Our First Studio Dividing Line: Romans 13, 1 Peter 2, and More

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line, the first studio edition of The Dividing Line.

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Yes, this is what we've been working on for quite some time. Are we finished? No, not quite. We've still got some work to do, mainly because we've just got so many things we want to try to be able to do in the future, and trying to get all this stuff to work together is a bit of a challenge.

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But anyways, we're here, and we're going to do our best. Please be patient with us.

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We had to get on our knees to beg this particular piece of equipment to work with us today, but it is here, and it is currently working, and I hope it continues working for as long as I need it to be working.

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But there may be some time where, for example, this stops talking to that, and we have to play around with it and things like that.

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Patience would be appreciated all the way around. We're going to do our best. Because we have a very, very important topic to address today, as we have announced, we're doing this a little bit backwards.

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I will admit, Sunday evening at Apologia Church, I preached on the text we're going to be looking at.

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I am not going to tell you that it was meant to be an in -depth exegesis. I even mentioned in the course of the sermon that we would be doing this program, and even in this program,

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I am not pretending this is some type of exhaustive survey of all the different issues that come up.

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Generally, though, my normal procedure would be to do this, which is dealing with the text first in its context, in its original language, and then do the application, which would be the sermon.

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But we sort of did it a little bit backwards, and so I had to sort of assume some things in the sermon that I will provide a foundation for, as we look at the text now.

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Why do it in that way? Well, part of it was just simply due to the fact that we had a very, very large group of people at our church on Sunday evening, because of the fact that we had had a large rally.

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We have been involved with helping to introduce legislation in the state of Arizona in regards to the subject of abortion, not merely the limitation of abortion, but the abolishing of human abortion in the state of Arizona.

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And so we had people visiting, literally from all over, people from Florida and the

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Northeast, and they even managed to let a few people out of California, which I thought was very kind of them to let them to cross the border.

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But we had all sorts of people visiting from all over the United States with us, and that lent itself to a fair amount of energy,

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I would say, in the meeting. And so I did go a little long.

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I will try to remember to link to the sermon along with this particular study, so you can put the two together.

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Obviously, I probably will not be quite as applicatory in the sense of pastorally saying to a group of people, this is what's coming our direction.

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These are the things we need to be dealing with in the future, things like that. But you put them together and there you go.

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I also will be posting a series, a five -part series from a dear brother in South Africa, who posted these as a series of blogs.

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I'm going to be posting them on our blog. Very, very well done, very concisely written, lots of excellent quotes on this same subject.

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And that's because I have brothers, dear brothers, dealing with this issue around the globe.

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South Africa, Germany, United Kingdom, Scotland, Ireland, all around Australia.

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Obviously, this is a global situation that we are facing. And so while we still have the opportunity to communicate with that global church,

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I want to encourage everyone to be praying for the global church and also then to take the wisdom of these people.

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None of us have faced this exact situation that we're going to be facing now in the past.

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And so none of us are going to do it all right. None of us are going to say it all right. None of us are going to have all the right answers at the exact right time.

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But there are certain things that it is very encouraging to me. I am seeing brothers around the world coming to the same conclusions from different perspectives and then discovering that these are things that have been said hundreds of years before us.

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But at the same time, I will admit that this particular text, we'll be looking at Romans chapter 13, that this particular text is one that has, in fact, been traditionally interpreted many, many times.

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What I mean by that is when the church existed in a sacral relationship to the state, when church and state were connected with one another in a particular fashion, this particular text, as well as 1

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Peter chapter 2, would be interpreted in such a way as to, in essence, demand absolute subjugation to whatever the state says because the king or those in authority were considered to have derived their law from a divine impartation of power or authority, basically.

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And so rather than seeing the law of God as that which judges what is good and evil, what is just and unjust, very often this text was used to defend unjust actions by those in authority because of that relationship of church and state.

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And in fact, I'll also try to link, as it becomes available, yesterday

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I spent about 80 minutes with Dr. Joseph Boot and the folks at Ezra Institute up in Canada discussing the exact same issues and spending a lot of time talking about church history and the development of interpretation of this text down through church history.

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So you start putting all this together, there's going to be a fair amount of material to be looking at, but we need to get to it now and need to be looking at this.

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And I want to, once again, as is always the intention in the dividing line, in preaching, teaching, wherever it is

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I happen to be doing so, provide examples of how we are supposed to be handling the text of the

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Word of God. In other words, hold me accountable. I should, as I look at this text here,

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I should be using the same hermeneutical methodology, the same interpretational methodology that I would use no matter what was up here, whether this was

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John 1 -1 in a mosque in South Africa, or whether it's

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John 17 debating a oneness proponent, or whatever it might be, whoever

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I'm dealing with, I should be utilizing the same methodology no matter what text we're looking at.

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And so, with that in mind then, I want to look at Romans chapter 13.

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And before we delve into the text completely, I would like to have us read the text.

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And maybe we can just read it from the New American Standard here and bring that up on the screen.

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And let's just read through the text itself as we get sort of the context here.

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Therefore, he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed receive condemnation upon themselves.

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For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil.

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Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same.

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For it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword for nothing, for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil.

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Wherefore, it is necessary to be in subjection not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake.

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For because of this, you also pay taxes. For rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.

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Render to all what is due them. Tax to whom taxes due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

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Now, I'm not going to stop there. I want to point one important thing out here in the context. Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled what?

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The law. Has fulfilled the law. And what is that law?

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For this, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you should not steal, you should not covet.

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What are those commandments from? They're from what's called the second tablet, the second table, I'm sorry, of the law.

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And it is the law of God found in the Ten Commandments. So the first thing that Paul says after the section we're looking at, is owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

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For this, you shall not commit adultery, you should not murder, you should not steal, you should not covet. And if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.

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This is incredibly important, in my opinion, to recognize what

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Paul does immediately upon talking about subjection to ruling authorities, is to then demonstrate that the definition of what is good and what is evil is an objective concept.

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It is an objective source. It is found in God's law. And so with that, how do we look at a text like this?

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What is the methodology that we will use to understand this text?

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If I can get it to put just Romans 13 up here. It's fighting with me about it, but that's all right. We'll just have to go with it right there.

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All right. So when you look at a text like this, there are some who would say, well, start with the commentaries, get a bunch of interpretations, and then go to the text.

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I think that's backwards. I think most people would agree that what you need to do is you need to start with the text itself.

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Obviously, that means knowing where it is in the flow of thought in the book of Romans. Obviously, we've now entered into the practical application section after the completion of all the theological material up through chapter 11.

