Taylor, Tom: Woodside Bible Chapel Conf-1988-06 ~ Scripture Is Authority

And I'm glad to be with you this evening again. I mentioned this morning that I placed on the table out in the lobby, in the foyer, or in the outer room, or the hall, or whatever you want to call it. I placed out there some yellow back books that look like that, that had the extract of my comments from these talks contained within them. For those who may have picked those up and looked at them, you discover that the longer they go, the skimpier the notes are, and that's because it's hard for me to write the notes in advance of the talk. It's not hard to write it afterwards. They might not be any better, but they're longer when done afterwards. So I mentioned that I had that. I said that this morning I didn't pass them out in advance for people to read. I don't believe in creating any unnecessary diversions in your audience, and some places give out comics before the service, and some places give out Power Magazine and things like that. I always say, wait till the meeting is over and get that stuff, then you can read it on your own time at home. That's how I kind of feel there, but I have some of those out there. If you'd like to pick one up, you're welcome to it. I have a few more in a coat rack. I always make enough as a rule, so I have them stuck around in different places, but I don't leave them when I go. When I go, I take them with me. I also left a few copies of the biblical bulletin out there with our current issue and various things of that sort in it. I've been talking with you about the government of God these last three Sundays. We define government of God as his oversight, his rule over all of creation, and particularly over us. And I broke that down into three groups of two discussions each. So I talked with you about the fact that the word of God is the authority of his government, and that in his government we have a proper relationship to the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. Last Sunday I talked for a bit about the how God's government directs the affairs of everyday life, and also how it necessarily directs our personal relationships. And then today I've been looking at the institutions that are close to us, and so this morning I talked about the government of God and the church. And what I tried to say this morning, as far as the church is concerned, having defined church several times, was that the church ought to glorify God in its yieldedness to him. And I said that it's not enough that we talk about the whole world concept of believers, you have to bring that down to the handful or the group or the party that you associate with, whatever it happens to be. That's kind of behind us. Tonight I want to talk with you about the government of God and our major institutions, and the major institutions are the state and the home. I will say more about the home than I will about the state, and won't say enough about either of them, probably, but that's where we are tonight. I want to read for background scripture, first in Romans thirteen and then in Colossians chapter three. First in Romans thirteen with these words regarding the state, and then in Colossians chapter three. So there are some people that think you should never mention the state publicly. They think that's getting into politics. I think you can do that, but I don't think that we should ever come to a point where we can't mention things that the scripture mentions. I think if we get to that point, then we have missed out a great deal in God's word. So you can relax. I'm not politically oriented, but I do think there are some things about the state that ought to be known in the government of God sense. So first, in Romans thirteen, these words about the state. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God, for they that resist such shall receive for themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same, for he's the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain, for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore you must needs be subject not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. And for this cause pay ye tribute also, for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. And I will remind you that these verses were written at a time when the government of the Roman Empire was a long way from being what we would call fair, just, or equitable. It was a sorry kind of a mess. But the apostle is speaking theoretically and logically about what God does, and making it incumbent upon us to honor the work of God. And then the second passage that I want to read are these few verses in Colossians three which talk about home. In Colossians three, Uh, the great verse that unites this chapter together is verse seventeen where we're told that whatsoever we do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. And then the various household ministrations are treated in the next few verses, at verse eighteen: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. Then there is a word to servants, and verse twenty three is the verse I'll conclude with. Whatsoever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men. Now, if you wonder why I've put these institutions together, it's because I don't have another night to speak, that's why. I did want to touch on both of them just a little bit. Uh, they can