The Sovereign Lord (God's Got This) — Shane Idleman

The Sovereign Lord and God’s Ultimate Authority

We are talking about the sovereign Lord this morning. Do you know what sovereignty is? Some of you are sovereigns in your home. Some people are sovereigns in the city, in their position of authority. It's a govern, it's a rulership over a certain area.

But with God, and what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna pull out from Wayne Grudem's book. Wayne Grudem wrote a book on systematic theology. And I was gonna bring it and show you this morning, but it was too heavy to carry around.

And here's what he defines sovereignty as. I'm gonna pull a few points from his work. God's exercise of power over all of his creation. That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? Because, I mean, there's terms that, they're like two paragraphs long on what God's sovereignty is but what it is is God's ability to exercise his power over all his creation.

And in that, there's a lot of comfort because you realize that it's not the government or different nations or the neighbor up the street that you have to worry about or even the crime, right? We worry about that a lot and that's why a lot of people move, is crime and different things.

But when you understand that God is sovereign, it really begins to put your mind at ease because he's the one ultimately in control. And there's only three areas I'm gonna talk about this morning. It's in the area of sovereignty.

If you look at systematic theology, they'll take sovereignty and they'll have three points underneath it. One of those is, the first point is preservation. The next point is going to be concurrence and the third point is government.

Don't worry, I'm going somewhere with this. It matters to your life. It's not just application. I mean, it's not just theory. It is actually very good application. So here's preservation. Kind of you can get from the word that God preserves things.

Preservation: Christ Upholds the Universe

God keeps all creative things existing and maintaining the properties in which he created them. Hebrews 1 .3 tells us that Christ is upholding the universe by the power of his word. Here's something interesting Wayne Grubin said that this just really struck me all week.

If Christ were to cease his continuing activity of sustaining all things in the universe, then everything except the triune God would cease to exist or would instantly cease to exist. If Christ stopped upholding everything, if he just stopped that, everything would no longer be upheld.

And there's other verses that in Christ, he's holding up the universe. The particles, the atoms, the protons, everything is held up by him. It's an interesting truth that is just mind boggling if we think about it.

Our dependence on God is affirmed every time we pray, God give us our daily, Jesus taught us to pray. God give us our daily bread. And here's where some confusion comes in. That prayer has to be backed by a little bit of effort.

Right, have you ever just been on the couch praying unless you're George Mueller in a dairy truck breaks down in front of your house and feeds the orphans in the orphanage. Most of us have to work a little bit, and he did work, he worked in prayer and different things, but you're not gonna be praying often and there's a bag of groceries on your front porch.

God does that sometimes, he'll answer prayer that way, but more often than not, we work, which is I'm gonna get to the next point with concurrence, we work with God's sovereignty. So God give us our daily bread means that we get up and we do something about it.

And I like that old saying that I pray as if it's all up to God, which it is, but I work as if it's all up to me. Because God blesses diligence, God blesses hard work, God blesses labor, God looks upon those who are diligent and hardworking, he favors that person because the opposite of that is lazy and slothful.

Those aren't encouraging words in the Bible. And we all have the tendency to go in that direction, don't we, our flesh by nature is not hardworking. It's very, it's like to sleep all day if it could. It'd be NASCAR, popcorn, cookies, ice cream, pizza delivery, and then reruns of your favorite television shows or whatever on the Hallmark Channel.

If we could, right, you'd be honest, if the flesh got its way today, we would not be here, most of us, pajamas all day, drinking and eating our favorite things, and we would not be very productive. So even though we pray, God, give us our daily bread because we know he brings the rain, he sustains, he does everything, it's in his sovereignty, we also cooperate with his sovereignty.

Now, he may relent, this is interesting, and what's hard about this type of topic of theology is really this could go for about a month on God's sovereignty. I could do four weeks, six weeks, and there's so many different areas, but I just try to pull out the main things.

And even in God's sovereignty, he will relent. The Bible uses the word repent, but I don't really like that as much depending on the translation because we think that God is repenting from sin. He's not, he's repenting, meaning he's changing his mind or he'll change something.

That's why I do believe that prayer is powerful because in Hezekiah's case, one king, God said, hey, listen, you're gonna die in a certain amount of time, and he pleaded with God, and he pleaded with God, and the prophet went to him and said, God has heard your prayers, he's relented, he's changed his mind, and you will, I believe it was 15 extra years that he got on his life.