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And then chapter 12 has been, therefore, because of all this, this is how we should then live.

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And so obviously, how Christians should interact with the state, how

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Christians should behave, have their behavior good in the midst of an evil and perverse generation, very, very important stuff.

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So as we look at the text, having just read it, there are certain questions that immediately come to our mind.

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And so let's take a look at some of the things that we want to understand.

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So first of all, what we have is a command.

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Here's your command right here. Let every person be in subjection.

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Be in subjection. So there is a command here that we need to take seriously.

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So who are we to be in subjection to? We are to be in subjection to this dative construct right here.

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Now, what do I mean by that? Well, we have two dative forms here, and it is exousiais.

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You've heard the term exousia, power, authority, those having the ability to exercise power.

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And then it is described here in the second portion. It's translated as governing.

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So governing authorities is how the New American Standard translates this at this particular point.

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Governing authorities. But this term itself actually means to have supremacy, to go beyond, to be higher than.

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And so there are some, for example, Dr. Stanley Porter, in his commentary on Paul's letters to the

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Romans, will argue, and he's not the only one, but it is to emphasize it strongly,

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I would call a minority opinion, even though the outcome is not a minority opinion,

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I don't think. But his argument is that this term here is not just governing authorities, but those that excel, those that are moral, those that are upright in their exercise of power, which is consistent with what comes afterwards.

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Because what are we told afterwards? We're told afterwards, the rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil.

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So these rulers, there's no question that not only in Romans 13, but also in 1

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Peter 2, the role of the rulers is to promote that which is good and to restrain and punish that which is evil.

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So immediately, the question that comes into everyone's mind appropriately is governing authorities, as Paul would understand it, what would those governing authorities look like?

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Because he is a Roman citizen, he is writing to both

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Roman citizens and non -Roman citizens. I mean, in Rome, he's writing the epistle to the

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Romans. They know all about who the governing authorities are. They understand who the emperor is.

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And he may be writing right toward the beginning of Nero's reign. Now Nero is going to be incredibly evil.

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You've got Nero and Caligula and eventually Commodus. There are some real bad apples, but there were some fairly decent emperors during the time period as well.

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And so you have to keep that in mind, but Nero didn't start off all that bad.

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He sort of flipped the switch and went sort of crazy a little bit later on in life, but he didn't start off necessarily all that badly.

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And so they would know who governing authorities would be. They are at the seat of this, but not everyone in the church at Rome was a

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Roman citizen. Just being in Rome didn't make you a Roman citizen. There could have been slaves. Well, we know that there were slaves in the church at this point in time.

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You could have had people who were foreign. Rome would have all sorts of people who were not Roman citizens as part of the people that are there.

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And so whatever this commandment is to be subject to, to be subject to, we have to ask the question, is this line here governing authorities?

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Is it prescriptive or descriptive? Is it prescriptive or descriptive?

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And so this has not been the first thought across most of our minds, as we've read

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Romans chapter 13 for the past couple centuries, at least in the

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United States. We have not felt the weight of a conflict between church and state the way we feel it now.

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And of course, what's going on in our day cannot be the governing way of interpreting any piece of Scripture, any place of Scripture either.

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And so we have to be very careful that just because we are facing, for example, the soon passage of the

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Equality Act and things along these lines, that we don't take that and make it the lens through which we interpret any passage of Scripture.

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We have to allow the context to speak for itself. And so does it mean governing authorities?

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Well, as we've read the rest of the text, we've seen that these authorities bear the sword.

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These authorities punish evil. These authorities are cause for fear for those who do evil things.

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And so clearly these are authorities along those lines in the sense of what we would identify with the federal government, state government, local government, even in fact, what we would identify as the police force.

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I mean, when it says bears the sword, this would probably be in sense of saying, do you not want to fear the authorities?

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Then do what is good. Okay, we immediately hear that.

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And so we get the idea. All right. Here's a description that Paul is giving to us of living under authorities who are promoting the good and punishing the evil.

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And as such, Christians are to be subject to those authorities. Christians are to demonstrate by our behavior, the consistency that is ours in regards to God's law.

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We proclaim to the world that Jesus Christ dies upon a cross because of God's broken law.

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To bear in his body the wrath due to that broken law so that we can have peace with God.

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You can't then turn around and live a profligate life. You can't then turn around and be a thief.

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You can't then turn around and live in such a way that brings dishonor upon the

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Lord Jesus and upon the law of God. And so we hear this and every one of us is thinking, but what happens when the governing authorities, those above us, are no longer simply punishing evil, but they begin to punish good?

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What if they begin to promote that which is evil? What do we do in that situation?

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And obviously we'll wait for a moment. I want to finish walking through this, but obviously there's a lot of other

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New Testament revelation that bears upon this, that touches upon this. But I want us to make sure that we see these things here.

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So we are told that there is no, now remember we had up here the authorities.

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So here it is again, there is no authority except from God.

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And that is an assertion then, obviously, that God is sovereign over all these things.

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I don't think you could really understand this outside of a proper understanding of God's sovereign decree.

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And so you have, there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God.

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Established, this is the terminology that is used. That's the same root form I was just thinking. I hadn't checked that, but the same root form is found in Acts chapter 13, actually, which is interesting.

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We can't expand upon that right now. Therefore, he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.

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So what's the first application? What's the first application that we have here?

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Paul is saying to us, Christians should be the best citizens of a good governmental system.

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A governmental system that is reflecting God's law, reflecting God's creative ordinance.

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Christians should be the first ones to acknowledge it and to be the best citizens of it. I'm reminded that when the pastor of the early reign church in China, before he was imprisoned for nine years, and that was, man,

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I was like almost two years ago now already, wasn't it? But one of the things that was in one of the letters that they sent and was published to the

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Chinese government was that we will be the best citizens you could ever have.

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As long as you recognize that your government exists under God's authority.

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And of course, that's waving the red cape in front of the proverbial bull, especially when you're talking about communists, any secularist at all.

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Because secularism, by its denial of God's role in this world, sets government up as the ultimate authority.

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So I mean, to say that you're under Christ's authority, that's what's so offensive. That's what makes these people so angry.

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And they are now the majority in our government as well. So you can sort of understand where that's going to be coming from.

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But the point is, anarchy is not a Christian virtue. Anarchy is not a

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Christian virtue. God has established government. He has established spheres of authority.

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And when there are spheres of authority established by God, and these spheres of authority are specifically rewarding the good and punishing the evil, we are to be in subjection to them.