both be put together because the one is an institution for domestic blessing, the other one an institution for national blessing, and they are not really that diverse in character or in what God does with them. So I will touch on each of them a little bit in our discussion with regard to the government of God on the state and on the home. And what I will emphasize is the general truth that God orders society for his will and for blessing. Blessing is pretty honest, I think, in that connection. God orders society for blessing, blessing in accord with his will. Man has not worked it that way. Men have corrupted a lot that God has said, but that does not alter the pattern of God. He orders it for blessing. He ordered it in Eid for that. He ordered it after Noah's day for that. He orders it with the law for that. God orders society for blessing. He's not a God of chaos. He's not a God of ruin or a God of chance. He is a God of order and of love and of power and integrity. God is those things. So he orders society for blessing. And the two institutions which are most prominent in society are the home and the state. The one being a domestic thing to care for us individually, the state being that wider body to care for the needs of man on a national scale of things. And since God orders society for blessing, what I will say to myself and you too is then let our institutions, let our institutions honor God. Uh, we cannot control the nation totally, but let's tell it a few things, but our homes are much more within the regard of our control. So let us in our institutions, honor God. He lays out society for blessing. Let us then, in our institutions, honor God. In state as we have opportunity, in the home certainly as we have opportunity, let us honor God. And if somebody says, what do you mean by honor God? We mean, let us show that what God has done is right and credible and practical as we put our minds and hearts to it. I talked the other night about honoring parents and various other degrees of honoring things that I shan't get into this evening, but the emphasis is that the home honors God when the people in it live by the principles that God establishes and for the purpose that God gave it and set it up for. It may have other things, it may have a bigger house or a smaller house or a tent or a lean-to or any number of crazy ideas, but it honors God when the people in it live up to the things that God has told them to be and to do, and that is also true in the nation. Now, if you say to me, we can't do much about the nation, you are right. We are told, however, about praying for the nation in First Timothy two, and we can all certainly do that, and there are some other things that we can do as well in the process of time. The emphasis in life is not to be a person who knows all the things we can't do. That's worthless. Be a person who knows what God can do, and learn to pray and depend on God for the doing of those things, and then do what God will allow you to do. It's too early in the evening to ramble very much, although that doesn't bother me other times, so I guess it shouldn't bother me now. But you see, there are always people who say, well, we can't do anything about this, we can't do anything about that, we can't do anything about something else. I've got friends who can give you hours lectures on what we can't do anything about. I have that, you know, to some extent they're true, but the problem is, is that I like to be a positive thrust in life, and I like to think what we can do things about, and we can all pray for things, even things that otherwise we don't think we can do anything about. Our hearts can cry out to God, and many other times, other opportunities are given to enable us to do things to serve God too. So are you with me? Are you awake? It's a cold night. When I sat down to sing these hymns, I began to doze off. Would you believe it? I've had a very nice day, but it's like being on the farm again. You come in out of the cold into a warm room, you sit down, the first thing that happens is you begin to feel sleepy. So I offer you my advice. If you must sleep, do it. Try not to snore, and try not to do it in a position where you will need orthopedic help when the service is over. I don't know how many people there are that can give that sort of thing. When I run into somebody who can't straighten up, I just tell him to lie down. I jump on his back with both feet two or three times, and usually the pain will bring him to himself. But understand that's not medical advice. I don't want any malpractice suits on it. That's not medical advice. So if you must sleep, try to be in as comfortable position as you possibly can, and be sure not to slump against the person sitting next to you. That is really deadening when you're trying to stay awake and some slumber party fella is falling over on you from either side. But I will not fault you. I appreciate your coming out very, very much. Better to be here and sleepy than home sleeping. So I appreciate your coming out very, very much. Well, then the emphasis is that God has ordered society for blessing, that our institutions honor God. First of all, let them see that they're accountable to God. Let the state see in Romans thirteen that God gives it the power to exist. Let it be accountable to God. And let me with my home see that God created this circumstance, made