August 29, 2023 Show with David Reece on “A Government Appointed by Christ”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 29th day of August 2023.

Just a brief update on my older brother, Andy, who many of you have been praying for, who has a life -threatening blood contamination known as sepsis.

The antibiotic treatments still appear to be holding the sepsis at bay.

There is no apparent decline in his health. I really appreciate your continued prayers, not only for him physically, but infinitely more important, that you pray for a clear and convincing testimony of trust in Christ.

He has made professions for decades, but they have never been totally reliable, and I would love to have a peace of heart and mind if the

Lord were to take him into eternity sometime soon, I would love to have the peace of mind knowing that that eternity is being spent with Christ Jesus.

So I appreciate your continued prayers. I thank the hundreds of you who have been emailing me and communicating with me on social media assuring me that you are praying for Andy.

Please continue to do so. I'm thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest,

David Reese, pastor of Puritan Reform Church of Phoenix, Arizona. He's also the owner of quite a fascinating company called

Armored Republic, and today we're going to be discussing a government appointed by Christ, and that is a government in every sphere of life.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor David Reese. Chris, it's an honor to be here.

Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to discussing the Lordship of Christ in every aspect of life.

And tell our listeners, for the sake of those who are unfamiliar with you, they missed your last interview with me on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Tell our listeners about Puritan Reform Church in Phoenix, Arizona. Puritan Reform Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

We have the name Puritan, and Puritans, of course, are very concerned to see Scripture as the sole authority to have the doctrine be pure according to the

Word of God, to have the worship of the church be pure, and to be able to demonstrate every element of worship as being appointed by God, and to make sure to seek to apply everything that God has commanded in the worship.

And then the same with government. And so the doctrine, worship, and government of the church, we seek to be very careful to apply sola scriptura to all of those things.

And we are concerned to make sure that the gospel is proclaimed, that men would know that Christ has come to pay for the sins of his elect, and that all those who believe their gospel have their sins paid for by Christ, and have his righteousness imputed to them.

And so we want to make sure that that's broadly taught, and then bring disciples in, and to disciple them to obey everything that Christ has commanded.

We all know that we are breakers of his law, but we are made righteous by his covering, his righteousness imputed to us, and yet we also, knowing that we've received the grace of the gospel, want to, out of gratitude, do good works, according to his law, for the glory of his name.

And so that's what we're concerned about. And yeah, we meet at, basically, we're in Northern, and the 51 are connected.

You can check out our website, which is PuritanPHX .com, if anybody's interested in worshiping with us in Phoenix, Arizona.

And your congregation is a Presbyterian congregation, am I right? That is correct.

Yes. And I'm delighted that we have at least two Presbyterian churches advertising on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, the other one being

Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, hosted by Dr.

Joseph C. Moorcraft III, who I also love to interview. And so, keep that website on hand, folks,

PuritanPHX .com, if you are planning to visit Phoenix, Arizona, or perhaps you have family, friends, and loved ones who live there.

That's PuritanPHX .com, and you'll be hearing the commercials later on in the broadcast with more details on this fine congregation.

I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away, if they'd like to send in questions of their own about our subject today.

It's ChrisArnzen, at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N, gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you disagree with your own church on something we are discussing today, and you don't want to draw identity to yourself.

Perhaps you're even the pastor. You have a disagreement with your fellow elders or your denomination about something we are addressing.

Well, we would definitely understand that those would be reasons that you would be compelled to remain anonymous.

In fact, we would insist that you remain anonymous if you're discussing a specific church. But if it's a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

This concept of a government appointed by Christ in every sphere of Christian life is interesting.

You would think that that would be a no -brainer, but there seems to be a skittishness of even evangelical born -again believers when you combine the words government and by Christ.

But if you could give us an outline of exactly what you want to speak about today. Absolutely.

So the reality is that the law of God is a grant of authority. When God commands us to do something, he's authorizing us to do it.

And so we think about this. God is the maker of all things. He owns everything. And so he has to give us the right to use his stuff, otherwise we're trespassing on his property.

And that includes our own bodies, that includes our own minds. We have to know what it is that we're supposed to do.

So God tells us the purpose of life, which is to glorify him. He commands us to exercise dominion over the world and over the animals and the plants.

And we're told that we have authority in those grants. So, OK, we know what the goal is for glorifying

God. We know the things that we've been given authority over. And then he gives us particular commandments to know what to do, how to govern well.

We govern our own bodies, but we're not allowed to kill ourselves. The sixth commandment forbids that.

And so the law of God doesn't just give us a list of things that we're forbidden to do. It also gives us commandments positively that we are required to fulfill.

Now, we cannot fulfill those commandments perfectly in ourselves. That's why we need

Christ. But we've been saved by Christ from sin so that we can do good works.

And so in being saved from sin, in order to do righteousness, we need to know what is it we're saved to do.

And so being saved to do these things, we look to the law of God and it teaches us what we're supposed to use all of our resources for.

Now, God has organized life into four spheres of authority, four spheres of responsibility.

And this really simplifies things. People look around and you kind of wonder, what is life about? Where should

I be giving my time? The four places where we have principal responsibility are as individuals to govern ourselves.

We need to govern our minds well and our bodies well. We need to govern our households.

And we think about the household relationship. And that includes the husband or father of the house, the mother, the wife of the house.

And we also think about children and then servants and the idea of businesses and estate building.

So that's all under the household. We look at the church and what it's supposed to do. And we think about the state.

And those four spheres are where our duties are principally to reside. Everything else is a voluntary relationship.

But you are stuck with yourself. You're stuck with your household. You're stuck with your church. And you're stuck with your state.

Those are all covenant institutions. And we have an obligation to deal with them according to the law.

Now, in voluntary agreements, you still have to treat people according to the law. But you're not obligated to enter into any particular contract.

The covenant institutions, we can't get away from it. You can't get away from the fact that you are born as an individual before God.

You have to deal with the household you're born into. And church and state are both institutions given authority by God.

And so as we think about those institutions, each of them have law order from God about how they're to be used.

So if you study the law of God, it teaches you how to govern yourself. And if you study the law of God, it teaches you how to govern a household.

And we think about when we move beyond the individual, we have the fifth commandment, which serves as a head of doctrine.

It's a bucket, a category that all of the honor relationships, all the interpersonal interactions sort of fit into in terms of the duties that you have based upon the station that you're in.