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This is a command from Scripture. We do not have the right to go off in our own ways.

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So you'll notice it says, now this is where it gets a little bit tricky. Because I've drawn up here, and I like being able to do that.

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I like being able to make the connections and things like that. But then I have to make all that stuff disappear, or it's not going to make much sense.

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So I'm going to make it go bye -bye here real quick. And there's actually an easier way to do that, but I'm not sure what it is. And I don't want to mess everything up, because it's working right now.

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Can you tell? We're just sort of like, keep working, keep working, don't stop. It's important.

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But let's scroll down here. For rulers are not a cause.

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If you hear giggling once in a while, we do have a studio audience. And they're trying to be quiet.

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They really are. But now that I'm talking about them, they're laughing and things like that. So I'm just thankful we have extra folks here to help us get all this working.

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And in fact, behind the video board today is Matt DeJesus. And what's interesting,

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I was thinking about this on the way in. I've known Matt. You ready for this?

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I've known Matt longer than I've known Rich. That's scary, given that Rich and I are old men, and Matt's only 29.

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So it's a little bit weird along those lines. But we do have some help for us here this afternoon.

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Whatever time it is, we don't know. This is all new to us. Okay, back to what we were talking about.

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If you thought Rich was a distraction behind a window, wait till you try this.

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It's a new experience. For rulers are not a cause of fear.

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Now notice, I'm going to put the notes back up here real quick. Can I do this?

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Oh, yes, good. For rulers, yay. There we go. For rulers are not a cause of phobos, fear, to those doing good works, but to those doing evil works.

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Now please notice, there is an assumption on the part of the text that we can identify the difference between a good work and an evil work.

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And of course, I do want to give a shout out to my great Greek professor from years and years ago,

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Dr. Mike Baird, who in that class on the epistles of Paul, I was the only one left listening at this particular point in time in the lecture.

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But he very wisely and sagely said, and I've told him that I remember this, and he's like,

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I said that? Oh, okay, fine. So it obviously wasn't a real big thing for him, but it was for me. He wisely and sagely said, now in the

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Greek New Testament, the word for fear means fear.

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And then he just sort of paused. And like I said, I was the only one in the class at that point in time that was still conscious and listening.

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And it actually means something. You've heard so often that fear in the New Testament doesn't really mean fear.

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No, actually it means fear. And phobos, phobias, there's where it comes from, phobos.

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The rulers are not a reason for phobos to those doing good.

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Now, let me just stop right there. This is obviously what is called a nomic sentence.

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What's a nomic sentence? A nomic statement is a statement that is presenting a generalized truth.

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You can always disprove a certain element of it by putting it into a context that the author really wasn't intending to communicate, but it's a general statement that is true.

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And so in the context he's speaking of, rulers are not a reason for fear to those who are doing good deeds.

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How many times in so many different situations that we can consider, have rulers been a reason of fear to those who were doing good?

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Now, if that condition prevails, then God's judgment rightly comes upon those rulers for violating

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God's intended role in their life. I remember, oh, it's been over 20 years ago now, having a conversation with some people.

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And this really goes back to how 40 years ago, most of us were thinking very differently than we are now because we had peace and prosperity and ease of life.

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And so we didn't really think about these matters all that much, to be perfectly honest with you.

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But I remember in one situation, the question came up and this was back,

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I think this was during the Clinton years actually. So, but yeah, sometime 20 some odd years ago.

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The question came up in a conference. Would Bill Clinton be held accountable before God for what he was doing in regards to homosexuality and abortion?

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And the group was divided. There were some who said, yes, of course, he will be held accountable before God as a ruler in regards to the revelation of God's law.

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But there were a lot of other people who held to and continue today to hold to the idea that what you do, quote unquote, in politics is separate from the spiritual realm.

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And so rulers, very term right there, Archontes, the rulers are not really judged based upon God's law, whether things are good or evil.

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That's just the political realm. God will deal with that in a different way. The individual rulers do not have to be held accountable for how they deal with these things.

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So they continue on. Do what is good and you will have praise from the same.

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Praise from the same. Again, this has to be a gnomic statement because we know today if you do good under the

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Chinese Communist Party in China, you will not have praise from the same. You will have prison from the same.

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So how do we fit this with the experience of God's people under evil rulers is one of the main questions that we all need to be dealing with.

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So for it is a minister of God, a minister of God, a deacon, diakonos, a minister of God for you, for your good.

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Now, is that prescriptive or descriptive? Is that saying that all civil governments are the minister of God for your good?

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Just this, I'd say within the past four days, I had someone in social media.

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It's one of the reasons I stay in social media is it is a way to communicate with people around the world very quickly. It can be very depressing.

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You can't make it to be your life, but you can communicate. And someone wrote to me and said, actually my church has told us that they interpret this text when it speaks of good in the way of Romans chapter eight, when

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God works all things for your good. And I was like, well, that's interesting.

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I mean, I could see if you didn't have what came before and after I could see maybe how you could shoehorn in here, but when you've got a phrase like this, do good works, that's not the category of Romans eight.

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God works all things for your good. That is clearly a description of doing works that are pleasing before God based upon the standard of his law.

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That's a completely different category. And yet this individual is telling me, well, our church is, you know, our church is shut down and our church isn't meeting and all of it's based on this idea that this is for our good.

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And it's all because of Romans chapter 13, the state said to do it. So there we are.

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That's why there are literally millions of Christians around the world who have not partaken of the

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Lord's supper since March of 2020, maybe even earlier, if it was not their tradition to do so with regularity.

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That's not what this is talking about. That's not what this is talking about. So the properly constituted authority is the minister of God for your good.

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But if you do what is what? If you do evil, this is moral evil.

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This is that which is a violation of God's moral standards. Then FABU fear, fear.

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You should properly fear for it does not bear.

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The authority does not bear the sword for nothing.

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And the sword plainly and clearly is in reference to punishment of evil doers for it is the minister of God and Avenger who brings wrath upon the what here the one practicing evil practicing.

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That's the exact same terminology that John uses in first John for that ongoing sinfulness that practice of doing evil.

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And here is or gay wrath brings wrath upon whom upon those that are good.

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Those are seeking to do good. Those are seeking to speak the truth. Those are seeking to present the gospel.

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No, those who are doing evil who are practicing evil. We're talking about criminals here.

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Therefore, this is a description of properly functioning government.

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That's what we have in these words. That's what we have here.