women for men, and put them together, and established them, and blessed them, and gave them children and whatnot. But let me with my home see that I am accountable to God too. Let both the state and those who build the homes know that they are not the supreme force, that God is, and that they are accountable to him. If you say the state is slow to learn that, I suppose that's right, although we often have legislators and men in government who know it and who live in the good of it. But we, in the framework of our own governmental structures, ought to be able to live in the good of it every day. I ought to remember that I'm accountable to God for my stewardship with my family and the circumstances that surround me. I often think that was a physical property. You know, you invite eight kids in, you invite eight kids in for a Bible club. The next thing you know, they've kicked a hole in the plaster, one of them has, one of them has pulled out the electric cord and almost shorted himself to death. But that, those are things extreme, but they do happen, see. It's possible to worry so much about things like that, that I forget that ultimately I'm accountable to God, not for a wall with no holes in it, but for how my total being is used for his glory. I certainly don't want people to destroy things. We had some grandchildren stay with us for four months, well, uh five months, six months, my whole lifetime almost. And I would like to tell you, in the first three months they were there, they broke everything except the side of the wall and the ceiling, and the side of the wall suffered it. That's an exaggeration. They didn't break the refrigerator, just the light in it, and didn't break the stove, just the door, you know. It's a, so there were some things they didn't touch and are not particular, just normal kids like you were once, and like I still am. But I just, just that sort of thing. I don't mean we stand back and say these things are unimportant to us, but we remember that our accountability is to God for how home and life and property and everything else is used. And you may discover that having a car with no scratches on it does not count that much in heaven as compared to one that's been scratched by pulling some guys to Sunday school in it. I don't have the final word on that, but you may discover that things go along that way. The problem we have with the state is that the state thinks that it's supreme. That's what we have with these communist states. They will rule without God, but they will discover someday that their accountability to God has been missed, and they will be the worst for it to no small degree. We need to remember that too. I like to talk to people who are running for office to ask them if they understand that they're accountable to a higher power than the people that vote for them, that somehow God expects integrity and truth. Why else are we told to pray for kings and for those that are in authority in the Timothyian letters? They have an accountability to God, and when I find people who know that, they don't have to be giant and other, if they know that, and if that somehow touches them, then I frankly am thankful and appreciative and feel I've got somebody working that has some standard and substance to him beyond the normal course. I've had friends all my lifetime who didn't want to vote because they thought if you voted for the man that didn't win, you were voting against the will of God. And I don't fight with them. Honest, I don't. But it never occurred to them that if I went out and bought a sausage from Jones Sausage Company and Jones went broke next month, that they bought it against the will of God in buying a sausage. Thought never occurred to them. And yet the maintenance of all of these things is under the providence of God. Under the providence of God. You'll have to find your own spirit, I think, and you don't need guys like me to growl at you about it. But it's an important point to bear in mind that state and church, I'm sorry, state and home are accountable to God. They ought to see that accountability, and sometimes we who are believers need to help them see it. Sometimes you need to help some homes see it. You'll see some circumstance where parents don't care a thing about the spiritual status or the well-being of the children. Sometimes you have to help them see it. And sometimes we have to do that in these governmental levels too, where we reach out to help people see that we are accountable to it. The second thing I'll emphasize, and remember what I'm saying? God has ordered society for blessing, therefore let the institutions honor God. Let them be accountable to God. And secondly, let them be directed, let them be directed to his will, to his will. And the passage in Romans thirteen with regard to the state is that will of God that it should work for against evil works and not good works. We're seeing a lot of questionable things in our country. If you don't read at least one of these Christian Legal Society magazines, I guess you save a lot of headaches, but you really need to read one along the line. Uh, the Concerned Women's magazine that the Lahey Institution puts out is a good one to start with. It, uh, surveys things pretty nicely. We're seeing a lot of things that work against righteousness in our country and not enough that work for it. But the state ought to work