is a widow? How do you know if this widow is someone that you should financially support as a church? Well, basically, here are the standards, and then you have to have an interview, and she has to apply for it.

To the state? No, to the church. If she doesn't meet the requirements, then here's what you tell her, and here's how she goes about her business then. The same with pure and undefiled religion is this, visiting the widows and the orphans at the time of need.

There are all sorts of instructions against partiality. Why? Because, well, we're only going to have a church where everyone has it together. So-and-so wants to join the church, but he's just a sack full of mess.

You're three gallons of mess in a two-gallon bucket. We don't want you as a part of our church. You're nothing but work. It's an impartiality. The state has no business running charity, according to the Bible.

That's God's work. God's work's in the church. That's what our job is. Families are to take care of parents. Children take care of their parents. If they cannot, they get help from the church. If they can but do not, that's church discipline.

Jesus got angry on a handful of times. He was indignant about them rejecting children. He was indignant what they did with the temple, and he was indignant. He was fiery mad about the religious Jews who, in the name of honoring God, did not take care of their parents.

So who should be? We don't need. We shouldn't have Social Security. We should fear God and take care of our parents. That's what the Bible says. That doesn't sell well. What if we can't? Well, Galatians.

There's burdens that are too big for anyone to carry. Whether it's sin or something else. Love of Christ. John says, you see your brother in need, and you have the world's goods that you can share with him, and you don't.

What kind of Christian are you? Charity belongs to the church. That's the church's job. So that happens through just the generosity of individual Christians and families as we see needs and see what we can do to help.

Be more systematic, especially when there's a need inside the church. We gear up. We have a need inside this church. Nobody as a member of our church should be going hungry. Nobody as a member of our church, if they lose a job, we're going to gang together.

How can we help this family? That's the role. And by our love for one another, they will know that we are his disciples. Okay? So that's the job of the church. What about education? That's the job of the family.

God said that very clearly in the Bible. Who's supposed to educate the kids? The parents. The mantra has been for a little while, well, it's that the parents are ultimately responsible, even though they may farm it out to others.

Well, ultimately that is the case. What if you send your son to be apprenticed by your neighbor because you want him to learn that tradecraft and that skill and so on? Obviously, you don't know it, so you have to have somebody else do that.

But responsible in a way like totally responsible. All right? So if you send your child to the government schools and they're taught five days a week, the majority of the year, abject paganism, then you're responsible for the results and what they're going through.

Now, if you do that, I don't think the percentage of young men dying on the Normandy beach is lower than the percentage of church kids surviving high school with their faith intact. I'm not sending my little ones to Normandy, so I'm definitely not sending them to government schools.

If you go to a government school as a teacher and they interview you and say, I love Jesus, Jesus is my king, and he's primary in everything that I do, they will not hire you. The teachers who are saying it today are getting fired.

This is not neutral ground, and it has never been neutral ground. That's a lie. It was different back then. Yes, it was. Because the fear of God was more available, more rampant, more out there. But it's not that way at all.

You could tell, okay, so in the days of the judges it was 80 years. Sometimes they had 80 years apiece, and then all of a sudden judgment hit with a hammer. I dare say that the earlier part of the 80 years is better than the latter part of the 80 years.

The education belongs to the parents. God says parents educate their children. So families can bind together. Josh Bullard and I were talking about this at lunch the other day, Kevin Pinwell, president of the board at CHA.

He's like, where do you see Christian schools? It's like, well, Christian schools are families who have come together to agree to oversee the education of their children. And if these families fear the Lord and they're supported by God-fearing churches, Christian education is bright.

Bright. But it has to do but the parents have to be, like, 100 thoroughly responsible for every aspect of education, which is beyond simply the classroom. So the government shouldn't have anything to do with that.

It's not a good thing. It's not a good thing. It's an aberration. It's as much as an aberration as two men saying, hey, we're married, and we're faithful to each other. Can't you get behind that? It's just a I think the two men marrying is a worse aberration, it's a greater abomination according to the Bible, but it's still taking what in the name of doing something different.

Self-Defense, Divorce, and Taxes as a Sign of Ownership

Any other questions or comments, thoughts, observations from the elders? Yes, Norm. If they're not a Christian, then obviously the church authority, we're not going to confront them, call them to repentance.

In a situation where you have, let's say, to quote one of the Puritans, if the father tries to prostitute his wife and daughters, they should fend him off with stones, self-defense. And then the civil government should get behind that and side with the ladies.

In the case of this, if you have a man who is not providing for his family, in the church, that's called worse than an unbeliever. That is church discipline under repentance, that's excommunication. In the state, if you have someone wronging another person, if you put it into biblical context, the city elders, he's like, you busted your wife's eye?

Get over here. Your eye gets busted, right? Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, and so on. And so that would be the case of the civil government has to deal with that. Now, does the government then say, your family is dissolved now.

We take you, we take your children, we dissolve you. What did they just do? The state just acted as the church, and they just did church discipline on that family, excommunicating and messing with their family and so on and so forth.

It's a perversion. If he does a crime worthy of death, he's executed and she's free. If he commits adultery, then when she divorces him and marries another, she doesn't commit adultery because he did it.

There are things that the Bible says that clarifies these things. This is something I was studying on the other day. A tax by definition, a tax on something, means that the state owns that thing. When the state began taxing your land, the state has declared ownership of that land.

Don't believe me? Don't pay the tax. They'll come take their land from you, serf. That's the truth of the matter. They own your car. Don't pay the tax on your car, license, plate, registration. They'll come take their car back from you.

They own it. One of the reasons why the church is tax-exempt, and that was fought for and enshrined and it's been defended and so on, is what? You don't own the church, state. Now there are churches that function that way.

They are state-run churches. The state says don't sing hymns, they don't sing hymns. The state says don't have communion, they don't have communion. The state says don't meet, they don't meet. The state says you can meet with 50 people but not 100, they do that.

Those are state-run churches. So they can own you in other ways. But the reason why there's no tax on the church is because the state is not to own the church. Now that is biblical, but then there's also the fact of the matter that in the Constitution, there can be no state church federally.

There can be state by state. There could be a state church of Oklahoma, an official state church of Oklahoma. That's legal according to the Constitution, but not federally. That's the way that it was set up.

So there can't be a federal tax on a church constitutionally. They would be breaking their own law if there was a federal tax on a church. But the state by state, now they could tax the churches. They could, but they would be doing so unbiblically against the law of God.

And I imagine that, I can't imagine a red state ever taxing a church. I think they know better. I'm not saying that they're holy, I'm just saying that they know their constituents. And if the blue states start taxing churches, then refugees keep on coming to the shores.

Praise the Lord. You can still move about in our country without having papers. Does that answer? Sorry, that was down and depressing, wasn't it? It's like, I thought I owned my land and my car. Hey, Jesus owns it.