And so when we look at that, we see that the scriptures tend to spend a lot of time on the household relationship.

And the household relationship has a government appointed where the man is to be the head of the house. He is to rule in the house.

And he's supposed to rule with his wife so that he is master of the home. She is mistress.

He is husband. She is wife. He is father. She is mother. And so she submits to him. They together rule over the children.

And if they have any servants, they would rule together over them. And they seek to build up an estate and pass on wisdom and wealth to their children.

So there's the order of things. And the children are supposed to be prepared to take over that property and to be able to govern it well, according to the word of God.

In the church, we have elders and deacons, and they are to be nominated by the men of the congregation.

They're to be tested publicly, to be elected. And then the officers that exist are supposed to ordain, which is the setting apart of a man for public ministry.

And those men are to work as a council in the local church to rule together. And so you have these three courts.

You have the elders, the deacons, which include the elders as well. And you have the men of the congregation, which includes the elders and the deacons.

And then lastly, we have the state. And we see the state is given the sword by God to avenge for crimes, to wage just warfare, to defend the innocent, and to be able to remove threats.

And the state also serves the purpose of seeking to make sure that contracts are upheld.

And so we see the punishment of crimes, the waging of just warfare, and the adjudicating of these disputes.

And so we see all of that. We have limited purposes for each institution. Backing away from the state, you think about what's the purpose of the church?

It's to proclaim the word in the world. It's to have the sacraments administered, the worship of God done, and to have government maintained in it for discipline.

And so this institution is created for the purpose of teaching, of holding up the doctrine in the world, being a pillar and ground for the truth so that it's upheld to be seen by the world.

And it has the keys of the kingdom to be able to discipline members and to be able to deal with order.

The household has the rod, and then you have the individual has the conscience. And so between all of these things, this is sort of the elements of the government, and these are the things that are to be used for the government of these various places.

And we need to study the word of God carefully to see what is it that each of these things is to do.

Great. We actually already have a listener question for you that I think is an excellent question, and it's from an anonymous listener.

The anonymous listener says, as you know, in 1 Timothy 3, 4 verses 4 through 5,

I should say, he must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive.

For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?

This is obviously in regard to a requirement for elders in the church.

How much disobedience is tolerable for children of an elder before he needs to step down?

Yes, that's a great question. So I think when we look at that text, when we talk about the idea of the children being in submission, what we're talking about is not just a child who is disobeying, then gets disciplined and they repent and come back and obey.

But we're talking about a child who is throwing off the authority. And so the child won't go through conflict resolution, won't heed the discipline of a parent that disqualifies the elder.

But the second thing would be there are particular acts that could be so grievous that they indicate a total lack of self -government in the child because of a lack of government in the home.

And I think that the Bible provides for us valuable categories. When we look at the Torah in particular, it gives to us not only sins with the categories of the

Ten Commandments, but it provides for us by the case laws, examples of criminal behavior.

And so behavior that would be biblically defined as criminal is the kind of behavior that would call into question immediately whether that elder is ruling his house properly.

And so if you see criminal behavior by the children, that would be something. So an example of that might be, for example, theft or assault.

And you could also see, you know, that occurs in small children. I mean, small children might smack each other when they're playing. That's a type of assault, right?

But so you might not you might go, OK, I'm not going to throw this guy out of office because his five -year -old kid hit my four -year -old kid when they were playing together.

But you would look at that and say, is there this immediately calls into question what's going on here, the level of a type of activity that is that is criminal.

So the Bible's definition of criminality. And so we need to consider the throwing off of authority, rebellion without a willingness to repent.

But secondly, criminal level types of behavior are the types of things that you pause that you engage on them and you see how is this being dealt with.

Now, in some cases, like the example I just gave where a child hits another child, you say, OK, fine, we're going to look at this.

Does the parent deal with it appropriately? Are they disciplining it? If it's a small child doing something like that, then you move on.

But you get into older kids. You start to go, what's the deal? Why are these kids not controlling themselves? Why are they doing things that are inappropriate at that kind of a level?

I have a question to throw in of my own. How is that to be understood when there are adult children not living under the roof of an elder who could be extremely rebellious?

They might be known for adultery, fornication, drug abuse.

We could go on and on and on. Homosexuality, so -called transgenderism.

Where do we draw the line as far as what the parent who is an elder is responsible for?

Yeah, so we know that there's a responsibility for parents to rule their children well.

We're told in Proverbs that if you raise up a child in the way that he should go, that when he's old, he will not depart from it.

And so there's this general tendency that we see and this promise there for the idea of the child going in the way.

At the same time, we also know that we do not have the power to regenerate children. The father does not have the power to bring about regeneration in the child.

He can bring all the means and does not have the power to cause those means to be effectual. So we pray for blessing.

We ask the father to cause the Holy Spirit to make those things effectual. But ultimately,

I think when you see a child, if they leave the home and abandon the faith, it should call into question whether that man has led his home well.

And again, we know that they cannot control regeneration. The father cannot control it.

But at the same time, we have the promise of the tendency of the raising up of the child in the way they should go and how that causes them to walk in the way.

And so I think what we are supposed to use is the evidence of what we see. And if the children of that elder have walked away from the faith, then that needs to be dealt with carefully.

And I would say that the bias should be toward the removal of that man as an elder. And I think that only when we see something like there's extraordinary evidence that this man has done his duty, that the child was in submission while they were in the house.

And then afterward, they later threw off the faith after some sort of a process where they are outside of the home.

That is perhaps the example of when you would say this man is not to be removed.

But I think child immediately leaves the house and then immediately throws off the faith. That man, you need to call him into question and probably remove him from office.

And what would be the reason that you believe from your own experience, from what you hear in the media, from what you hear even by having observed and heard the sermons of other pastors, meeting other

Christians, perhaps counseling Christians who have left other churches? What would be the major failures that you believe exist amongst modern evangelicals, perhaps the majority, who are failing on all of these points?

So when we look at government, the issue of the Amazon prime pastor is one of the big problems.

They ship these guys in. They come with free shipping straight out of the seminary. And also, you're pulling these people in from other churches, and there's kind of this shuffling around.

I think the church is supposed to raise up its own officers. And that doesn't mean that a man can never go to plant a church or to help in another church.

But there needs to be a significant relationship and significant testimony that this man is fit for office before he moves in.