And I think of 2 Chronicles 7, 14 often. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, I will forgive their sins, and I will begin to rebuild and cleanse their land.

I will change my course based on your response. So God says, here's what's going to happen. This is the interesting about judgment, whether you believe in judgment upon a nation, judgment upon a group of people, judgment on a person, that God will pronounce something saying, this is going to happen.

But if you change certain conditions that are allowing this, God can relent and change his course, change his mind in that area and allow your prayers to be heard. Now, of course, we don't know how that works, and that's why it gets confusing, right?

Because we want to know what, when, why, where, when, and how, and I want to know today. But within God's sovereignty is his perfect will. And on that, it doesn't matter how hard you pray, you can fast, you can pray, you can plead the blood, and it won't matter if it's his perfect will, in my opinion.

When something is, and when he says, this is what's going to happen. Now, inside of perfect will, you have permissive will. Woo, keep rabbit trails, keep growing here, right? There's one rabbit hole, there's another rabbit hole, there's another rabbit hole.

But inside of perfect will, there's permissive will, and what he allows us to change course on, or what he allows us to redirect. So we just live according to God's word, and we trust in him, we know he knows what's best.

We pray for his permissive will. God, are you going to allow this to happen, but we don't know what your perfect will is. So it's good just to stay flexible and humble in this area, because if we try to overthink things, we can get in trouble.

Because there's people who think, well, it's God's will. God's will, I fell into sin. God's will, I left my spouse. God's will that I just, well, and just, and we can have this view of everything is God's will.

It's almost like a puppeteer. You know how he's got the strings, and you're going to do whatever he wants you to do, but we don't see that in scripture. We see a cooperation, because man is ultimately held responsible for his actions.

That's why a lot of people in evangelical Christianity, there are two different views on this, on salvation. You know, that God elects certain people, and the rest he doesn't elect, or the belief that God, that man has the ability to accept or reject God's gracious gift of salvation.

And if they reject it, then they are then judged based on their actions. They're accounted for on their actions. You can't have both of those be true. So that's part of God's sovereignty. Now, again, people become frustrated, because we don't know how it works, exactly why it works.

I have a lot of questions just like you do. Right, for example, how can God be completely sovereign? But how can man have a responsibility to do certain things? Because you would think as man is making changes, or man is making choices, that God would be caught off guard but we know God's not caught off guard.

He knows what's happening. So are the choices predetermined, pre-foreordained, all these things? All we know is what the Bible teaches is that man is held responsible for his actions. So on this first point of preservation, that God keeps all created things preserved, basically.

Here's the application. I want the scripture on the screen, probably throughout the sermon if possible, because this is going to be a good reminder for all of us. Here's the application. Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you.

In God, I will praise his word. That basically means in respect of you, God, I will look to your word. I will look to the promises you have made. In God, I have put my trust. I will not fear. What can flesh do to me?

And you have to be reminded that often, don't we? Because he says here, whenever I am afraid, that means we get afraid in our broken humanity, but when that happens, I will trust in you and I will put my mind back on you because where the mind goes, the body follows, right?

Where the mind goes, the body follows. So I will put my trust in you. I will put my hope in you. I will praise your holy name. What can flesh do to me? What can man do to you? Let me ask that question.

Is there anything man can do to you where you're worried about man and not God? There's nothing we can do. So that's the application. So how would that fit into our own lives? Well, here's how. What about anyone going through court battles?

Legality issues? Tough decisions? Come on, lots of yeses, right? The rebellious child, the broken marriage, failing health. That's why the title is God's Got This. Regardless of what it is, God has got this.

He's got this. And I was reminded of the old hymn in the 1800s. Many of you will know the name once I say a few of these stanzas. When we walk with the Lord in the light of his word, what a glory he sheds on our way.

While we do his goodwill, he abides with us still and with all who trust and obey. Trust and obey, there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. So God's got this, but often we need to realign ourselves with trusting and obeying.

Because when we get outside of that and I'm not trusting, I'm fearful now. Usually when I'm fearful, I'm not obeying, right? Because I'm gonna do things my way. I'm scared, so I'm gonna react instead of respond.

So we have to realign ourselves again with trust and obey. For example, the court battle. You have to be humble and gracious. You have to reflect the nature of Christ. Tough decisions. We have to submit and wait versus yelling and cursing.