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So after all my drawing, which is probably going as an easier way to do this, but actually that's pretty quick. That's actually faster than doing it the other way.

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And when you think about it, we're experimenting folks. We're learning. Well, five years from now.

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Right. Is this saying where is out? I'll have it down real well, but it'll probably take me that long.

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So wherefore it is necessary to be in subjection.

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Same command that we had back in verse one. It is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of or gay wrath, but because of the conscience, the conscience.

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Now stop a second. Is your what?

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What forms and informs your conscience? What forms and informs the conscience of a believer?

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What does Jeremiah 31 say? What's the description of the regenerate heart in Jeremiah 31?

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Repeated in Hebrews chapter eight. I will write my law upon their hearts.

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The Christian conscience is formed by God's revelation, not by the laws of a state.

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And so if it is dea, Tane soon I day sin, if it is due to conscience, then what does that tell you?

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What's what is this? See, we don't fear the wrath of man. We feel the wrath of God. God's wrath comes upon what evil doers.

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But let me tell you right now, let me give you an application right now. That hope you don't mind using a modern application right here.

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I will teach my church. I will teach my children and my children's children.

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That God made mankind in the beginning, male and female, because that's what

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Jesus taught. And it's good and it's right and it's proper. And I will teach my granddaughters that God made them women.

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And that that's their calling. And that it's good for that to be their calling.

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And they have no right to rebel against God's calling in their life.

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And I will teach my grandson that he is to be a man. And that means I will teach him that his duties are different than my granddaughter's duties before God, because God made them to differ.

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And I will have a clear conscience to do that. Even when in a matter of weeks in my culture, the law may well say,

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I am an evil doer for doing that. No act of the

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Senate and House of the Congress of the United States can change this.

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The conscience can take that which is evil and make it good or good and make it evil.

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Keep that in mind. For because of this, you also pay taxes.

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Wow, that has been, that's been pretty much a universal human experience for quite some time.

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You also pay taxes for rulers are servants of God. Now this is, this is interesting because that's sort of applied.

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It's just simply servants for they are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.

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Wait a minute, stop just a second. We do not want God's word to be made a mockery of, but we know that there are many people in positions of authority who are devoted solely to their own self -promotion, not in any way, shape or form to the service of God.

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So how can this passage be anything other than a description of what government should be, can be when

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God's law is allowed to speak, but very often is not, which leads to many other difficult things.

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Therefore render to all what is due to them, tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

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We, the beauty of the Christian gospel is that the, the body of Christ that is formed, when

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God calls his elect people out of men from every tribe, tongue, people and nation can exist in every culture. But if it exists in every culture, it then calls every culture to Christ likeness.

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So I've used as an example before, and I think it is an appropriate example. I've used as example before, what happened when the

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English went into India. And of course today that is considered to be colonization is considered to be terrible and horrible and all the rest of that stuff.

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And I am not for a second defending everything that England did as a colonizing power at all.

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I mean, all the stuff they stole and everything else. No, but when they went into India and they stopped the practice of sette, the burning of the widow on the funeral pyre of her dead husband, that was a good and proper and right thing.

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Sadly, we now live in a day where there are many people that say, that was terrible. That was colonization. Oh, terrible.

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No, it was a good thing. It's a proper thing. It's the right thing. Should not be ashamed of that in any way, shape or form.

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But then as I mentioned, I just want to emphasize this one more time. Normally we stop at verse seven, but notice,

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Oh, nothing to anyone except to love one another for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

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That is not some, see this is one of the problems that we have when we divide the Bible up into chapters and verses.

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Is we figure we're done with that paragraph. We can now move on. It's like we're reading a textbook in accounting and you move to the next paragraph.

42:47

It's on a totally different subject. Now you have to worry about the relationship. That's not how these letters were written. And so I think it's very important to recognize that right after talking about how government should function,

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Paul says, Oh, nothing to anyone except to love one another for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law, the law.

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Now that's extremely important to recognize. Here we have the one loving the, the, the heteron, the neighbor has fulfilled the namas, but we're not in the law.

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We're under grace, different context, different issue. The desire of the believer,

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Jesus fulfills, he fulfills that law. Therefore we are to honor that law, say that it is good.

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And what's the best way to do that? Love your neighbor, love the heteros, the other, the one loving present tense participle.

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The one loving is the one that has fulfilled the law. And that is the overarching application should then bring into whatever governmental situation you're dealing with.

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Even when you're dealing with governmental situations that are not fulfilling

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God's commands for how they should be ruling. And we are to inform them with grace, but without compromise that they will be judged by God.

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Keep that in mind, keep that in mind. And if you're going to say, well, that namas, that that law is something else.

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What comes, what comes afterwards? This. Ufunyusis, uklepsis, that's, that's the second table of law.

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That's the, the law of how we are to relate to those around us straight from the 10 commandments.

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And so very, very clear, very, very powerful and important aspect of what we have here.

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Now I didn't have time to do this in, in my sermon, unfortunately.

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But I do want to at least briefly look at first Peter chapter two as well. I realize

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I'm going rather long, but there you go. First Peter chapter two, beginning of verse 13.

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Now, again, I, I, I love context. Context is important thing before we get to 13, submit yourselves to the

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Lord's sake to every human institution, verse 12, keep your behavior excellent among the

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Gentiles. And the thing in which you are, they slander you as evil doers, as evil doers.

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They may on account of your good deeds, they observe them glorify God in the day of visitation.

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So please notice right here, doers of evil. And then we have good works.

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Just as we had in Romans chapter 13, the question of the definition of good and evil, right and wrong.

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What is morally good? What is morally evil is right in the context itself.

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And part of Peter's exhortation is going to be, you're going to experience persecution.

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You're going to be slandered. Katalaleo, to speak against, slander.

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You're going to be slandered. And so if they're going to accuse you of evil doing, your life should be a life of doing good.

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Now, what if you're in a situation where a culture has been so given over by God to evil, the majority of people decide that that which is good is actually evil and that which is evil is actually good.

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Then you have to entrust yourself completely to God to vindicate you. But you don't change your standards just because of that.

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That would be, that'd be foolish. So here's the section. Verse 13.

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Submit yourselves. I want to get verse 13 up there. There we go. Close enough.

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Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution. And when he says every human institution, he then gets a little bit more specific, whether to a king as the one in authority.

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So the basal use, the king as the one having authority, same word group that we had in Romans chapter 13, or to governors, so derivative authority, as sent by him for what?

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The punishment of evil doers and the praise of those who do right.