And I think that the reality is that we don't look at the family life very carefully.

And we need to remember that what we're told in the scriptures themselves is the man has to govern his house well.

He has to govern his wife well. He has to govern his children well. His wife needs to be of a certain caliber. And if they don't have this, the government of a man over his children is sort of a foreshadowing of what he's going to produce as an elder and how he governs his wife and leads her and washes her in the word and beautifies her and brings joy into her life is also a foreshadowing of what he's going to do as he leads in that local church.

And so I think examining that and the private life is very important. Hospitality is extremely important.

It's one of the qualifications. And hospitality lets people look into your home. They can see what your children are like.

They can see what your wife is like. They can see what you're like in person. And they're able to see, are you generous?

Are you stingy? Are you willing to give time? Are you willing to serve? Are you willing to bless? Are you willing to talk about the problems of your people and enter into their lives or not?

And so I think that that is a significant piece of this is looking for the proper qualifications for men.

But I would also say, and we look at the broader evangelical church, there's a failure to guard the worship of God.

And that is because there is not a concern to say, when we call the church together, they are obligated to appear.

And if they're obligated to appear and they're obligated to stay from the assemblies beginning to its end, then everything we do in that worship is an act of authority.

It's the government of that church requiring the people to participate in that worship.

And so the care to guard what the worship is and to be able to prove every part of it from the

Bible, to do it in a manner that's pleasing to God, rather than what's pleasing to man, is another part that has to be carefully guarded.

And then with the doctrine itself, so much of the teaching, people aren't willing to go through the hard passages of scripture.

They aren't willing to look at trying to deal with doctrine in a full orbed way.

And so what we need to be willing to do is to engage with the word of God throughout its whole and to be desirous to teach the full counsel of God.

So I think those are the three places where we tend to see those failings. And I would also say one last part is this,

I talked to pastors and I talked to them about the idea of a church court, and most of them have no idea what a church court is.

They don't know that the church is supposed to hold court. They don't know that the church before it disciplines people is supposed to call them to appear, require them to hear the charges, allow them to give a defense for themselves, have them have the right to challenge witnesses.

And with cross -examination, that idea that church discipline is a court process is something that is totally foreign to most evangelical pastors.

And so that is necessary. It's a part of the government of Christ's church. And if a church doesn't have discipline, doesn't have a court, it's not a church.

It might be people who have the gospel, but it's not a church. Yeah, in fact, probably the instinctful reaction, if you were to ask an average pastor, do you have a church court?

They might say, oh yeah, the kids from the community play basketball at our church all the time. We have a gym, we have a

Starbucks. But we're going to our first commercial break right now.

And once again, if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, for our guest today,

Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona. Send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We're devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God, so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

Christ. This is Pastor David Reis of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

Puritan Reformed Church. Believe. Build. Fight. PuritanPHX .com

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That's royaldiadem .com and make sure you mention Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We're now back with David Reese, pastor of Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona.

We're discussing a government appointed by Christ and David, one thing that we failed to elaborate on in the beginning of the program is your business,

Armored Republic. We did discuss that in more detail the first time you were on the program, but why don't you let our listeners know something more about Armored Republic again.

I can't hear you, David. You have yourself on mute. Oh, wait a minute. I have you on mute. Can you hear me now? Yes, I do. Very good.

So Armored Republic creates tools of liberty to help free men to defend their

God -given rights against tyrants and criminals to the honor of Jesus Christ. So what we think of body armor as is a tool for liberty.

And so our broader mission is to figure out how to educate men, encourage them to lead and defend their families, and to encourage them to think about tactical tools they can use to defend themselves and to defend their rights.

And so one of the things I think it's important to do in order to see a nation organized properly is not to have a huge military establishment, but rather to see a citizen soldiery where men are able to participate in the call.

When you see the state going into a just war, the state would call the men to engage in a defense of the nation.

And so this idea that one of the things you see warned about in, for example, the time of the kings,

God warned that kings should not multiply horses or chariots because they were not to have a large standing army with a focus on offensive capability.

They were not to multiply gold. They were supposed to keep taxes low. And if there were tons of resources that were available for the state, they were to lower taxes further to avoid the accumulation of capital being held by the state so that a free people could have their own property and use it to serve the

Lord. And then also they were not to multiply wives, which is about not being a pleasure -seeking person as a ruler, but also about not making covenants that are wicked and not forming wicked alliances.

And so in order for a nation to preserve its independence and to preserve its liberties, there needs to be a citizen soldiery where there is this idea of the man being capable and competent to defend himself and others and to be well -trained.

And so we encourage people to own body armor and to own a rifle. And frankly, if you don't have a rifle and you don't have body armor, buy the rifle first, because what you need is something that's a basic tool for defense and to be able to resist tyrants.

But then armor is sort of the second tactical tool. And so we think a good firearm is what a man needs to be useful, to be able to defend his own rights and the rights of others.

And then secondly, body armor. And when you have those two pieces of equipment, you have the basic fighting tools to be an effective infantryman so that you could help to defend your community, defend your home, be able to resist tyrants and to be able to resist criminals.

And I think that the church more and more, as it looks around and sees the possibility of persecution, it is good to be well -prepared and well -equipped and to be around other men who are also willing to defend you and to be willing to work together so that you can preserve your liberties and preserve your safety.

Yeah, that's another sad reality, how many Christians, at least professing

Christians, recoil with discomfort when you speak about a

Christian arming themselves and so on. It's just a bizarre world we live in. I guess that would also depend on where in the

United States you live. I'm originally from New York, and that phenomenon definitely existed there.

In fact, I had a friend, a Christian friend, who owned a very lucrative sporting goods and guns and ammo business, and he said that he was getting flack from Christians constantly thinking that he was doing something that was not proper.

He was utterly amazed by it. Wow. But I want to make sure our listeners have your website for that, for Armored Republic.

It's AR500Armor .com, AR500Armor .com.

And we do have a listener, Bradley, in Pittsburgh, Indiana.

And Bradley said, you mentioned earlier that when you are interviewing a candidate for an elder office that his wife should be qualified.

I was wondering if it is a qualification, in your opinion, that an elder be married with children that seems to be a heated area of debate, even amongst very conservative and very

Reformed Christians, some who do not believe an elder needs to be married and not even needs to be a widow or ever having been married.

