Proverbs 8:38 (Men At The Gates Pt. 3 - Identifying The Primary Gates)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged Strengthened in your faith and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you. When I was deployed to Iraq, I was a part of a targeting and surveillance group that used radar technology to acquire enemy rounds to target to destroy hostile enemy munitions.

Such as mortar teams rocket launch sites and other heavy artillery. My job was to track those rounds that were fired at our soldiers and through a lot of sophisticated math that happened within the radar Itself it would receive a location from where those rounds came from and then it was our job to call Counter-fire missions back on to them so that we could fire back at their location in under three minutes Having American metal raining back down on the enemy's head.

Now to accomplish that mission we were given millions of dollars of equipment. We were given hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of training. We were given a prominent position in Operation Iraqi freedom in the brigade that we were in.

And we were given all sorts of resources to find and eliminate Artillery and mortar rounds because those are what kill our people. But what we were not given is leadership as.

We said last week.

We were not given a really good or helpful or faithful set of rules of engagement. So that whenever we called in hostile targets that we would actually track. Our counter fire missions were being denied by upper brass.

We had men dying mortar rounds falling on top of them and yet our colonels would not clear our counter fire missions because of things like the Geneva Convention. Which made it impossible for us to do our job and it put our entire Battalion in harm's way and it made us like sitting ducks in the middle of the desert and thank the Lord.

That the Iraqis weren't really good at firing. Their aim wasn't the best. So even though we had all of the equipment all of the training we didn't have the leadership or the rules of engagement that would actually help us make a difference.

And. The reason I tell you this story is because the same tragedy I believe is unfolding today in the American Church. We have the equipment. The Word of God the Spirit the gifts of the Spirit the fruit of the Spirit the sacraments the training.

But without the leadership and the conviction and the courage we've become a well-armed army with muffin tops unable to actually get involved in the fight and That's why last week We began with the premise that if we are in a war for the world.

Then we need to know what the rules of engagement are. Before we can identify what the targets are. We need to actually know how we are to engage once we found them. Because if we don't we would end up like the radar team that I was a part of.

That could track the rounds but not call in counter fire. But now after last week after we've seen the rules of engagement, which is the Word of God. Repentance fighting under the banner of his Lordship.

Fighting from the epicenter of the church to build Jesus's church in every tribe tongue and late and nation. Fighting together as men and women fighting with hope fighting with clarity charity and order fighting to build something that lasts for Generations instead of something that just lasts for the moment.

Now that we know our rules of engagement.

Now.

We need to know what the targets are that we need to actually be aiming at if we want to see the establishment of Christendom. This week we're gonna learn how. Or no, sorry last week. We learned how we fight this week.

We're going to learn where we fight and If you want to understand the complete message that that I'm preaching today. You actually need to understand last week's sermon this week's sermon and next week's sermon.

Because it is all a part of a triad on the same topic. You'll need to understand where we fight and you'll need to understand that how we fight actually goes together. You'll need to understand that there's nine ways that we fight as Christians that we talked about last week today.

We're going to talk about three primary areas where we need to be aiming our Rounds downrange at and then next week. We're gonna be talking about nine Secondary places where we need to learn to wage war as Christians now.

This is all a part of Proverbs 834. Which we will read right now if you'll turn with me there and we'll see how all of these things come together in That great verse in that great chapter, and I'll read it to you.

Proverbs 834 says this Blessed is the one who listens to me watching daily at my gates and waiting beside my doors. Proverbs 834, let's pray Lord you say in your word that blessed is the man who watches daily at your gates.

Jesus said all authority in heaven and earth belongs to me. So therefore any gate that exists is yours. Whether it be a gate that supports Righteousness and the church and and the gospel or whether it be a gate that represents wickedness and depravity and sin.

Lord all throughout the Bible you say that you talk about gates as being the places of influence and commerce and government the places where men go and rule well the the places that actually dictate how the society is going to go are the gates and.

And Lord as we look at how our society has gone We can know that the gates have been overran and Lord as we've talked about last week. What does it mean to fight like a Christian for the to win the world?

Help us to remember those things. As we now look at three areas where we have to and we must fight. So that your kingdom would advance on earth as it is in heaven. Lord it's in Jesus name. We pray. Amen.