for the will of God. It ought to work for that which agrees with God's word, and we have a perfect right to tell people that that's what they ought to work for. Now, they are accountable to God, so if they don't work for it, eventually God will hold the rule in those particular things. But they are accountable to work for the will of God in the direction of God's will, by maintaining order in the case of the state, by working as a punisher of that which is wrong and a rewarder of that which is right. And Paul, against the background of a very corrupt government, tells us that that's what government ought to do. And when people say to me, you know, that things were different in the apostles' age, yeah, they were different. They were about ten times worse than they are today, a good ten times worse than they are today. They were really different. Christianity has been a great impact on the world, and the gospel since the days of the Reformation has been life-changing in country after country. Whether you like it or not, it's made a great, great impact for good. And now we're seeing some of that impact lost as people forget their accountability and forget to work towards the will of God, but they ought to do it. They both ought to direct their activities towards the will of God, and in the case of the state, Romans thirteen tells them pretty much what that will of God is. When you come to the home as a little more nebulous in some ways, but I take these passages in Colossians and the kindred passages in Ephesians to do it pretty well, that the will of God for the home is that it exhibits a good status of order for the creative work of God to be seen as the right work. I tie that into First Peter three also. The will of God for my home, in a practical sense, is that it exhibits the wisdom of God in the way that he's arranged things, in the way that he's appointed society. Now, some of us have come from more different kinds of homes. Uh, it's hard to talk about them honestly, uh, and it's hard to talk about your own honestly, I think. My boyhood home saw a lot of strife. I don't like to think about it or talk about it today because it's over, but it saw a lot of strife. So I came from a home that was a great deal of strife. A great deal of strife does not exhibit the goodness of God. A great deal of hatred and jealousy does not exhibit the goodness of God. A great deal of anger and a great deal of tribulation invoked by us. You know, if it comes external, that's, but it doesn't exhibit the goodness and grace of God. And the home somehow, in the concept of this Colossian passage, ought to reflect the order of God and the wisdom of God's arrangement. And all you have to do is have a place where there's a great deal of fighting and bickering, and what it shows is not the glory of God, but the disorder of men and women. And we need to bear that sharply in mind. So the home ought to be appointed to do the will of God in that particular sphere. You can't govern all the community about you. You can't make sure your crabgrass grows better or worse than the other fellas. I kind of like crabgrass myself. I don't know why people spend so much time getting rid of it. It's green all the time and only brown in the fall and crowds out weeds and does all kinds of stuff, so I've never known it. But the home, see, has no direct order from God what the lawn should be like, but how the people should live and how they should comport themselves, that's pretty clear in a passage like this. So let the home be concerned for that. I'm not able to answer every question on the subject, even if I had hours and hours, but the problem is that we sometimes forget the accountability, and we sometimes forget the doing of the will. Stamp those things in your mind, that these institutions that God has created are first of all to be accountable to him, and second, to be directed to his will. For the continuation of the message, please turn the cassette to side two. And then the third thing I emphasize, let both of these institutions fill their assigned duties. Let them both fill their assigned duties. I shan't say much about the state here. Let them both fill their assigned duties. I shan't say much about the state here. Let it keep order. You know, it's amazing the number of people that don't like the police until they get into difficulty. I've kind of always liked the police. When I was a boy, I used to get lost in Pittsburgh, and they'd find me and give me ice cream. I've always had great sympathy for the police. They would sit you on a little counter, and they'd say, what is your name, little boy? And usually after about ten minutes of silence, you got some ice cream. Sometimes it didn't take that long, and after the first time, you had to go to a new precinct station every time, because when they knew you in the precinct in the west end of Pittsburgh, when they found out who you were in the Sheridan precinct, they just sent you, you know, they called your folks. I didn't do it. It's, it's a long story, but I've always kind of liked the police. Some people don't like them, although I've thought of them as being friends. When I'm driving down the highway, I think of them as being friends, keeping me from ruining my car by going too fast and making others obey the law too. I've always thought that way, and I have respected them, I think, and felt that thing