What is your opinion on that? Yeah, that's a great question. So when you think about a pastor or elder, he has four titles that are frequently used in the

Bible. You have the idea that a pastor is a teacher. He is meant to teach doctrine.

He is supposed to be a pastor who cares for the people.

So he's sort of acting in a prophetic way, teaching doctrine. He's acting in a priestly way, caring for the people, shepherding them.

And then he's also supposed to be an overseer, which is being sort of kingly, ruling.

And so you have those three titles. But the other title is elder. And what does elder mean? Elder means mature.

That's the whole idea behind it, right? So you have this guy that teaches doctrine. He maintains good relationship and cares for people.

And he governs. And he's supposed to be mature. So the question is, has this individual reached a mature condition?

The book of 1 John talks about little children in the faith, young men in the faith, and fathers in the faith.

This is sort of the stages of maturity. And so if a person is immature in their life, they are not fit to enter into public rule.

And so I think that what we see is the Lord Jesus Christ waits until he's 30. We see the qualifications of a priest were to be 30.

And so you have this idea of a guy who's mature to rule before he enters that. The Levites had to be 25 to serve.

And I think there's a relationship between Levites and priests to the office of deacon and to elder. So I think there's part of this age idea and maturity.

And so you have this idea that these are men. You become a man in Israel at 20. You become fit for sort of this diagonal type of service at 25.

You have the qualifications fit for elder type of service at 30. And so there's just sort of this like this progress of age where there's ability to do more and more service publicly and to govern.

So the question about marriage is, are you called to singleness? The Lord Jesus Christ was not to be married to a woman in this life.

The apostle Paul seems to have been a widower. And so I don't think those guys are exceptions.

I think that they are both under the law. Christ was in his human nature under the law. And so he didn't do something that was illegal by entering into public teaching office.

And the apostle Paul did not do something illegal by entering into a public teaching office in that way.

The qualifications of apostle or the qualifications of the king of the church for the Lord Jesus Christ are not things that are lesser qualifications than the office of elder.

So I think it's plain on its face in the scriptures that you do not have to be married in order to enter those offices, but you have to be mature in life.

And so if you're a man who's looking to get a wife and there is nobody who is fit to marry you or there's nobody who you are willing to marry or they're not willing to marry you, then the question is, okay, you need to focus on that.

You need to get your house in order. And the other thing is we see the law that a man, if he gets married, he's not supposed to go off to war for the first year.

He's not supposed to go off and do public service. It says he's not to go off to war and he's not to be charged with any business.

Now that doesn't mean he doesn't do any work. It means he focuses on governing himself, governing his house, pleasing his wife, getting his house in order, making sure he can provide well for the house and the house is beautified and that the wife is happy.

And so when you get married, you should take a year off from public service. But the other thing is if you're trying to get married, get married, get your house in order before you seek to govern other people.

So I think that's what the teaching of scripture is and hopefully that clarifies the issue. Let me add something to the question.

I've asked other guests this. When you were talking about a qualified wife, if indeed an elder is married or if he is courting someone that he would like to marry, are there certain things that are not necessarily innately sinful about a woman that would disqualify her to fill the role of a pastor's wife?

Let me give you an example. Perhaps she's painfully shy and private, which would affect possibly, unless she just strove to overcome these emotions and ways of thinking, her fear and so on of being social in any way, it may affect negatively her being hospitable.

And there could be other things that I'm not even thinking of right now, but that would not be an innately sinful thing or trait, especially for an average

Christian woman, but for a pastor, it might be very problematic. Do you think there are things like that that would disqualify a woman from being an elder's wife?

And if she is already married to a man who seeks a position as an elder, that would disqualify him?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think the goal of a godly man ought to be to beautify his wife with the word, to wash her with the word and to help to develop her up.

And the goal would be to see a woman grown into a Proverbs 31 woman, right? Because she's the type of woman that an elder needs as a helpmate.

So if someone is particularly shy, the question is, is she able to overcome that? And if she's able to be hospitable despite her shyness, then she's just working past it.

And that shyness will be overcome and eroded over time. And her capacity to reach out and to be caring for people will increase as she practices it.

And so the issue of hospitality, it's a great connection because essentially if that personality treat is used as an excuse to avoid a positive duty, then it would disqualify because it would stop the man from doing it.

So if he can't be hospitable because his wife is so painfully shy, okay, great, he doesn't have that qualification.

And it might be because of his wife's behavior. So he needs to lead through that, help her.

And the sort of a training process, the word of God, we're told in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 is profitable for doctrine, for rebuke, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

And so that training in hospitality is a part of what the application of the word is supposed to be done for.

And so with a wife, you could help to develop that, help her to overcome that shyness to be able to care for others better and to be able to be hospitable.

So there might be something, but the way you would look for that is to see does it affect one of the positive qualifications?

So the negative qualifications, they disqualify, but the absence of a positive virtue also disqualifies.

Okay, we have a question from Gabriela in Ninilchik, Alaska, and I'm hoping

I'm pronouncing that correctly. Gabriela says, when it comes to the verse in the

Bible about turning the other cheek in Matthew 5, 38 -40,

I believe that many people really abuse and twist this passage to mean something that it doesn't.

Can you please explain the true meaning of this passage and how it should be properly exegeted?

Absolutely. So the passage to turn the other cheek is talking about the idea if somebody offends you, if somebody does something that is embarrassing, painful, hurtful to you, that you do not seek to avenge yourself.

You don't seek to return cursing upon them for the cursing you received, but you seek to bless them, you seek to overlook.

This is not a statement that if someone's trying to actually murder you or cause you bodily harm, that you don't defend yourself.

You have a duty to defend yourself and to defend others. We're told in Exodus that if a man breaks into your house at night and you kill him, that there's no guilt for that.

So how do you reconcile these things? We also have texts that talk about just warfare, and we have texts that talk about, for example,

Abraham going off and saving Lot when Lot was kidnapped by foreign kings out of Sodom.

Abraham takes his 300 and something trained men, the neighbors that he covenanted with, and they go and hunt down this army, engage in a night forced march, dozens of miles, engage in a flanking movement and an ambush attack, kill the enemy army and free the men that were kidnapped, including

Lot. So those are all viewed as good works. And we also see

Jesus when he's talking to soldiers, he doesn't say, well, be pacifists and quit your job and run away.