The Objective of Ruling Well at the Gates

First thing I'd like to share with you before we get to the three specific gates and these are three primary gates. These are three fundamental gates. These are the most basic gates that we ought to be working towards ruling well in.

But I want to say the first thing we need to do is we need to know our objective. The premise of this sermon is that we would be the kind of men the kind of women who would rule well in the gates. Because the gates of this world have been so utterly Co-opted by godless men who bow down to and are serving demons that Paul tells us.

We also have to be the kind of men who when we see that we've lost a gate we need to be the kind of men who will go and actually reclaim that gate and Wrestle it back out of the control of the enemy so that we can eventually rule well in the city gates again We've got to stop being the kind of church that looks at Christianity as the spiritual exercise and everything else as what the world does.

That's not true. All authority in heaven earth belongs to Jesus. Every square inch of the cosmos belongs to him as Abraham Kuyper once said there's not a square inch of reality that looks at Jesus and he doesn't say mine.

Government belongs to him. Education belongs to him. The church belongs to him. The family belongs to him. Everything in all reality belongs to Jesus. And if those things represent gates of influence We have to take them and we have to rule well as Christians there to bring Christendom To the nation saying I would ask you is this would a Christian ruler make more righteous laws than an unchristian one.

Of course.

With the law of God that he wrote would it not be better for our nation than the law of man? Absolutely. Here Proverbs is telling us to watch daily at my gates at God's gates and if everything belongs to God then we need to be the kind of people who bring God's rule and his authority and his love and his mercy and his power and his dominion and his Righteousness and his holiness and his law into every sector of life because there is no sacred secular divide.

There is no spiritual material divide. We're not Gnostics and If this language of gates seems new to you, I would remind you that All who are children of Abraham, which means if you're a Christian you Have been promised the gates of your enemies.

Did you know that? That the children of Abraham have been promised the gates of their enemies look at Genesis 22 7 your seed Abraham. Paul tells us that Abraham's seed is.

Christ.

Your seed shall possess the gates of his enemies. Jesus Christ is gonna possess all the gates. He's gonna rule over all the things. There's not a single thing that Jesus didn't die to claim authority over.

That's why I've already said this verse. But I'll say it again in Matthew 22 8 or 28 18 He says all authority in heaven and on earth belong to me. This is why Jesus died was to take back over leadership of this fallen world to supplant Adam as the failed head and to Make himself the true head by which all things will come back to him.

Therefore when Proverbs tells us to be watching daily at the gates It is summoning covenant men and covenant women to stand in the very places that Christ has already Claimed by his resurrection and to guard them and live like he's actually one to protect them from being lost and to secularism and to every other evil that permeates our society and This should come to no surprise to any of us.

We cannot even think about ruling well in those gates unless we have possession of them and We can't even have possession of them until we talk about actually Retaking them and reclaiming them because what we're gonna see today is we've lost most of the gates.

I cannot merely say to you that we have to retake the gates. If I'm not even telling you what we're aiming at also. That would be like me saying to a marksman and let's say that we go to a store that was filled with targets.

And I say I want you to hit the bullseye and he says, okay, which one I say, I don't know hit it. That makes no sense. So if we're gonna rule well, and we're gonna bring Jesus's reign Everywhere that it needs to be brought.

We need to know exactly what's been lost. And we need to know what the primary gates of civilization are. So that we as Christians can prayerfully biblically joyfully and righteously Take those things for Christ so that we would see our world stop going down the slippery slope to ruin and In saying that there's two errors that I want us to miss.

The first one is knowing where to fight but not knowing how to fight. The second one is knowing how to fight but not knowing where to fight. The first one is an unarmed sniper. Who is put in the middle of the battle without a gun?

That's foolish and stupid. But the second one is just as bad. It's an armed sniper. Loaded with all sorts of ammunition but made as a lifeguard over a swimming pool. He knows how to fight but he doesn't he hasn't been placed where He's needed to fight.

Today, I want us to not talk in those ways, but today and in next week I want us to aim to actually understand where we can fight to bring Jesus's kingdom to a world that is lost and dying. And going to hell apart from the gospel of Jesus.

This week we're gonna be talking about the three primary gates next week. We're gonna be talking about the nine secondary gates and I will begin with the most important primary gate of them all. The thing that we must claim.

The thing that we must have the thing that we must rule. Well, then and that is the gate of worship. That is the sphere of the church. All dominion begins with the dominion of God before we can build cities and before we can do any of that We actually have to rebuild the sanctuary of the fallen Church in the West.

Before we can shape culture. We need to actually know the king that rules over it. Christian Dominion begins with Christian doxology. Before any man can rule in the gates of the world. He has to rightly rule to the God of heaven and That is why the enemy's first and most fierce Campaign against the things of God is always leveled at the worship of God.

Long before he corrupts the governments or the schools. He corrupts the pulpits in the people. Long before he captures parliaments. He captures the praise bands. Because the enemy knows from thousands of years of observing us that whoever rules the worship of a people rules the people.

Whoever is over the hearts of men ends up ruling the hands of men. If the enemy can desecrate the Church of God he can desolate the city of man because politics is downstream of our faith and This is where a bit of honesty comes in the temple of Christ.

The Church of Christ is in shambles today. The gate of worship Christ's own house the church has been breached by almost every imaginable foe. Charismania has turned the worship of God into a circus where emotion replaces truth where tongues replace Thinking and theology where men and women convulse and bark and laugh themselves into a spiritual stupor.

Thinking that chaos is a fruit of the Spirit. In the mainline denominations the rot runs deeper still. Pulpits that were once a flame with the Word of God now bow down to rainbow flags and perform same-sex weddings and ordain.

Women.

Bishops of Canterbury. The so-called seeker sensitive movement has turned Sunday into a sanctified pep rally a joke fog machines. Sermons without any mention of hell or sin or or what it really means to be forgiven in music without the grandeur of God.

Worship has become a theater and a spectacle and the sanctuary of God has become a stage for the performance of professionals and the ministry. Has become a mascot for modernity even among the Orthodox Church.

Anti-intellectualism has taken root among the Roman Catholic Church. Sacramentalism and Marianism are golden calves that the Lord himself will judge many churches Boast about their passion while starving for any sort of perceivable biblical depth.

We have produced a culture of Christian men in Christianity who would rather feel something than know something and we have forgotten that our Lord our Commander has commanded us to love him with all of our heart and All of our mind and even more than this.

The faithful churches in this land and in this state in particular are mired with financial struggles. They barely eke by they're unable to afford their own buildings. They wonder if they're going to be able to withstand the famine and the depth of the lack of Affections for the things of God that is descended upon our world.

We have a nation filled with a graveyard of churches and churches that are in root to their death. That can sing right now, but they cannot know him. They preach a kind of unity that is damnable and they're mired in division.

They can raise their hands But not their standards. The lamps of Zion are flickering in this country and the state of Christianity is pitiful and yet the lights of Babylon blaze with oxygenated vigor and the fruit of this Ecclesiastical downgrade which is what Spurgeon called it in his day is all over the place.

The church today is filled with cowards from the pulpit. Who won't preach truth? The churches are filled with doctrinal confusion. The churches are filled with Sentimentality instead of the spirit. The churches are filled with a feminine leadership instead of masculine men.

Elders who are selfish and self-serving who would destroy the church from within. Congregations that cannot choose rightly between being relevant and being reverent. The Lord's Day has been desecrated.

The pulpit has been Prostituted the sacraments have been stripped of their gravity and the people of God have been traded have been told to trade in the gold of New Jerusalem for the glitter of Babylon.

And The modern church today as Paul Washer once said is Like a hooker in the night who would rather be loved by the world than ruled by her Lord. But scripture doesn't let us forget That great Lord that we are Defaming.

Habakkuk 2 20 says the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him. Why should we be silent? Why should we shut our mouths and bow down our faces and worship him because he alone is holy and we've lost our vision.

David says in Psalm 96 verse 9 worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. Tremble before him all of the earth. True worship of God. True affections for God. True knowledge of God doesn't produce frivolity and.

Harlotry in worship.

But it produces trembling and fear and awe and affections for God reverence and devotion. That's why Paul says in Hebrews 12 28 through 29 offer to God acceptable worships worship with reverence and awe.