about them. What they ought to do is to preserve the order of things and circumstances. They ought to be concerned with righteousness. I'm always bothered when a scandal comes up in which the police are involved in grafts and whatnot, but, but I'm not surprised because even the preachers get involved in things like that. And if the guys that are really supposed to know what God wants, if they slip, how can you blame others terribly if they slip too from time to time? We don't condone it, we just recognize it. There it is. Now let's cure it and get on with things in a proper and righteous way as much as we can. Let them fill the assigned duties. Let the state do that. As far as the church is concerned, as far as the home is concerned, I look at all these people in Colossians three. Let them fulfill the assigned duties. Let the wives be good helpers to their husbands. They are called to them for helpmates. Let them be that. The concept of submitting yourself under your own husband for a wife is not the idea of being a doormat in the foyer of the house. Foyer, well, whatever it is you come in at. It's not the idea of that. It's the idea of being an agreeable person who, after conference and discussion, agrees to what necessarily needs to be done. That's the concept of submission. I will say to you quickly, see, there's lots I don't fully know in those subjects, but I'll remind you that the husband is called the head of the wife. He is never called the head of the home. Contrary to all those books on the subject, he is called the head of the wife. If you doubt me, just read it. In Ephesians, he's called the head of the wife, and some people, that may make him the head of the home, but there's more to a home than a wife, in most cases. Most cases. It's even possible to have a home without a wife. But in that case, I don't know what he's head of. But emphatically, he's called the head of the wife, and in that particular circumstances, he's given a responsibility for God, for order, and for direction, and she's given the concept of being submissive to him. My wife will tell you that the word obey never occurs in these commands between the wife and the husband, and that's pretty hard to argue against, unless you do some funny retranslation of Greek words. It's hard to argue against, but in English it goes that way. The idea is not that the wife is a slave, that the husband says more iced tea, and she says, I'll bring it right away. I just kind of feel that men like that deserve to have it poured on them. That's what I kind of think of. I mean, it can be said nicely, you know, it can be said, I'm in this comfortable chair, dear, couldn't you bring me some more iced tea? I'm sure those things can be handled well, and I don't interfere in the way you run things in your home or the circumstances, but she is not a slave. And that's why in First Peter three they are called heirs together of the grace of life. Beautiful chapter in First Peter three, beautiful concept of it. But in her duty, she submits herself to him, which presents an order situation. And I will tell you, as I've said many times, if he is reading Ephesians five and loving her like himself, she won't have to worry one minute about being submissive to him, and he won't have to worry about her either. Where they are both concerned for honoring Jesus and fulfilling the will of God at home, things will go pretty well. I have noted, as far as the wife is concerned, many men are not happy with that idea, but in First Timothy, First Timothy five fourteen, he says one of the things they're supposed to learn to do is to guide the house, and in Greek that is a very strong word. It's the word from which we get the noun despot in English, means be a dictator over the house, submissive to the husband, but otherwise. I do know men that don't want their wives to turn around unless they ask them, see? You know, she'd like to paint the room red, he'd like to... but I leave that to your families. You make up your decision on that. But I kind of take the passage in First Timothy five literally. I want my wife to run the house. That doesn't mean she spends a great deal of time bossing me. I'm easily told what to do, one word does it, but that doesn't, but I want her to run the house. I don't want to have to sit there for an hour at night while she says, do you think the roof should be better painted white or gray or pink? I don't care what color it is. The brutal truth is I don't care what color it is. I've never seen one yet that I thought needed painting. I'm even willing to help paint some, see. But I don't want to have to sit there and think that. I hope you, if you think ill of me, that's a calculated risk in these exposés of what we're really like. But I, but that's what Paul says, tell the younger women to marry, to have children, and guide the house. And that's what I want them to do. That displays a biblical concept. And there are different arrangements that you'll have to work on and different things, I suppose, but I don't want my wife to say, will you write out the menu for what we're going to eat for the next month? I want her to guide the house. If I don't like it, I'll eat it with a smile on my face. Because I want her to guide the house. And one of that guiding the house is, in our particular family, she decides on things to eat and fixes those things, and I always