He says, be content with your wages. Don't extort anybody. He's telling them to administer their role justly.

The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 13 that the state has not been given the sword in vain. The sword is not simply an ornamental tool.

It is something to be used to punish the wicked. And so we look at the turning of the cheek and what it's saying is two things.

Don't avenge yourselves and two, be willing to overlook offenses. It does not contradict the idea of having to defend yourself against imminent danger.

The difference between self -defense and vengeance is also explained in Exodus. In Exodus, it says, if you kill a man when he's coming into your house, that's not murder.

There's no guilt. But if you go and hunt him down in the daylight, the next day, you are avenging yourself.

There's no longer a danger. You're avenging yourself. So when the danger is removed, if you go and punish the guy, you're taking authority into your own hands.

So the Bible teaches us, everyone has the authority to defend themselves. Only the magistrate, only the civil government has the right to avenge, to take vengeance, to apply a punishment.

And that requires due process of law. And then the waging of war is the other type of violence that we see that's lawful besides self -defense and besides vengeance taking through just process of law.

And waging war is sort of a mixture of a communal self -defense, but also it's a communal judicial action because it involves going on the offensive.

It involves fighting this, not just for the night or whatever. It's an ongoing process. So it's sort of a mixture of vengeance plus self -defense when you see warfare.

So those are the three categories of lawful violence. And we can see those throughout the scriptures. And we see the just wars that are engaged in by the kings.

So turn the other cheek does not mean never use violence. It means do not avenge yourself and be willing to overlook offenses.

Yeah, I agree with the listener in Alaska that that is probably one of the most twisted and misused scriptures along with judge not lest ye be judged.

Very often thrown in the face of Christians by unbelievers who have at least enough cursory knowledge of what they've heard the

Bible teaches that they remember those things and they totally butcher them. And this, what you've said totally obliterates.

I'm not going to mention his name because he may have changed his view. But I remember a number of years ago,

I was startled by a very, very well -known and highly respected Reformed Christian.

He was a pastor. He retired a very voracious author.

And he said that he would not kill evil men that had broke into his home and were raping and murdering his wife and children because he knew he would be sending them to hell.

Now, very bizarre statement for a Reformed person to make because we are not in control of the eternal destiny of other human beings.

And secondly, the reason why it's an asinine view is because that means that you are giving the opportunity of these evil men to leave your home unharmed and kill other people and send them to hell.

I mean, absolutely insane idea. And I was shocked because of the caliber of this person in many areas and also his being a thoroughly

Reformed individual in so many other ways. It was bizarre. But we have to go to our midway break now.

And please be patient with us, folks, because the midway break, as always, is a little longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church like Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona, no matter where you live on the planet

Earth, I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches, and I've helped many people in our audience find churches, sometimes within just a couple of minutes from where they live, in all parts of the world.

That may be you, too, if you are without a biblically faithful church home. Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to our guest today.

His name is David Reese, and he is the pastor of Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and our discussion is on the theme

A Government Appointed by Christ. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. Let's see here. We have Bo, B -E -A -U, in Belfast, Maine, and Bo wants to know,

I have been so excited to hear what you have to say, and my elders need to hear this stuff.

Do you have a video, an audio recording, a series of sermons, a book, or anything that you could recommend that I could pass on to them?

But I would imagine we're talking about the elders' qualifications, or we're talking about the requirements for church government, state governments, household government, and so forth.

So first, on our website, puritanphx .com,

you can find our sermon audio account. You can download sermons. We have a sermon series on the qualification of elders there, but also, it's a five -part series that I've done.

The other thing is, I have done a teaching series through the entire

Westminster Confession of Faith, and in that, I have a section on the household when we deal with marriage and divorce, the chapter on that.

I've dealt with the church government in terms of the chapter that deals with church courts and church censures, and there's also a chapter in the

Westminster Confession that talks about civil government. And so those are sermons that I've put out.

But the other thing is, if you're trying to look at how to deal with these things, James Bannerman is a historic

Presbyterian— Yes, yes, absolutely. I imagine you probably have it on that website you were talking about, the

Solid Ground books. They probably have Church of Christ. I would encourage you guys to check out that site and see if there's Church of Christ by James Bannerman.

It's a two -volume set. It's very good on church government and the details of it. But also, Brian Schwartley wrote an excellent book called

National Covenanting, Christ's Victory Over the Nations against Brian Schwartley's National Covenanting.

He does a really good job of laying out the case, showing how to deal with the civil government, and it pulls enormous amounts of biblical text together and makes that very plainly laid out.

And Philip Kaiser is another pastor who has written The Divine Right of Resistance, which is a really short book.

So Philip Kaiser's Divine Right of Resistance is excellent there. There are some historical ones on that as well, like Messiah Prince and Lex Rex and Vedicchiae Cantu Terranos.

So there are a lot of books on civil government out there that are very good, that have been written by our Reformed forebears in the faith, as well as a number of excellent books on church government.

And so I think that when you look at what the Puritans did, in particular, in trying to think about church government, there's a lot of good writings that are available.

But I don't want to just continue to give a list of books to people over the air. So, Chris, where would you like me to go from there?

Just pick up on where you left off on a different phase of government that you'd like to address.

By the way, just to let our listeners quickly know that The Church of Christ by Bannerman is also available in a massive one -volume version, hardcover, from The Banner of Truth.

Great. I just thought I'd let you know that. But if you could continue. Absolutely.

So, going back to the types of government, when we think about government, it all begins with self -government, the government of the individual.

And so, when we think about governing ourselves, we need to remember that we are commanded to govern our bodies, and we're commanded to govern our minds, govern our souls.

And so, with the government of the body and the soul, we need to realize that we have been made the image of God.

The image of God is not a material thing. It is our minds. It is our souls, our spirits.

And the mind, the rational faculty, is the image of God. We have to remember that logic is eternal, that God is the logos, and He has given us the ability to think, and He has given us

His Word. And His Word renews our minds. So, we govern ourselves by growing in wisdom, by studying the

Word of God. That rearranges our desires, our purposes, our affections, so they are holy.

And, furthermore, that helps us to make righteous choices. So, the image of God is rationality, and that manifests itself in knowledge, holiness, and righteousness.

And when we are renewed, that makes it so that we can serve other people and glorify God as prophet, priest, kings.