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So the punishment of evil doers, we had doing good up above, right?

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We had good works up here. Now we have evil doers.

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And to the praise of Agatha Poyon, those who are doing good.

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Same context as Romans 13. Same idea as in Romans chapter 13.

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So when we talk about subjection, we're talking about subjection to those who are using

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God's standard of good and evil and therefore no anarchy, nothing like it whatsoever.

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It's the exact same context. Punishment based upon what? God's law revealing what is evil and what is good.

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Now, here's a key. And this could be interesting, but need to do it because this is the other thing that we want to utilize this for.

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I'm going to put this up here for a moment and I'm going to use this part of the board to do some writing.

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So here is what we must be thinking about, okay?

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Number one issue. Who defines good and fall over himself?

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That would be great. That would be great on YouTube. Very first program, right over it, crash.

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It's almost happened twice already. So it will eventually happen and that'll be our most watched video ever.

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It's great. Who defines good and evil? Who defines good and evil?

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Are we to believe? Is there any reason for us to believe that either

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Paul or Peter believed that the actions of King's governors are to be taken by Christians as the ultimate determiner of good and evil?

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Do we have any reason to believe that? Well, let me give you an example in Peter's life that I think very clearly demonstrates the answer.

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Look at Acts chapter 13. We've discussed this before, but let me just remind you if you haven't seen it.

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In Acts chapter 13, Herod arrests Peter and he's already taken care of James and so he sees that that was very popular with the

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Jews and so he's going to execute Peter as well. What happens?

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God supernaturally delivers Peter from prison.

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Basically, angel comes. It's a supernatural situation. I mean, when chains fall off of hands, that's a supernatural situation.

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When Roman guards don't see what's going on, when they're prisoners walking away and doors are opening on their own, supernatural situation.

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So there's a supernatural deliverance of a real person out of a real Roman prison.

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He is led down the street. The angel leaves him there. He goes to where he knows the

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Christians are going to be meeting. We have the funny story of Rhoda and Peter knocking on the door.

51:54

This is one of my favorite biblical stories. It really, really is, which is why I don't suggest naming any of your kids

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Rhoda, but I mean, Rhoda, God bless Rhoda. I'm looking forward to meeting Rhoda someday and I'm not sure that she ever found out that her name was put in scripture in this way, you know, but she leaves

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Peter standing outside, doesn't open the door, runs inside. You know,

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Peter's angel is at the door and they finally let Peter in. What does Peter do? Because if a common interpretation of Peter's own writings in 1

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Peter 2 is that we are to be subject to every human institution, a human institution had determined that Peter needed to be in jail and God had just delivered him from jail and Peter does not go,

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Lord, you know, I had already started composing my first epistle in my mind and I'm going to tell everybody they need to be in subjection to every human institution.

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So I'm just going to go back and surrender myself and besides, everybody knows that if I'm not there in the morning, those poor guards, they're toast, they're going to be dead and they were, by the way, they were executed.

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Is that what Peter did? No, Peter leaves a message for James and hot foots it out of there because he knows

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God has delivered him. That means God has other purposes and God's purposes are more important than an evil ruler's purposes.

53:37

So whatever you do with what 1 Peter 2 says, remember how Peter dealt with this.

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Remember how Peter dealt with this situation and remember that the end of Acts 13,

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Herod himself, a king, yeah, king, same term, king. A king,

53:58

God strikes him dead. Worms eat him.

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Doesn't sound like a good way to go. I don't know about you. I'm not really sure exactly how it happened, but it was probably not pleasant, probably not pleasant at all.

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So here's the point. In all of Paul's writings, in all of Peter's writings, in all the rest of the

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New Testament, what is the ultimate source of knowing what is good and evil?

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It is God in creation and in special revelation in his law.

54:39

Absolutely, positively, no question about it. None. So what has been the presupposition in most of the traditional interpretation of Romans 13 and 1

54:49

Peter 2? There has been this subtle insertion of a presuppositional idea that if the government says it is agathos, then it's agathos.

55:03

That's not what either text is saying. Either text is saying, honor the government that promotes the agathos, the good, and that punishes the kakos, the evil, but nowhere are they saying it is government's role to determine what is agathos and kakos.

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So there has been a fundamental misinterpretation at that point, and a lot of it came from those times when that sacral relationship between church and state existed, and it was the king's, the king didn't mind if people assumed that it worked that way.

55:48

I mentioned in the sermon Sunday night, a little something I had picked up from Gary DeMar that I was unaware of, but I knew, everybody knows, that King James hated the

56:01

Geneva Bible, the 1559 Geneva Bible. The primary reason was it had all these notes, and these notes talked about how kings were under the authority of God's rule and God's law, and it even described people as tyrants, tyrants.

56:21

It's interesting, if you look up the word tyrant in the

56:26

King James Bible, it won't appear. The king wouldn't allow them to use the term tyrant, even though there are places where in other translations it does appear.

56:36

They would not allow the utilization of that term in the King James Version of the Bible for that reason, for that very reason.

56:43

And so it is very plain that God's law defines good and evil, and that government, therefore, is subject thereto.

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And one of the main reasons for that is that everyone in a government is created in the image of God, and therefore is subject to what

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God says in his law. So here you have two texts, and now the tough question comes.

57:32

Now the tough question comes. What happens, what happens when government abandons any meaningful commitment to even a theistic worldview and becomes a promoter of evil?

58:01

What is the Christian's duty? That's the first thing. You can pretty much see what my answer already is going to be to that, but here's where it gets even more difficult, and this is where we're having so much division today in the church.

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What about those issues and those topics that are not a direct discussion of what is good and evil?

58:31

There's terminology. I just got dizzy watching the,

58:39

I told you we just want you to be patient with us. We're working on, we're figuring stuff out.

58:44

I don't know about the rest of you, but I think that what I was able to just do right now, you can see the benefit of it in the future, in being able to, can you imagine once I can put, and I can put the textual data up there.

59:01

I can put manuscripts up there. It's going to be great. I can put the papyri up there and circle stuff in the papyri, and it's going to be wonderful.

59:11

It's really, really great, but anyway, there I am. Hello. See, what's weird is

59:18

I can see myself, but I'm over here, and so if I look over to see me, then I'm over there, and that camera's over there, and then there's another camera over there, and then there's another camera over there, and in fact, before we make the application part here, guys, can one go wide so people can see?

59:38

Okay, so here you're getting a little idea. We have a podium that will go here. The problem is it's about four inches taller than I am, and so we've got to cut it down so you can even see me, but it's a beautiful podium, handmade.