For God is a consuming fire. The Word of God Knows nothing of flippancy in worship. The God who thundered at Mount Sinai who rained down fire outside of the tent of meeting who fumigated? Solomon's temple with the smoke of charred lambs.

The one who struck down Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire the one who killed Ananias and Sapphira because they lied in front of the presence of God has not changed. He's the same God yesterday today and forever.

His holiness has not aged out. His worship has not evolved. The problem today Is not that the world has grown stronger. It's that the church has grown weaker and. And we are to blame for the secularization of the world in the same way that the light being turned off is to blame for the darkness in the same way that the salt being removed is responsible for the rot.

For presenting strange fire to God should we be surprised that the world is burning. And if we ever want to reclaim The world for Christ. If we ever want to see God's kingdom move again and grow again.

Where their cathedrals planted on every hill that proclaim the name of God to the nation's. If we want to do that. If we want to see the halls of government even filled with Christian princes if we want to see our homes.

Participating in family worship. If we want to see every secular stronghold demolished. We must reclaim right worship of God. That's why Peter says in first Peter 4 17 that judgment begins with the household of God.

And it will be so in our day. Because revival and Reformation are Not going to happen until we are revived and we are reformed and the world actually has something worth coming to the health of the church's worship is Emblematic of the health of her witness when the sanctuary grows sick.

It will not be long before the city streets start puking. When the pulpit loses her core her courage the culture then loses its soul. That is why brothers and sisters. Especially my brothers we must be watchmen at the gate.

We must guard the purity the holiness and the vitality of worship. You don't come here to consume a Christian service. You come here to participate in the Church of Jesus Christ. You're not here to receive and Two hours.

You're not here to receive two hours of church to check it off your list. You are here to be watchmen on the gates. That's why I would implore you brothers.

To be watchmen on the gates.

And to be watchmen on the doors.

Seeing is that this little church is one small minority in the state of Massachusetts trying to be faithful at the gates. That if you see division festering in the body of Christ that you would cut it out like a Surgeon would use a knife to cut out gangrene.

If you sense discouragement in your brother. You go and you infuse him with courage you grab him by the collar and you say hope in God. Brother if you notice weakness consider it your goal to remedy it.

And if you are doing anything and I mean anything That would harm the witness of this church or would jeopardize the health of this church. Whether it be sin in the light sin in the shadows or sin in the heart.

Repent of it this day. Because who among us would ever want to stand before King Jesus being known by the legacy of my behavior killed a church. Men, you're not spectators. You're here to build. You're here to build the Church of God.

You're not here to criticize her. You're not here to to put her down. You're here to build her up. You're here to be the solution to the problem that you see. You're here to contribute to her health. You don't watch her struggle to pay her bills.

You get out your checkbook and you fund it. You don't let her languish without leaders. You read the passages about what it means to be a leader and you start working your tail off to become that man.

So that you can be a leader in the Church of Christ. You work so that the next generation of men when we're dead and gone we'll have a banner to carry forward. The church is not a theater for consumers.

It is a barracks for her soldiers. And there are too few gospel preaching churches left in our land. For us to take for granted this one and it must be our collective mission to make sure that her lampstands continue Shining brightly and that they do not go out quietly in the night and We must do it by any means necessary under heaven to the glory of Christ.

That is the first gate is the worship gate. And I would pray that you would contribute to the health of it so that we can continue to herald the gospel here. Amen. The second gate is the gate of the home.

The second sphere of authority that God has established in the world is the home. If Worship in the church is the wellspring of Jesus's Dominion. Then the household is its riverbed. Let me say it this way.

The kingdom of God flows out from the sanctuary and it flows directly into the living room. It flows from the pulpits of the playroom. It flows from the Lord's Day into every day. The Church of Jesus Christ is the mother of all the faithful.

But the home is her incubator. Her the home is her outpost. The home is the the little fob forward operating base for the kingdom of God. It's the household and the family that was the very first government that was established on earth.

It was the first economy that was established on earth. It was the first church that was established on earth. The household is where the nations are discipled for generations of faithfulness or prepared for calamity and ruin and Just as the enemy storms the gates of worship trying to infiltrate the church.