And so, prophets speak the truth, and they correct error. Priests maintain holy relationships.

They pray for the glory of God, for themselves and for others. And they self -sacrificially serve.

And kings provide and protect. And so, we are called to serve in those ways.

And I want to encourage you to think about governing yourself as a prophet, priest, and king who is an image -bearer.

And the law of God teaches us how to do that. And so, we think about the household, and putting households into good order again. And I think that we have failed to realize as Christians that we don't just want to be people who are husbands and fathers, but we also need to think about women as wives and mothers.

But we also need to think about the duty of training up children. You know, there's an old Jewish saying that is common that would say, if you do not train your child in a trade, you are training him to be a thief.

And so, excellent, excellent. I got to remember that. The absence of skill makes it so that you don't have ways of serving other people.

And so, when we govern ourselves, we have to find good work to do. But masters of the home and mistresses of the home are obligated to put people to good service.

Now, William Perkins has an excellent series, sorry, an excellent book which also

I know is available on Solid Ground. It's a part of the William Perkins series. They've got the ten volumes set there. But he has this little book called

The Christian Economy, or How to Rightly Order a Christian Home. And in it, he talks about the duty of the head of the house as a master, husband, and father.

And so, he talks about the duty of the master to put the economic resources of the household into good use.

So, I want to encourage Christians to think about how to govern their property and their time to do dominion work that makes it so that the law of God is applied to more and more.

And so, having Christian businesses is a part of that. So, if you currently are not very skilled and you're looking for work to do, find a

Christian businessman. Find a Christian plumber. Find a Christian to work with. Develop skills. Be useful.

Be a good servant, a useful servant. Build wealth and build skill. And when you're capable, when you're competent, when you're mature, start a

Christian business because that extends out your capability to support shows like Iron Sharpens Iron.

It extends out your ability to give Christians jobs. It gives you the ability to have resources to support the church.

It makes it so that you can have independent resources and wealth so you can even run for political office.

And so, if a man doesn't govern his home well, he can't govern well in the church. And he can't govern well in the state.

And if you don't have any resources, you're going to be totally incapable of actually taking your time and money and putting it to the service of others.

So, that self -government leads into household government, leads into governing a wife well, governing children well, and governing property well, and putting time to good and profitable use.

We are commanded to redeem the time and to not be idle. And so, we need to put our time to profitable employment.

So, Chris, anything else you wanted to go into before I jump down further into the church and state? No, you can jump down.

Okay. So, when we talk about the church, when we think about a teaching of the church, there is a lot of teaching that needs to be done.

And the book of 1 Corinthians gives to us an order for the New Testament church.

And the theme of 1 Corinthians is the idea that the church is the New Testament temple.

And so, you see the idea of the people of God being gathered together.

We see the glory of God manifest there. And it talks about when you look at the good order of the church in 1

Corinthians, one of the things it talks about when it's talking about spiritual gifts like prophecy and when it's looking at spiritual gifts like tongues, it talks about the importance of two or three prophets speaking.

Then it talks about two or three speaking with interpreters. And by the way, let's all be very clear, tongues is speaking a foreign language.

It's not made up gobbledygook. It's a foreign language. And it's only useful in the church when there's an interpreter.

That's what 1 Corinthians says. But in either case, whether it's prophecy or tongues being interpreted, the idea of two or three witnesses going forward is pulled from the

Old Testament and moved forward. We bear testimony in the church. And so, the order that ordinarily is supposed to occur is that in the public worship, you have two or three people teaching.

And that applies to prophets. It applies to people who are given the supernatural gifting of tongues and interpretation.

And it applies to the lesser office. So, William Perkins, in his book The Art of Prophesying, he takes the principles out of 1

Corinthians about prophecy and says, the way we prophesy now is by proclaiming the

Word of God as it's laid out for us in the Scriptures. And so, we need to be careful to prophesy well, to teach the doctrine of Scripture well.

We don't give new revelation, but we take the revelation that's been given, the complete revelation, and we unveil it to men.

We explain it to men. We explicate it to men. And so, we look at the order that's established in the history of the church and it's established in the

Old Testament, and you see this principle of multiple elders in a local church. Not just one elder, multiple elders.

And so, the government of the church is supposed to be by multiple men to prevent the church from becoming a personality cult.

And by allowing multiple men to teach across the services, you prevent the personality cult from forming. And so, this is a part of that idea that we are under a king.

The church is a monarchy under Christ. But when we look at men who are not Christ, it's a republic. It's an ordered council of men, as opposed to single rulers that dominate.

And that's how we avoid bishoprics and the consolidation of power there. And so, men learn to be able to share in power and to serve underneath the governance of Christ by having to work together.

And so, in the church, you see that, and the courts of the church help to deal with that. And when you are careful to not invent elements of worship, the church becomes a place where the rule of Christ is on display when you're very careful to preach

His Word, to sing His songs, to pray His promises, and we are careful to obey

Him in those things. And so, Chris, anything else you want to go into before I move into the state? Well, before you move into the state, perhaps we'll just take one more listener question.

We have Monroe in Searcy, Arkansas, who says,

I know that it is a very good thing to support Christian business owners and professionals, but when the rubber meets the road, shouldn't we be buying products and using services from businesses and organizations that are at the best at what they do?

On top of that, there are many professing Christians that advertise using the fact that they are

Christian, and when you find out more about their lives and how they conduct their businesses, they could not be farther from the truth in their description.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think the reality is that it's not a sin to buy something from an unbeliever, right?

We can do trade with anybody. There's nothing evil about doing trade with an unbeliever, but if you can bless a

Christian, it's good to do so. And so what we need to do is when we hear about Christian businesses, if we're getting a service from somebody who's not a

Christian, we should take the time to see, is it possible that instead we could do business with a

Christian? And if you find that there's something that's of similar quality or better, and you can do business with a

Christian, then great. Now, if you find out that Christian is a hypocrite, okay, then you no longer think of that as valuable.

You think of that as a negative thing. But if you know of Christians who have a credible profession of faith, and when we don't know, we use the judgment of charity, and so what we do is we seek opportunities to bless

Christians and to do business with them, and if there's a product that's of similar quality or better quality, we should be willing to pay as much or some more to be able to bless

Christians rather than non -Christians. And so that's what I would say, is that's how we can seek to encourage each other and bless each other and build business relationships.