59:54

It's going to be glorious. It's in the other room right now, but that's going to be over here. I'm just using this right now to hold my stuff here, but you've seen us using the flipboard here.

01:00:05

That is going to be my main teaching tool. I'm really excited to use that. You may ask, well, why have a big old monitor over on the other side?

01:00:11

That's where we will have, like for example, I want to have Tom Buck on. I'm going to talk about Tom here in a few minutes to talk about the authorship of Hebrews.

01:00:21

Brother Stephen we want to have on to talk about all sorts of other things, and so when we do debates, the other person's going to be over there, and if you put another person over there on a

01:00:36

Zoom shot or something like that, they're almost going to be the same size as me because that's a big screen, and so when we have debates, then that's where the other person's going to be, and then we can have the presentations, the

01:00:50

PowerPoint, keynote presentation, things like that in between, and there's actually enough room that we could probably put,

01:01:00

I don't know, maybe as many as 10 people or so over toward camera one there, and we could do the

01:01:06

Ligonier. There's a few heads in the shot type of situation here in the room, but you should have seen the room before we started working on it, and you can see that there's been a lot of work done, and I will mention that behind the pretty blue thing here is actually a screen that we can use to put other backgrounds in and things like that, so we'll put, yeah, no,

01:01:34

Tom's not going to go on that. Giant Tom, big, big Tom. Well, Tom is big, but he's not that big, and he's a big

01:01:44

Tennessee boy, so our deepest appreciations to all of you, and, of course, you can't see back to the back the equipment back there and all the stuff that's being hooked together to make the cameras work and the remote -control cameras and all the rest of that kind of stuff that we're doing, so our deep appreciation to everyone who has obviously,

01:02:08

Rich has worked and worked and worked, and Matt has been of great help to us and assistance to us in getting all this stuff put together, and so we really do appreciate everyone who's made this possible, and there's more to come, more things that we...

01:02:22

We got to get this working first, then we can start making it more and more complicated, and then when it crashes, it'll just burn to the ground because the more complicated it gets, the more difficult it becomes.

01:02:36

Anyways, all right, let's make an application, and it's the application that everyone's thinking about and everyone's arguing about.

01:02:47

It's dividing churches, and it is masks, masks.

01:02:57

There's nothing about masks in Scripture. I don't think you should go to the section about seeing

01:03:04

God with unveiled face. The veil that Moses wore was not a mask.

01:03:10

It had nothing to do with disease. It had to do with hiding his face from the glory that he had sort of been shaken off on him, you might say, absorbed from being in the presence of God.

01:03:26

Scriptures never address the issues of pandemics as we have today.

01:03:34

The Scripture does address disease. The Scripture addresses quarantine.

01:03:43

Those who are to be quarantined are those who are sick. It is appropriate to social distance in that sense.

01:03:54

There is no basis for accusing people of being sick until they are, but the idea specifically of masks is not addressed in Scripture, and so a lot of people think it's simply a matter of freedom to be determined by individual fellowships and churches.

01:04:19

Okay, then you have the reality of mandates from the government where the government now says, well, you may have, well, we don't normally have this many, but we have between 650 and 700 people in our service on Sunday.

01:04:43

You may have 700 people in your church, but you can only have 100 meet at any given time, and you all have to wear masks, and you cannot sing.

01:05:00

Now, I know all of the alleged medical reasons why this type of argumentation has been made of late.

01:05:12

I do. I'm not proclaiming myself a medical expert, but I did finish all the work for a

01:05:19

Bachelor of Science degree in biology, and I've kept reading in that field, and I can read technical papers and understand what they're talking about.

01:05:28

I have the vocabulary, and so I am aware of the argumentation, but here's the situation.

01:05:38

What is the relationship between masks in Romans chapter 13 and government mandates?

01:05:46

Now, I can tell you that in our fellowship, we have certainly not prohibited anyone from wearing a mask.

01:05:56

If someone wants to wear a mask, they can wear a mask. If that makes them feel better, that's fine, but likewise, we have not mandated masks.

01:06:08

We have left it up to the individuals to self -govern. Pretty much the only major things that we have done since March, for a period of time, we did not pass the offering plate, and we continue to, in our fellowship, we come forward to receive the bread and the wine and partake of it in that way.

01:06:35

I think that's a beautiful thing. Why? Because you're actively proclaiming your faith.

01:06:43

We're told in Scripture, we're proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. Well, when I go forward to receive the bread and the wine,

01:06:51

I am actively doing so. I think there's something beautiful about that. It's new in my experience, in my history.

01:06:59

You had always sat there, and it was given to you, passed down the road. I like going forward.

01:07:05

I like this way of doing it. What we do is we have some of the elders or normally some of the deacons in the back with hand sanitizer.

01:07:15

And so we take advantage of that rather modern innovation. And so before you come forward, you've gotten your hands sanitized, and so there you go.

01:07:27

Those are really the only things we've done. For a while, we stopped coming forward during the last song of the service, which had been our tradition, but we've begun doing that again.

01:07:44

There has been no social distancing in the sense of six feet or three and a half feet or four and a half feet. Depends on which country you're in as to what the number is.

01:07:51

That's a magical number. It just sort of popped out of the air. We've not done any of that. And in fact, the building we're renting is a little bit smaller than what we need.

01:08:01

And so there you go. There's where we have come down. And so people would say, well, no, if you're not masking, you're not showing love for neighbor.

01:08:11

And didn't you have love for neighbor in Romans 13? Is that not loving neighbor?

01:08:19

Okay. Let's remember a few things. I'm going to see if this works.

01:08:24

I'm not sure if it's going to. I noticed that it's not showing that there, but maybe when

01:08:31

I expand it, it will pull it back up. I have,

01:08:37

I think right here, and let me see if I can pull this up. This is going to be tricky.

01:08:44

We're doing tech. Trying to figure out how to break it.

01:08:50

Yes. And yeah, you know what?

01:08:58

That might do it. Nope. I think, what did you say?

01:09:05

I just broke it? I didn't want to do that? Hold on a second. It still says it's connected.

01:09:15

Aha, watch this. Watch this. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And let's see if I can do it.

01:09:28

Well, maybe. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. We are happy with ourselves.

01:09:34

Yes. You can hear Rich laughing at me more often in here than you can through the window, so just keep that in mind.