You better bet your dog your bottom dollar that the enemy is working overtime To corrupt and get into the home and let's make this specific your home. The satanic assault on the home over the last several decades has been relentless systematic and devastating.

It began with feminism convincing women that motherhood was bondage and that it was not their glory to build up their home So that they would go out and compete with and serve other men. It continued in the effeminacy of men persuading them to lay down their scepters to abdicate their duty to confuse Meekness with weakness and to trade in their testosterone for man boobs and estrogen.

The rot on the home metastasized even further when the sexual revolution in this country on tethered marriage from fruitfulness and faithfulness redefining covenant norms as Just sex for pleasure bodies colliding together in motion for carnality.

It happened when the state incentivized men to sleep around and impregnate women and abandon their wives to single motherhood producing fatherlessness in this country. And Guess who was ready to take up the mantle of the absent father?

But the godless secular state that caused the problem in the first place. Today you can define government by this definition. Government is the ones who give the unrighteous solution to the sinful problems.

They created and And in creating this problem, they've declared themselves the de facto husband and father of the family promising to provide for the family through welfare and other government programs to educate the family through Pornified curriculum to rule over the family with an iron fist of bureaucracy demanding that your sons serve in their forever wars and your daughters exist for their pleasure and Taxation as a tithe to the religion of state.

Today fatherlessness is an epidemic. The living room has become a digital brothel where lust and depravity are pumped in instantly at the speed of light. Where wives are exhausted not from building up their home, but from building up some other man's company.

Where children are catechized on YouTube and tick-tock where the family the only family altar that remains is The shiny television screen that demands your allegiance and your time. We've built houses in this country, but no longer covenant homes.

We've raised children, but we've not raised disciples. We are drowning in luxury and yet we are starving for legacy. And in that way the modern home is no longer a fortress it is a playpen of demons. And yet this is not how it was meant to be.

And Genesis 1 and 2 God established the family is the first institution under heaven. He blessed him and said be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. God's plan for the family was that it would be the epicenter of blessings that would bring blessings to all the world.

And in that way Every father was originally designed to be a prophet a priest and a king in his household Teaching his family the Word of God. Leading them like a faithful priest in prayer ruling them like a faithful king with love and justice from God.

Every mother was meant to be a pillar of our future civilization. Proverbs 14 1 Forming souls and forming children who would take their own place one day upon the wall. But when sin entered into the home Disorder followed.

The very first thing that you see immediately is that men stopped leading? Women stopped submitting and children stopped obeying. Isn't that not what Genesis 3 and 4 are entirely about and today The modern church's failure to guard the gate of the home has been nothing short of catastrophic.

Many pastors will rail against the world's corruption while ignoring the collapse within their own pews and within their own homes. We rightly lament drag queens infiltrating libraries. But do we lament that our sons are being raised by screens.

We decry public schools. But we don't do family worship. We're shocked by the state's encroachment into the home and yet we hand our children to Caesar for 10 ,000 hours of formal indoctrination a year.

We should not marvel that our culture has become like Sodom when the church stinks like ancient Babel. And the solution is where it's always been With repentance and Reformation that begins in the home.

Men rise up and be patriarchs of your home. Lead yourself first and Then once you've led yourself lead your wife, and then once you've led your wife lead your home be the head over one woman and be the patriarch of a household and.

Wives.

Realize that you're not a prisoner in a Christian marriage. You are the crown and you are the glory of your husband. You are the buttress and the pillar of truth in your little world. And children are Not just accessories.

It's weird walking in Boston with with four plus children because people think that you're strange. Children are not accessories. Children are arrows in the quiver of a godly man meant to be Sharpened so that they can be aimed into the heartland of the enemy's territory for future victories.

The home must be built up as a little covenant outpost and each family a small cathedral of worship and order. And love for God every man take this as your charge. Lead your family at your dinner table pray with them lead them read the scriptures to them sing songs of worship with them.

So that your home echoes the Psalms and the catechisms and the prayers of the Church of Christ every week. Come to the Lord's service. Where other families are here to worship God and feast at the table of Christ discipline your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord so that when they are old they will grow up and they will not depart from it.