liked them. Once I didn't like them, and once she didn't like it either. I ate more of it than she did, but neither, once in a while those things happen. I don't mean to be light-hearted about that, but that's a big thing. The home needs to respond to the appointed duties. The children are to be the obedient demonstrators of God's will. And I'd like to say that as long as you live at home and your parents are feeding you and all that kind of stuff and caring for you, you may be big in body, but you're really a child at heart, or something like that. I don't know how far to press those things. When we think of children, we think of little people like that, like this, like this, and various stages of life, but they are to be those who demonstrate by their obedience and yieldedness that the program of God is right. So you don't have five sons, each got a club beating his father, saying we're going to do it our own way. You don't do things like that. And at the same time, you don't have fathers that just make up a bunch of nasty little rules to make life miserable for their children. You don't do that either. There has to be a balance in those things. But in that circumstance, see, the home, like the state, the people work to fulfill their assigned duties, and it's beautiful when things go that way. Beautiful. I've been exposed to a lot of awfully nice homes, fine homes. I'm speaking of the people, and I've, and that sort of thing. But I, I, I can't tell you all my experiences in one night. You wouldn't even want to hear them. But I remember my days in California when I was in the army. I think I can say this without embarrassing anybody, hope so anyway. I was in the army in California, and I went to a little meeting on Atascadero, uh, where the, where Burt Young was the resident worker in those days. He still lives in Atascadero, but age has taken a toll on Burt too. And the Atascadero meeting was just started, so it was about twelve people in a storefront, that's all, about twelve people. And I showed up, and a couple other guys would show up, went to other assemblies, and the Youngs would take us home for dinner and various other things. Sometimes we'd help them pass out tracts too, but that's the sort of thing. I was thrilled by their home. I was thrilled by it. I was thrilled by the way that she ran the place. I don't think I would have dare say unless they heard me say it. I was thrilled by the place she ran the place in submission to her husband, and the children, although no more perfect than mine, wanted to do what pleased God and pleased their parents. I was thrilled by that. And you know, it's funny how those things grip you. I have seen so much unhappiness and so much anguish among people I knew that I had really wondered if happy homes were really possible. But just seeing how those things work biblically, I concluded they were possible, came home when the army was over and got married as fast as I could. Well, maybe not quite that fast, but within reasonable time. Yes, let these institutions demonstrate the goodness and the wisdom of grace and God. Don't let anybody resent their position, neither man nor female or children, but none re- resent what they are, but live it for the glory of God, because God in his wisdom designed the institutions. And I have often read that passage in Proverbs thirty one, the godly woman. Do you remember that passage? I've often read that. You know, among other things she does, she goes out and buys a piece of land and sells it as a profit for him while he's sitting in the gate talking with his friends. Ah, that's how to guide the house. You know, you come in at night and say, what'd you do today, hon? And she said, well, she said, I bought a house down at the end of the street and sold it for a five thousand dollar profit. Put that in a CD in your name. I know it sounds a little far-fetched, but she was working in the provision of what God gave her to do. And I've always said there is, that's, that's a, that's the example of a godly woman in the Old Testament. And I have lots of fellows say to me, find us one like that, find us one like that. And I, I, I, I always say to them that you pray for that kind. Well, forgive me, but that's a big thing with me. If we all take the places God has assigned us, then we do well in the framework of things. So God orders society for blessing. Therefore, let the institutions honor God. Let them be accountable to them as they go day by day. Let them have their goal set directed to his will, and let them fulfill the assigned duties given to them. And finally, let them show the divine presence. That's tough in a situation like we live, in the state in which we live, but it ought to show it. It ought to show, even by rulers who don't know God, there ought to be the general recognition of a power that is superior to themselves. Good example is Thomas Jefferson, an absolute deist in the finest sense of the word, but keenly aware that there was a power superior to himself. It didn't save him, but keenly aware of it. Another good example, I suppose, but of an ornerier sort, is Benjamin Franklin, an ornerier sort, but another deist. Franklin was a friend of George Whitfield, the evangelist, and in Franklin's autobiography, he notes, Whitfield has died now, he notes that Whitfield, he said, often prayed for my conversion, but he said, I am happy to report