01:09:43

They can hear you. Here is Dr. Fauci back less than a year ago,

01:09:52

March of 2020. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask, infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told, 60

01:09:58

Minutes on March 8th, 2020. And now, this is January 25th, so yesterday,

01:10:06

Dr. Fauci, double masking makes common sense and is likely more effective. All right.

01:10:12

Well, which one is it? Well, some people would say, well, all the science has changed. No, the science hasn't changed.

01:10:18

In fact, every single study I've seen that's actually a peer -reviewed published study has established the same thing that was true back in March and that all these people knew back in March.

01:10:31

All right. So the position that we have taken in regards to this subject is basically based upon the same principle enunciated by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn years ago when he was about to get kicked out of the

01:10:48

Soviet Union. Live not by lies. Live not by lies.

01:10:57

That is, all the science that I've been able to find, and I've had a number of people who've tried to challenge me on this, and when

01:11:03

I've pushed on them, they've just not been able to push back. All the science I've seen says that if you have an

01:11:13

N95 mask fitted for you together with other

01:11:19

PPE, such as face shields, booties, gowns, and gloves, together these things can be helpful for individuals in the medical context to not only not spread, but to not have splatter, so on and so forth, in the communication of disease, and these things need to be changed regularly.

01:11:48

But that the utilization of non -medical grade materials, non -N95, cotton masks, is not only ineffective, it actually reverses and can be damaging to the individual engaging in the behavior.

01:12:09

We've all seen it. Every single one of us has seen it. You've seen the people with the mask down here, down here, gaps on the side.

01:12:18

Those things are completely ineffective. They're doing nothing other than catching bacteria and allowing you to then, when you touch it all the time, re -ingest it.

01:12:29

They're doing nothing for you whatsoever. They're not protecting you. They're not protecting anybody else.

01:12:36

We have medical studies, the CDC, in May of 2020, published an article demonstrating that cotton masks over against the

01:12:48

N95, cotton masks had a 97 % penetration rate, and that those who wore cotton masks had a 40 % higher infection rate than the control group.

01:13:01

And then we had the wonderful marine experiment, which I thought was just great.

01:13:08

If anything illustrates what's going on, this does. The marines, over 1 ,000 of them, volunteer, and they wipe everything down, and they disinfect everything, and they had marine drill sergeants.

01:13:24

They brought Sergeant Carter back from the dead. I appreciate the laughter, guys.

01:13:32

You don't have to just snort. You can go ahead and laugh. It's all right. We've got the live studio audience now. They brought him back from the dead to make sure that these volunteers are doing everything they're supposed to do, and they double -masked them.

01:13:47

They double -masked them, just like what you've got now.

01:13:53

Double -masked them. Military discipline. The marines were crying out loud.

01:14:01

And the group that they studied with the double -mask had a slightly higher infection rate than the control group once again.

01:14:12

Live not by lies. These things don't do what they're advertised to do, and in fact, there's a lot of people who believe that they have greatly deleterious effects as well.

01:14:27

And so the question really isn't what is the relationship of church and state here.

01:14:32

The question is what is a lie? What if they start saying wear two masks?

01:14:39

There are already asthmatics that are suffering greatly because let's be honest, even though you're supposed to have medical exemptions, no one cares.

01:14:51

No one cares a bit about medical exemptions. What are you supposed to do? Put the asthmatic in two masks?

01:14:57

It's a good way to kill them. They can't survive that. What if they say you need three?

01:15:03

We literally have situations right now where people are saying, even after you get these new vaccines, you'll still have to wear a mask and still have social distance.

01:15:15

So the question then becomes when are you living according to a lie? When does this simply become a sign of your submission?

01:15:24

And what's next? Well, we all know what's next, don't we? Everyone listening to me knows what's next.

01:15:31

Anyone with, well, okay, I'll take that back. I think anyone in their heart knows what's next, but there are a lot of people who are unwilling to follow the logic to its conclusion.

01:15:44

You know that vaccinations will be made mandatory. They'll be mandatory for travel.

01:15:51

They'll be mandatory for schools. They'll be mandatory for employment. They'll be mandatory to do anything in culture.

01:15:58

And there are already a number of Western states and Western countries that have made it very clear that the police can vaccinate you, that they can force these untested, no ability to know what they're going to do in two years or five years, genetically engineered vaccines into your body.

01:16:23

That's what'll come next. What'll come after that? Well, they won't want to do anything after that.

01:16:30

Really? When do you say no to tyranny?

01:16:37

When do you say no to tyrants? Is it a good thing to force people to ingest into their bodies substances that they in their conscience do not believe to be good for them?

01:16:56

That they have absolutely firm and proper reason to say this is not good for me.

01:17:06

I am unconvinced in my conscience that this is safe. That's what's next.

01:17:15

And once you collapse on that, all of your autonomy is done. And I mean autonomy in the good sense of liberty.

01:17:23

Autonomy to do what's right before God, to act on the basis of his revelation. So the question is, how often has this subject been treated as part of the overall movement that we are observing?

01:17:40

And how often has it been cut off and it's only this issue over here.

01:17:46

It's just this masking issue. It's not about what the government's doing in any place else.

01:17:51

We don't have to consider that. No, we do have to, if we're wise, consider are these mandates part of an overall demand upon Christian people to compromise their principles in many areas?

01:18:08

And that's where we've come down. That's where we've come down. I think time is going to demonstrate that we have only begun this process.

01:18:17

We have only started in regards to this process. So there's much more I could say about that.

01:18:22

I've thought about doing an entire show where we bring back all the data and all the articles and go back over all of these things.

01:18:31

But to be honest with you, right here. Oh, hello. I even made it bigger.

01:18:38

We're slowly learning. Well, I'll learn. I wonder if I can. Oh, look at that.

01:18:43

Oh, yes. So much fun. Double masking makes common sense and is likely more effective.

01:18:49

We didn't know that in March. We didn't know that three months ago. What about the fact that makes it harder to breathe?

01:19:00

What about any of this stuff? A lot of us are going, hey, come on, guys.

01:19:07

This is becoming pretty obvious that you all seem to be making this up as you're going along. Making this up as you're going along.

01:19:13

Okay. Now, let me look at the time here.

01:19:26

And oh, goodness. All right. I'll be quick, okay? I will try to be quick. I'm sorry. No, not so much.

01:19:33

But I will try to be quick here. I really will. And I can't put this up on the screen, so we won't have to worry about that.

01:19:40

I do want to. I need to. And we're probably going to be doing another program fairly quickly.

01:19:48

Maybe not in here, but fairly quickly. I want to make some comment on the article that was published.

01:20:01

SBC Pastor calls Vice President Kamala Harris a Jezebel two days after inauguration.

01:20:08

This is by Mark Wingfield yesterday in, what is this called?

01:20:15

Baptist Press? Was that what it was? And I would like to read you what

01:20:23

Tom Buck actually wrote, just so you have an idea of just how outrageous this entire attack on Pastor Buck has been.

01:20:36

Here's what Tom wrote. I can't imagine any truly God -fearing

01:20:41

Israelite who would have wanted their daughters to view Jezebel as an inspirational role model because she was a woman in power.

01:20:50

Okay? Let me read it again. I can't imagine any truly God -fearing

01:20:56

Israelite who would have wanted their daughters to view Jezebel as an inspirational role model because she was a woman in power.

01:21:01

That is in the context of Southern Baptists actually promoting the idea of looking at Kamala Harris as a role model because she is a woman in power.

01:21:15

So what he does is he brings from Scripture an example of a woman in power and says the

01:21:24

Israelites would not have looked to her even though she's a woman in power as an example.

01:21:30

Why? Because of her moral character. We know that she was a very evil woman.

01:21:41

And here's what you can't say today. You see, the Bible used to make those kinds of moral judgments.

01:21:49

We're not allowed to do that anymore. When Kamala Harris, as Attorney General of the

01:21:56

State of California, prosecutes

01:22:02

Mr. Daleiden and the people who caught Planned Parenthood selling baby parts, a scandal in the history of our nation because nothing was done about it.

01:22:17

And why was nothing done about it? Because Planned Parenthood knows where all the skeletons are buried. They own so many of our politicians that they are above the law and they can literally sell body parts and get away with it.

01:22:35

It is the most ghoulish, evil, trafficking in innocent blood the world has ever seen.

01:22:46

Right here amongst us. And it was Kamala Harris who is the biggest supporter of Planned Parenthood ever.

01:22:57

As far as legislation in 2018 and 2019, since Kamala Harris came to the

01:23:04

Senate, for whatever that time period was, any legislation had any moral element to it whatsoever.

01:23:14

This is a woman who has demonstrated a worldview that from a biblical perspective is absolutely debauched.

01:23:23

It is evil on its maximum level.

01:23:31

And so we have a woman who has promoted abortion, opposed any limitation whatsoever to the point of even opposing the bill that would have protected children that are born alive from a botched abortion.

01:23:49

They are to be left to die on a cold metal plate. And that's perfectly fine in Kamala Harris's world.

01:23:57

I'm not sure Jezebel was that deeply involved in evil.

01:24:06

This is a woman who has agreed that the Equality Act, the perversion of God's gift of gender, is a good thing.

01:24:18

And so here you have a Southern Baptist pastor who would dare to say dare to draw from a biblical example, a historical reality of who

01:24:33

Jezebel was and say, I don't think the Israelites would have pointed to her as an example just because she's a woman in a place of power.

01:24:43

In other words, you have to look at the morality of these individuals and the worldview they're promoting.

01:24:52

That's the issue. Jezebel brought idolatry into Israel. Kamala Harris has brought idolatry into the leadership of the

01:25:03

United States of America. We can't say that. It's racist to say that.

01:25:09

Evidently, there's something in history. There's something in the black community about Jezebel.

01:25:18

I don't know what it is. But evidently, if you call somebody Jezebel, that has some meaning amongst black people.

01:25:26

So Tom Buck is supposed to evidently be running that kind of a filter over the

01:25:32

Bible because his point was plain. His application was clear. That it is, he and I together are astonished at men who stand behind a pulpit in a

01:25:51

Baptist church who cannot identify the evil of the worldview that is being promoted at the highest levels of government.

01:26:04

We are astonished that people, hey, look, people say, well, yeah, well, well,

01:26:10

Trump's wife, there's pictures of her nude. Yeah, I know. And Trump was interviewed in Playboy magazine.

01:26:19

And I've said, I was concerned. I was honestly concerned that if the

01:26:25

Equality Act passed and came to Trump, because boy, there are some quote unquote

01:26:31

Republicans in the Senate that, you know, whatever. I was concerned he might sign it because I felt he was very weak in that area of worldview.

01:26:47

But the proof's in the pudding. Who did he nominate to the

01:26:52

Supreme Court? Who did he put on the Supreme Court? Who did he nominate as judges?

01:26:59

People who passed a litmus test to make sure to profane gender and profane marriage and profane sexuality or the opposite?

01:27:10

The opposite. And people can't see that? They can't recognize that?

01:27:18

I'm astonished. I'm astonished. Now, I looked at the feed of the author of this particular article.

01:27:29

And honestly, it's like a New York Times article except meant for Baptists, liberal

01:27:35

Baptists anyways, okay? And so it's not fair. It's a hit piece.

01:27:43

And we're all going to get hit with these hit pieces. With what we're doing here in Arizona right now, we're getting hit with the hit pieces already.

01:27:51

What do you expect? What do you expect? We do not live in a land any longer that has a free press.

01:27:57

There's no question about that. Journalism is dead, deader than the proverbial doornail. But to see people, and let me point something out because it's mentioned in the article, and I'll finish with this.

01:28:10

Dwight McKissick, he said in the article, will not have fellowship with Tom Buck any longer because of what he said.

01:28:24

Think about that. Remember what he said? Don't think the people of Israel would look to Jezebel just because she was a woman in a position of power because being a woman in a position of power is not as important as the character you bring.

01:28:43

I won't have fellowship with you. Why? Because of a narrative, a racially motivated narrative.

01:28:54

That's all there is to it. That's all there is to it. Where is the division coming from?

01:29:01

Who has changed? That perspective that Tom expressed would not have so much as he probably wouldn't have gotten a retweet 20 years ago.

01:29:14

But now you write articles about it. Pretty amazing. Pretty amazing.

01:29:20

Well, there you go, folks. We're just starting. We're just learning. Thank you for being patient with us.

01:29:28

I hope that that study was useful. There's much more to be said. As I said, I'm going to be posting an excellent series of blog articles on that subject.

01:29:37

It'll expand, provide more commentary, together with this, together with the sermon. Hopefully, we'll give you some useful information to be utilizing and to be considering as we look to the future and how the church is to interact with a state that very clearly, because of its secular foundations, is setting itself up really for its own self -destruction because it's trying to create a world that isn't

01:30:06

God's world. And that world doesn't exist. The world that exists, God made it.