And Man, if your family is living below this calling right now repent. Repentance for whatever reason strikes at the soul of our pride and our depravity. But I would ask you to have courage and repent and lead your family.

Well, it is not worth. Raising children who are going to be stolen by the enemy because you didn't disciple them. It's not worth it and you'll regret it all your days. If you see your children being rebellious pray with them.

Call them to repentance. And brothers if you see families in this church that are struggling come alongside of them and help them. One of the worst things you can do is stand in judgment over another brother and say.

Look at how terrible their family is. There's too much of that in the church. Come alongside of them. Encourage him encourage her help them show them teach them. Apprentice them come over to their house and lead them in family worship and show them how it's done.

Do it. Because the health of the family Will dictate the health of the nation? That's the second gate. The third gate that we're going to talk about today is the gate of government. There's the church.

There's the home and there's the civil government. Those are the three governments that God has established on earth and each of them have their domain of authority and In this way a nation and its culture is nothing more than a thermometer of the state of the homes and the church listen what I said there the nation itself the third government that God established is a thermometer of the health of the family in the church.

If the families in a country are unhealthy and the church in the country is unhealthy the government will be unhealthy and sick. If The church is compromised and the home has been corrupted then the nation will be enslaved by a million lusts.

The disease always begins in the church. It spreads through the family and it washes itself out in the capital. That's why if we want this country to be Christian and you should. Then we must rebuild the church we must restore the home and we must take back the government from the godless who are leading it to kill a million babies a year and slaughter boys genitals in Sterilized clinics and all other types of godlessness.

God himself is the one who established the civil government in Romans 13 1 there is no authority except from God and Those that are exist are established by God and then later Paul says that that government exist to reward the good and to punish the evil.

That's the role of government that it's a minister of God. The same word used for a pastor is used for a governor and his role was not to replace the church or the home but to protect them and to Punish evil so that the society that we live in is one that is safe for legacies to be flourishing.

But when a government ceases to be a minister of God It becomes a minister of Satan and that is the time that we live in. John Calvin said that when God punishes a nation he gives them wicked leaders.

Why has God punished our nation by giving us such wicked leaders. Because the church is utterly corrupted and the family has fallen. That's why today we live in a time period where our governors call evil good and good Evil.

Isaiah 520 they've codified abortion. They've celebrated perversion. They've preyed on children. They've subsidized idleness. They've criminalized righteousness. They fly rainbow flags like their celebrations of Liberty instead of nooses around sanity.

They've used money to fund wickedness all over the earth. If you look at the pork barrel spending in our money that we spend in Congress you will find things like hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars going to Argentina for LGBTQ studies.

Because what you value you evangelize and Our country values death. So they evangelize it all over the world and today you have pastors Who use Romans 13 to tell you to follow wicked governments in their wickedness.

Very same governments who've declared war on righteousness. That is why during the Wu flu We did not obey we still met. Because government has a role but when they tell you not together and the scripture says do not neglect together.

You don't listen to them. You listen to the Word of God because they're a minister of righteousness. Not a minister of evil and if they begin doing evil you do not obey. You do not obey a government that tells you to do things that violate the Word of God they are going outside of their role and they are trying to say that the state is God and That's what the modern state has become a bloated idol swollen with pride demanding worship from its citizens.

Promising to feed your children heal your sickness educate your family and Secure your future only if you bow the knee. But like all false gods, it cannot save it cannot forgive it cannot heal it cannot bless and yet men keep bowing down to it.

Don't they? They trade the bread of heaven for government rations the great physician for subsidized medicine the sovereignty of God for the safety of Pharaoh and in so doing. They have been they have enthroned the creature instead of the Creator.

But when rulers reject Jesus Christ, which is what our leaders have done except for a very small minority. That call upon the name of the Lord in our government. Our laws become slavery our courts become circuses of injustice.

Did you hear recently? About the man who stabbed the child in the head while it was sleeping. What a perversion. But should we expect anything different from godlessness? There is no such thing as a non-religious government.

Every government there's no such thing as a secular government. It doesn't exist. Every government's bowing down to something either. They're gonna bow down to the crown of Christ or They're going to put the crown on their own head and say the state is God and that's what our state has done.