that his prayers have not been answered. That was Franklin's comment at that stage in his life, but an absolute deist, but keenly aware of the power of a force beyond us. Now, that's pretty vague. That isn't saving faith, but that's faith that tenders, let's not call it faith. That's an attitude of life that tends to mold the way you live, and so let them show the divine presence. Let these fellows who have to make the laws recognize the fact that there is a power greater than they are, and that all of their legal maneuverings and tanglings have to be made in the light of the truth of that power and the reality of it. And incidentally, when we get making rules like we make for our own societies, we ought to remember it too. You can break these things down into lots of other areas if you want, but when we get making rules for people to work with us and around us, we ought to remember that we are not supreme in the universe either. Let them show the divine presence. The home. The home shows the divine presence through these ordered practices that I mentioned a few moments ago. It doesn't show it because everything goes well. Sometimes everything goes well for the worst kinds of sinners. The fact that things go well indicates that the providence of God works on his level, not on ours. We've often marveled, we've seen some of the homes that were wonderful homes in which disaster after disaster came. Uh, but you see, that home shows the divine presence by letting God guide them in daily affairs and living thankful to God for what they've got. That's what it does. Let us show the divine presence, not necessarily by a new plaque on the wall or a new sign over the door, but by lives that are yielded to God and directed by God and that seek to honor God. The problem is, as I see it, along with other things, is that oftentimes in the institutions God has given us, we forget the reality that God is the supreme governor, and that God's government is the supreme government. And when we are unwilling to yield to that, we are rebels all of our days. And the one thing that's uniformly true of rebels is that they are never happy or satisfied in their rebellion. They usually wind up like Robespierre did years ago. They usually wind up on their own scaffold at their own guillotine. Rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft. An awful thing, said Samuel, speaking to Saul. And it comes to me necessarily not to be a rebellious person, but a person who yields to the government of God. I've only touched on it on a few of the many areas that could be discussed in detail in the scripture, only touched on a few of it in the personal lives. But I'm thankful to have a home. I'm thankful for the wife that God gave me. I've been thankful for our children and for many things with it. I'm likewise thankful for my assembly, I'm thankful for this country. But my prayer is that all of these things will be lived under the government of God, and that the truth of God will be applicable in my home and applicable in my assembly, where I talked this morning, and applicable in my state too, as God gives us opportunity and gives us benefit and gives us freedom. I'm one of those fellows who thinks that Jesus may come any day. I believe it. I don't know when he will come, but I think it might be any day. Yesterday, I thought it might have been today, but today is getting pretty well shot, but that doesn't mean he couldn't end these things tonight. I think it's a wicked sin to set dates, or even to suggest the setting of them. But I think the Lord might come at any time. But that says to me, what we need is a double measure of faithfulness and yieldedness to God until he comes. Thinking that the Lord might come at any time should never make me either gloomy or pessimistic or lazy about what God wants me to be. I ought to stand back and say, until the Lord comes or until he calls me, I'm living here under the government of God, and I want my life in all of its aspects to be ordered by his will and by his word. I cannot be wrong in that. Are you with me? You can't either. But it has to be a day by day yieldedness to the direction of the mind of God. Day by day. And for things that we can't touch personally, we pray. And for things we can touch personally, we touch for the glory of God. So that mostly is what I wanted to say to you in the series of talks about the government of God. Now, there are many other things that need to be taken up. You can take them up at different times, I'm sure, but remember that we have a great Savior in Jesus Christ, a great Father in God, a great comforter in the Holy Spirit. Let us live our lives in obedience and yieldedness to the Godhead, and let the rule of God govern home and church and country, and in particular, your heart and life. Let's pray. Gracious Father, we thank you tonight for your multiplied blessings to us, for your grace and mercy and truth. Now we have afraid you'd help us to be a people of God in heart and soul and dealing, loving the Lord Jesus and honoring him. We thank you for the fellowship of this assembly. Lord, bless it with your love and peace and with your strength and with your gospel witness. And may our lives, Lord, be so yielded to Jesus, so directed by his word, that we will be known for that of people who live under the rule of God. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.