And when you're talking about small things, it's perhaps less significant, but especially if it's something you're buying repeatedly, or if there's a consistent resource that you're going after.

And so I think that that idea that yes, you do have to judge the product itself, but we should, when we have the option, it's better to go with a

Christian option to see those resources put to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. And we have to treat that issue just like we treat the demand of the left that insists upon equity, and they want people that are less qualified to be in positions of employment just because of their race or their ethnicity or sexual preference, which is absolutely not only demonic but insane.

And to boil it down to its essence, if you want or if you need brain surgery, for instance, there's nothing wrong with finding the best surgeon, even if he happens to be a

Muslim or an atheist, rather than Deacon Bob, who might be a brain surgeon but has got a reputation for being horrible at it.

So we don't want to do the same thing that the leftists do with this equity nonsense and say, well, you better use the

Christian no matter how bad they may be at what they do. Absolutely.

Chris, I think that's a good point. I think it's another thing is sometimes it's really frustrating. I've hired a lot of Christians, and I've hired a lot of unbelievers, and it's really frustrating when

I see a Christian not working well, because it's so dishonoring to the Lord.

And so whether you're an employee or whether you own your own business, if you're not doing a good job, it dishonors the Lord. At the same time, so many

Christians are afraid to say that they're a Christian in the workplace or afraid to put up the word of God over their business, and so they run away from it.

The reality is we want to encourage boldness, so where honors do honor a lot.

And when somebody is behaving dishonorably, let's point that out. Let's call it out. Yeah, and in fact,

I could say with all honesty that the people who have harmed me most in my life financially when it comes to jobs, employees, and colleagues, they have been professing

Christians that have stabbed me in the back worse, caused the loss of great income for me.

They have been Christians and not the atheists and secular individuals that I've worked with and worked for, just thought

I'd throw that out there. But your point still stands that whenever possible, we should be helping our brothers in Christ become more lucrative and prosperous if they're doing a good job at what they're doing.

Absolutely. Chris, you know, John Calvin said that there is nobody who does more harm as a thief than a servant who uses his privileged position to harm his master.

Yep, there you go. And so one of the things also, Psalm 41 talks about this idea of the covenanted brother who comes into your house, and Psalm 41 verse 9 says, you know, you were my own familiar friend in whom

I trusted. You ate my bread, and you lifted up your heel against me. And so this idea that there are people who you are friends with, you give them hospitality, and there's nothing more painful than the betrayal of that.

So you're thinking about the Lord Jesus Christ having Judas be trained by him in the ministry there, and his hand is dipping bread into the oil on the table with him and betrays him, right?

This idea of the covenant -breaking friend. And so I think there's a great, one of the most painful things in this life is the covenant -breaking

Christian who harms you with their profession. Well, please continue. Move on to the next phase.

So, we think about the state, and when we think about the state, the purpose of the state as we discussed before, is to be an avenger.

The state is given the sword. So the state is to have officers, and those officers we see the state ordered, again, first in Genesis chapter 9.

The state doesn't exist in the garden. The sword is not given in the garden to man. The first time we see the sword come up is when we have angels with swords of fire set to guard the garden after Adam and Eve have been cast out, and that flaming sword is to protect

God's private property, the garden, from trespassers. And the reason for that trespassing protection is also to prevent them from eating of the tree of life, to prevent them from becoming immortal with sin corruption, which would be hell on earth.

But the other thing is we see that then the earth is filled with unbelievers who are violent.

They fill the earth with blood, and they destroy the church. They kill the church. The church is whittled down to Noah and his sons and their houses.

And so, after the flood wipes out the wicked from the earth, what you have left is these four households that are households that are professing houses, and the covenant that God gives in Genesis 9, he gives the sword to avenge.

And that sword is to punish criminals, to wage just warfare, and those two principles of punishing criminals and waging just warfare gives us a sense of the purpose of the state.

We're told that taxation is for that, and we have all these limits that are placed on the state. 1 Samuel chapter 8 gives to us a number of warnings about a disordered state.

When the people of Israel chose to have a monarch, a king, who was not God, but instead to replace the republican order that was established with a king, and one of the warnings is that this guy is going to think he's

God. He's going to tax you at 10%. And we all kind of hear 10 % as a tax, and we laugh, because we think 10%,

I pay that in sales tax, much less income tax. I mean, Social Security is almost 10%. And so you look at that number, and you say 10%, what is that warning about?

The idea is that God demands a tithe, and 10%, if the state demands 10 % or more, it is viewing itself as having the right to take as much as God demands in the tithe, which is supposed to be absurd.

So the limitedness of the state is viewed here, and we think about the limits of the role of the state as a punisher, as an avenger, is to make it so that there's room for the church to be a ministry for the education of God's people, and the worship of God, and for discipline.

There's room for the household, and the household is where the ministry of health care, welfare, and education is supposed to occur.

And it's to make it so that individuals are able to freely operate to be free under the law of God.

This idea of Christian liberty is the liberty to do what God commands, and so the state preserves that kind of liberty.

So the state is supposed to acknowledge Christ as king, rather than establishing other men as kings.

The state is supposed to acknowledge His word is authoritative, to see that Christian liberty is defended and preserved in the land, and to see that biblical justice is administered.

And so that biblical justice is to be administered by applying due process, and that due process is laid out for us in the first five books of the

Bible. That's where we see it. What we see is rules of evidence, rules for law in Exodus especially, and Deuteronomy, and Numbers, and we see it some in Leviticus.

And so those give us principles, like again, the two or three witnesses, those give us the principles for having elected officers that serve on councils.

And so in Exodus 18, you have Jethro coming as a priest of the

Lord before the giving of the priesthood. And he comes, and he bears a message from God about the proper order to establish in terms of the election of elders.

And he has this very localized system with one elder per 10 households, one per 50, one per 100, one per 1 ,000, and then there's of course the establishment of the 70 that occurs for the sort of supreme court of the land.

But these decentralized, low -power courts to help to deal with crimes and disputes about contracts and to deal with the waging of just defensive warfare is a very limited state that is meant to preserve righteousness in the land and to make it so individuals are free to obey

God. And so much of the book of Exodus is about people being freed from a tyrannical government under Pharaoh to be free to obey

God in the way that God has commanded. And so that principle of liberty of being free to obey what

God has commanded is the Christian principle of liberty, and the state is for that. And so we look at this idea of these officers that sit in councils and what we see now is so much in our land, we see sort of this bureaucratic system where a bunch of unelected bureaucrats do all sorts of things that the government is not supposed to do.