The rebellious child, you have to be loving and gentle, not sarcastic and throwing a Bible at them. Right, reposition, reposition ourselves. The broken marriage, all of the above. Humble, gracious, submit, wait on God, loving and gentle.

Not yelling, sarcastic, throwing the Bible, throwing things. It's all about repositioning. And that leads me to the next point, concurrence. Here's this part of God's sovereignty, concurrence. God cooperates with created things in every action, directing their distinct properties to cause them to act as they do.

Concurrence: Human Responsibility Within Divine Sovereignty

You might go, what? What exactly is he talking about? Well, the Idelman version is this. God cooperates with created things, and within that, he allows them certain freedoms, even though he is still sovereign.

Now, we know that it's hard to give examples of God and the Trinity or different things, but for example, those who are sovereign in your home, you are the sovereign, right? You had guidelines, you were leading, you were in leadership, but within that home, you didn't control every action of the children or the people, right?

So within your sovereignty, they had choices, they had freedom, they had actions, and they were gonna be held responsible for those actions. Now, the one bad thing about that analogy is God's not us and we're not God.

So he can go outside of that and do things that we couldn't do. But my point was to try to give you this impression of God where he allows us to make choices within his sovereignty. And that's what gets confusing, is, well, God, if you're such a good God, how did you allow this to happen?

And see, that's where it's hard, too, because we know, let's take for disease, for example. We know that disease is the result of the fallen nature, right? Something happens in our DNA, the DNA sequencing, the cells not being able to replicate, the body not being able to heal itself, something happens in our DNA.

But we want God to fix everything. But in his sovereignty, he allowed man the choice, man's sin, sin entered in, so now it's almost, and that's one of the big arguments for when people ask, well, what is, especially in Christianity, why would a good God allow evil?

Why would he? The choice is either he stops all evil and we become utopia now, or he allows the choices of others to run themselves out. But within those choices, he can stop and say cancer healed, diabetes, heart healed, multiple sclerosis healed.

I mean, that's why on this topic, on one hand, it's exciting for me, but on the other hand, it's frustrating. Because I read, I read a lot of books on revival and different things that are happening in different countries, third world countries, and either all these people are lying, or you will see God healing in powerful ways.

People being set free of disease they've been struggling with, all kinds of things, that Jesus is gonna set you free this morning, and during worship, a person is just, no more cancer, no more multiple sclerosis, no more Parkinson's, it's just, they've been healed, they've been set free.

But why not everybody? Why some? And see, that's where you get the headache. And you go, God, why, why? Because I truly believe when people come in, in wheelchairs, if God prompts me, and there's a strong, strong faith rising up, and God, you know he's doing, I have no problem praying for those people, and watching God do that.

But I'm also cautious enough to know that if God's not in it, nothing's going to happen. So being sensitive to the move of the Holy Spirit. Do we get into a point where we're not that desperate for God?

And if we're not that desperate, we probably won't be seeking him to the degree many people, because when you go to, when I read these stories in other places, all they have is God, or nothing. Not Blue Cross, not Blue Shield, not I'll put it on Visa, not UCLA and Northridge down the street.

God, that's it. And see, I often wonder how much of that comes into play, because without faith, it's impossible to please God, and God often said, because of your faith, because of your belief. But we also don't, and I don't believe in the name it and claim it type faith movement, you just have to have enough faith.

Nobody should be sick, everybody should be healed, come on, it's all contingent upon your faith. But then that kind of puts faith above sovereignty, doesn't it? Because then God becomes under my control, versus the other way around.

So this is a, it's a frustrating topic, it's an exciting topic, but on one hand, I do see, I mean, if everybody's prayed for, right, then Shane's elevated to Jesus Christ, if everybody I pray for is healed, or any teacher, any preacher, anybody, if they're perfect, if they're the Midas touch, what do they call that?

Jesus could heal everybody perfectly because he knew the will of the Father. But we don't know the will of the Father, many times. So it's an interesting topic because people can get frustrated, but the psalmist declares that whatever the Lord pleases he does in heaven and on earth, even according to Proverbs 16, even the lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is wholly from the Lord.

Now, we don't do that today, I wouldn't advise it, but in the Old Testament, even a little bit in the New, in the book of Acts, they would cast lots. And they would say, okay, Lord, what's your decision?

They cast a lot. And that even that decision was from the Lord, I believe that's how they picked a disciple. Matthias, Matthias, however you pronounce it. And God's not going, why did the lot fall on that?

I didn't want Matthias. Man, that's gonna ruin my whole plan here. Now I'm gonna have to have Paul meet me on the road to Damascus, now I'm gonna have to have him write a book of the Bible. So God's not confused, he's not, so even that decision was of the Lord.

It's just amazing to sit and, I mean, it's just, this week I was just in awe with Abedneke and I had a headache, right? I was in awe, like, this is incredible, but my brain does not understand how this can all work together.

And that's the beauty of it, because, and people think they wanna know everything God does, that would be impossible, you'd just explode. You would cease to exist. The atoms, the protons, and all this, to try to understand who God is.

So here's the thing, God's sovereignty is the primary cause, our involvement is the secondary cause. And we talked about his perfect will, his permissive will, and what I do is I trust in his perfect will, but I pray for the permissive will.

So if something comes up in my family or in the church, Lord, I'm praying, I'm praying that you would change this course based on what I know. But see, that's another twist in this. We pray based on what we can see.

God makes decisions based on the future and his sovereignty. Country music fans, you remember that old song? Garth Brooks, thank God for unanswered prayers, if it was him, I don't know who started that thing.

But isn't that true? Thank God for unanswered prayers. Come on, let's be real this morning. You run into somebody you haven't seen 10 years, thank God I wasn't gonna marry them. Right, we dated, we dated, God, you rescued me.

Oh, thank God for unanswered prayers. I was on my face praying and praying and praying. And God said, nope. And we look back and we go, thank God for unanswered prayers because that would have destroyed me.

Or in other areas that we look back and we say, God, you know it's a perfect father. So that's why trust and obey comes in because we can get mad. Why did you take my family member? Why did this person pass away?

God, I don't know, I'm so mad right now. Why is my child sick? I mean, it's very hard to rejoice in the storm when your child is suffering and others around you. So it's a hard thing for a believer. But again, what is the application for this point as well?

God's got this, right? If you can memorize that, that would be very beneficial. Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you. And God, I will praise his word. And God, I have put my trust. I will not fear, I'm sorry.

I put my trust, I will not fear. What can flesh do to me? And this is why Romans 8 .28 is so important. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.

So here's the big question. Do you love him? Are you in his will? Those are the things we need to worry about. All things work together if we love him and we're living according to his will. Now, I know many of you are thinking, oh, I messed up here and there, I missed.

Welcome to the club. I don't think it's said those who love God to those who are called according to his purpose who live perfect lives without any sin, they never do anything wrong, then he will work it out for your good.

See, here's the thing, and I want to be cautious here, obviously, because you don't give people permission to sin, ever. But you do encourage them in the sin. You say that God's got this. If you get your heart right, it doesn't matter what your past was.

Do you realize that? So many, the devil use accusation after accusation about your past. Oh, you remember, hot shot. Don't you remember what you used to do? But God doesn't do that. Every time the devil does that, you just remind him of his future.

That's all you have to do. So once the heart gets right and we reposition ourself in the center of God's will, he can do amazing things. Yes, there are consequences. I say that often, there's consequences, but do you live in God's arms, redeemed and forgiven, or do you continue to live outside of his will?

And people come to church discouraged, and they go home discouraged because they're always allowing their past to shape their future. So in God's sovereignty, he says, if you come back to me, and it's interesting.

Many scriptures throughout the Old Testament, primarily, aren't always written from a perspective that people are living perfect lives. If you turn back to me, remember, if my people humble themselves and pray, tells me they haven't humbled themselves.

They've been bad boys and girls, right? They haven't humbled themselves. So God says, if you turn back to me, if you seek me, if you renew your commitment, if you get back on track, through concurrence, this aspect of theology we've been talking about, the enemy tries to derail God's train.

Concurrence means we work in cooperation with God. But the enemy will try to derail that train, won't he? That's what I believe one of his primary purposes is, or what his goal is. If you cannot, if a believer's a believer until the day they die, then he's going to try to stop your productivity.

He's going to try to silence your voice, detours to your destiny, basically. So here's how it works. Running alongside the sovereignty of God is the devil trying to trip the runner. Sitting next to the architect is the devil with an eraser.

In case you don't quite get it yet, let me, this last one should help even more. Standing next to the master builder is the devil with his hand on the wrecking ball. That's how we live. God's sovereignty, I'm working with God in sovereignty, and you've got a menace that's trying to sidetrack you every chance he gets with throwing rocks, putting things in your way, that's how he works.

And think of this for a minute. Moses, right, God's plan, Moses, to deliver the people of Israel. What happened to try to stop that plan? What did Pharaoh try to do? The Hebrews are getting way too strong.

Let's kill all the male children. Now, I don't know about you, but that would be a pretty horrific scene, watching children being killed when they're born. And Moses was, see, the enemy comes in, tries to stop the plan of God through Moses, and Moses continues, he's put in Pharaoh's house, and we know what happened there.

What about Esther? Wicked Haman tried to wipe out all of the Jews. God had a plan for this people to bring the Messiah. So here comes Haman through the works of the enemy to try to sidetrack that destiny.

Anybody remember when Jesus was born? They even quoted the prophet that was writing, Rachel is crying for her children. The king slaughtered all children, all males two and under, to try to stop that messianic reign, to try to stop Jesus.

So what God's trying to do, the enemy comes in and tries to stop that plan. I'm assuming all of you have heard of Adolf Hitler trying to eradicate Jews. Do you know what's happening a lot in, maybe you don't follow a lot of this, but in Syria or the Middle East, there are towns or areas where they've wiped out, they've killed all the Christians.

Do you understand that? As we're sitting in pews with heating and air conditioning at right temperatures, there are villages, there are entire groups of people being slaughtered for their faith. Now here's the interesting thing, I had a lot more examples, I'm sure you can think of examples.

Even the cross, the cross of Christ, the enemy thought was going to finally get rid of Jesus, but in God's sovereignty, that's why Paul said if the enemies of darkness knew what they were doing, they would ever crucify the Lord of glory.

They would have never done that, had they known. See, they tried to stop God's sovereignty. Now here's where it gets interesting, okay? I had to just pray for peace all week on this point. There's more examples I could have given from nations from the Hittites and the Amorites and the Babylonians and the Assyrians, and you see the devil coming alongside.

Government as an Instrument of God’s Providence

Here's the third aspect of sovereignty, God's governmental authority, God's sovereignty over government. See, all of these things I just mentioned were because of the governing authorities. God often works through, and evil often works through, governing authorities.

That's why this area is so important. On this issue of government, it says this, God has a purpose in all that he does in the world, and he providentially governs or directs all things in order that they accomplish his purposes.

We read in Psalm 103, 19, his kingdom rules over all. So it's not who's more powerful, Russia's coming here, China, America, it's he rules over all. Now there is a concept here. That government is bad.

People have, you're gonna hear it more lately as these kids that get a microphone think they know everything about the world at 18 years old. And that government's bad, America's bad, and all these things, and you're gonna, it's gonna, I don't know what's gonna happen, but we have to remember something.

That God often governs through government. The God institutes three institutions, the family, the church, and the government. And whether we like it or not, God directs, God restrains evil, God does certain things through government.

Now, of course, it all comes to our mind, well, what about this government? What about Russia, or China, or Shane? Have you read North Korea? And what about America? Look at how far we've drifted in different things.

But in all of those governments, God, Putin, for example, is still restraining evil in the sense of the drug trafficking. China, for example, Middle East, if you get caught trafficking drugs, you will be killed.

China, they have rules against certain types of evil. The problem is they're also against God, and their definition of evil. But let me read a scripture to you, I've quoted some from time to time, I don't know if I put it up in the screen in quite a while.

Romans 13, Romans 13, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. And it's telling Christians, we are to be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.

Now, what happens to, like, let's say, in the case of North Korea or China, is you will have atheistic regimes, hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, they're still in power. That's the difference.

You have maybe when Europe was formed, or when America was formed, you see a different type of spiritual climate. In New Zealand, Australia, the Middle East has been primarily Muslim, which they draw from Abraham, Ishmael, a different child of Abraham than the Jews would.

Isaac, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they would look at Abraham's lineage differently. So you have this type of Islam grow up in the Middle East. So it's usually those governing authorities have been there a while.

That's what's interesting. So God puts the governing authorities in positions of leadership for this purpose. Therefore, whoever resists authority resists the ordinance of God. And those who resist will bring judgment on themselves, for rulers are not a tear to good works, but to evil.

Here we go. He's saying here, whoever resists authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. Obviously, he's not talking about when a government makes a law, for example, someday legally, I have to marry gay couples, then I would have to break that law.

I can't go, it goes against God's word. If they say, listen, you can no longer preach from Romans, you can't do this type of church, you can't preach, you can't witness to people, then I would have to break that law because God's law supersedes man's law.

So what he's talking about here, though, is not that, he's talking about evil actions. Evil actions. And I'm in agreement with John Piper, who, in his commentary on this, he knows that Paul is writing Romans to the church in Rome.

He knows, obviously, Caesar is going to read his writings because they don't get out from Paul and out to the other churches without the governing authorities looking at those. So he's probably reminding Caesar, listen, you're to be a tear to those who do evil.

And that's why God orchestrates government, especially in our nation, many years ago, that the government is supposed to restrain evil and deter wrongdoing. And the church is supposed to be the conscience of the nation.

So technically, you could have them running together in the sense of the government does this, the church does this. But what happens now with our government is they take on a lot of the church's responsibility and things get very convoluted.

So rulers, the goal is, God's design is there to be a tear to good works. They are not to be a tear to good works, but to evil. So that's why, for example, how can a Christian, they say this, how can a Christian be for war?

Well, number one, I'm not for war. I'm against war. But God puts into position governing authorities that supersede my authority, that they are to avenge those who do evil. And Augustine wrote about, if you're interested, it's called the just war theory.

When a nation goes to war, there has to be three conditions meant biblically for them to do that. But it's not me being excited about, it's not me killing people, it's not me, it's God putting people in positions of authority to do his justice.

How, for example, how would you bring tyrannical forms of government to justice? How would you go against wicked regimes? Now, of course, all of us are thinking, well, what about this? What about that one?

What about this? Yeah, with sinful man, you'll get sinful actions. But you don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. So that's the things with Christians, being a pacifist, people would say, individual's a pacifist, that's wonderful.

Personally, as an individual, I have to err on the side of passivity, right? I'm not gonna grab a gun, I'm not gonna go to war. But if I'm working, then become under that government authority, a sheriff, right?

Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, SEAL Team Six. If you're under that government authority, then you actually have an obligation by God to be avengers of justice, to do his will in this area. Because if you've got 1 ,000 terrorists who wanna rape, pillage, and kill, then I have a responsibility, if I'm in the military, to defend that nation that they are coming against.

Just war theory means that there's an equal, or there's actually a legitimate concern. You don't just go in and take territory or different things, and America has done that before. Here's the thing with America.

The foundation was good and godly, but corrupt men came in and brought in things like slavery, or how they handled the Native American Indians, or how they took this war was not good, or that wasn't good.

But at the core, at the core was men and women fleeing persecution from England to Holland, then to the United States, the pilgrims, the Puritans, you look at their writings. If anybody wants to really know what people believed, what you have to do is you have to read the original intent of the founders, not secular revisionists of what they thought and what they said.

You have to go to their own writings. You have to look at what they believe. What did they say? Because the media, the college educational systems, everything is going to twist, the twist, the founding.

They're gonna twist things, and they're gonna make, well, here's how bad they were. Look at what they did. So I just go to the original writings. Let me read what the founders of the nation said. Let me read, I've got a book out there, One Nation Above God, or I'll have to bring more copies, where I've got three pages at the end of all the founding fathers who were against slavery.

Page after, or quote after quote after quote. Why don't you ever hear about them? Why? Because there's an agenda. Civil unrest. Let's get the African Americans and whites and Latinos, let's get everybody fighting again.

There's an agenda there, civil unrest. But we're to bring civil rest as believers. That's why there's no color of skin, there's nothing. We love all, I love any type of believer to come to church. That's the heart of Christ.

But the media and different groups will begin to shake and stir that to cause dissension. So all you have to do is look at their original writings. Look at what they did, what they believed. Do you want to be unafraid of authority?

Do what is good and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. Talking about the government officials, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. But if you do evil, be afraid.

For he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. See, back in the old days, in the Old Testament, it was vigilantialism, if that's a word.

You know what that is? Do you know what a vigilante is? You kill my brother, guess what? I'm coming after you. And that was legit. They actually had safe haven cities where people could flee to. Sanctuary cities, right?

The right kind. I'm not going there, you guys. Now, I told you this isn't, because government affects more than you think. Government affects more than you think. God will often work through Romans 13, but the enemy will pervert Romans 13 against believers, against those truly following Christ.