And the government does a bad job of punishing crime, a bad job of resolving contract disputes. It costs enormous amounts of money to get a trial.

It takes forever to get a trial as opposed to making it simple for people who are poor to be protected from oppression so that there is an easy way to get a day in court and an easy way to deal with a trial.

Instead, it's a complex system that takes forever and it's very costly. And so the biblical system of justice is meant to make it so the rich are always going to be able to protect themselves and defend themselves, but capitalism and the system of private property and the protection that the state gives to protect the property of the poor gives the poor opportunity to be able to build wealth and to defend themselves when they don't have the resources to do so.

So the state looks out for the orphan and the widow and for the sojourner and for the poor by making sure that their cause is heard quickly and clearly and that truth is what reigns in that judgment.

And so those concerns, we hear those words orphan, widow, sojourner, the poor and we expect some sort of socialist tagline.

Well, the scriptures mention those people to be looked out for and the mercy ministry of the church can go to those people, the diaconal ministry but the state is not supposed to be redistributing money to those people it's simply supposed to be making sure they're not being oppressed by people.

And so we think about all those principles and we look at the various purposes of these governments and the forms of them and we see that our current establishments are far removed from them.

And so my hope would be that people begin to look into the outlines of these things and look at the very limited purposes of the state the limited purposes of the church and realize that the bulk of the work to be done is to be done by individuals and households and that we live our lives and we need to see

Christian households and Christian individuals applying the word of God in detail and the state needs to be careful to obey

God and the church needs to be careful to obey God and those public institutions are only going to be reformed as we seek to boldly proclaim that Christ is king in both domains.

And so I want to encourage people to seek to apply Scripture and to be unashamed of the

Scriptures in both the church and the state and to be the guy who says well where does it say that in the

Bible? And to be the guy who says well the Scripture says this. So that's my exhortation is to seek to use the law of God to bind rulers and to not let them throw off the chains of God's law.

Okay we have to go to our final break. If you do have a question that you'd like to submit we urge you to do it immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com We'll be right back with David Reese. Don't go away. The Mid -Atlantic

Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023 The Gospel at War September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County Pennsylvania featuring

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Coles author of Single Gay Christian A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity The debate topic

Is gay Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's Church? So come join us for the 6th

Future of Christendom conference. The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim Pennsylvania and will run from Friday evening through all day

Saturday with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reformed Bible Church. This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching with a theme of the

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Head to futureofchristendom .org James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here

I'm very excited to announce that my long time friend Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta Georgia again for the

G3 National Conference that's Thursday September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I have been preaching, teaching writing about and defending in live public debates for most of my life

The Sovereignty of God I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries And there's more great news,

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That's 1 -800 -NOW -HURT and 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. We're now back with David Reese, pastor of Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona, and founder of the

Armored Republic business, and I would like you, before we forget, to plug your upcoming interview with David Shannon, also known as Chocolate Knox of CrossPolitik.

Thanks, Chris. So, yeah, I'm on X, I guess formally known as Twitter, still trying to get used to that, as at RealDavidReese, so again, that's

Twitter, at RealDavidReese, and I'm going to be on August 31st interviewed.

We're going to be talking about Christian nationalism and national covenanting, and I'm going to be explaining how

I think that national covenanting is the historic doctrine that we should be more concerned about, and that it's better than the new way of talking about things.

And so this idea that we want to pursue Christian government, and we should do it in the way that God has appointed, and so I think that the idea of civil covenanting there.

And so, again, that's going to be on the 31st of August. It's going to be at 3 p .m.

Arizona time. Great. And if you could, I want you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

Yeah, the main thing I want to make sure that everybody remembers is what 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 says, and that is essentially that we take with the

Word of God, it's profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that it's the thing.

And it's sufficient, it's sufficient to make the man of God complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And that includes the good work of governing yourself, governing your family, governing the church, and governing the state.

And so if we approach all of these fears, realizing that the Word of God is sufficient for them, and stop pragmatically coming up with solutions, and instead say, what do the

Scriptures say about all of these things? We will find that God's wisdom is better than ours.

That's the thing I want people to take away, is to look to God's wisdom about all of those fears. Okay, we have time for one more question.

We have Chip in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. And Chip says, routinely when

I have conversations about a theonomic government or a

Christian reconstructionist aspect of government, I constantly hear feedback from Christians that because even

Christians are tainted with sin, this experiment of a church giving such influence to a government of any nation has never worked.

It has always eventually become corrupt, and brutal, and sadistic, and has faded away into non -existence.

So tell us why we should press on this issue, and how we should respond to that kind of criticism.

Yeah, so I found that every individual has to deal with sin, except for the Lord Jesus Christ. I found that every family has to deal with sin, every church has to deal with sin, and every state has to deal with sin.

And the only solution to sin is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word.

And so if we're going to say, hey, you know, we're going to avoid a Christian government, and the reason we're going to avoid a

Christian government is because Christians are corrupt. Well, I'll tell you who is more corrupt than Christians, non -Christians.

And I'll tell you what else. If you do not have the Bible to tell you how you ought to govern, you're going to come up with the fevered imaginations of men.

And so we either are going to have government that accords with God's law, or we're going to have government that accords with man's law.

And man's law is worse. If you think that the abuses of Protestant governments in the past are bad, you should study

Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot. You should look at the secular abuses that have existed.

And then you should also look at what has happened with the papacy and the inquisitions and things like that.

You should look at what happened with Islam. And so when you look at that, you realize the only solution we have is the

Lord Jesus Christ to pay for our sins, and then we have his word for wisdom. And so the question is not whether we're going to be governed by sinful men.

That's going to happen. The question is whether they're going to be Christians and whether they're going to apply

Christian law or man -made law, or they could get law from false gods, demons.

Those are another source. So are we going to have law from demons, law from men, or law from God?

And so that's the question. Well, we're out of time. I want to thank you so much for doing such a spectacular job as you did last time.

I want to remind our listeners to find out more about Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

Go to PuritanPHX .com, PuritanPHX .com

for David Reese's business, Armored Republic. Go to AR500Armor .com,

AR500Armor .com. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater