Let us turn to our Bibles to Psalm chapter 72. Psalm 72, then we’ll go over to 1 Corinthians 10.11, or at least I will. I will read both these texts.
Let us listen attentively to the Word of God. Psalm 72.11 Yes, all kings shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve him. 1 Corinthians 10.11 Now all these things happened to them as examples that and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
Wherein Paul describes Israel in the desert saying, still applicable for us today, morally. Let us pray. Father God above, as we wind up this series on the kingdoms that you have and do reign over God as God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you rule over all things, created all things in your providential control.
That is the natural kingdom of your existence. You are always supreme over all things, animate and inanimate. As well, Lord, as well as you sent your Son, your only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who became man, and as such the God-man, he also rules over all things, his mediatorial kingdom, for the good of your church, which is more precisely the kingdom of God.
As we often use that word and idea, Lord, we are part of the kingdom of God. We who are your elect especially and uniquely. And to that end, may we learn here how to live and to even thrive in the domains that you have established, both in nature and in the church.
Father God, help guide my lips to make these matters clear and practical, that your name be glorified in all that we do. Amen. The issue of how to live as a Christian in this world, how we work, how we vote or don’t vote, how we take care of our family or don’t, is a concern for all who love Christ.
We read in the Bible that we are pilgrims on this earth, for example. Does this mean we can’t vote? We also read that there is neither male nor female in Galatians 3, neither slave nor free, Gentile or Jew. Does that mean that gender differences are irrelevant? So I think you already hear from these questions.
I haven’t answered them yet, but I think you know the answer. How relevant this question, this decision in this matter is of living in God’s two kingdoms. Now, the first step to answering the question is to know that we live in God’s two kingdoms.
Living in God’s Two Kingdoms
The first is what I described at the end of the sermon last week or part of the sermon last week. A lot of different adjectives I know can be confusing because it covers everything in life. Wherever you are as a human, you could be on a spaceship and you’re under God’s kingdom, either the natural kingdom of this world, the American state, your family and the like, and the church, and or the church.
So I’m describing it here as the creational kingdom. I also used the word the outer life, the body, the earthly kingdom, the common kingdom, the natural kingdom, the kingdom of man. A lot of different descriptions for this domain of God’s rule.
It describes specifically God’s rule over mankind through our relationships and through our institutions. So we’re not talking about the inanimate things. God and His natural reign as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit controls all things of providence, including the inanimate things, right? This is about us, not animals, of course, humans in particular.
This is that first kingdom. What I mean by living in God’s two kingdoms, this first kingdom, is what we all are born into, this world. Not in the sinful sense of this world, but in the real sense that I have a parent.
They may not be Christians, but it’s still a real relationship with real responsibilities and consequences under God’s rule. He guides and directs even unbelievers what a family life is supposed to be like. I don’t think Christians really debate that.
Of course, that’s what I mean by this first kingdom or the creational kingdom. The other kingdom I’m describing here in this sermon is the redemptive kingdom. Of course, that’s to highlight the fact that we have Christ immediately as our Savior and Redeemer, whereas the rest of the world have Him as their Lord.
And although He is the mediator God over them, He doesn’t save them. He uses them and guides them toward the good of the church. That was part of the sermon last week, the week before.
So you can already hear the complementary descriptions here. This is the inner kingdom, the supernatural kingdom. The soul, with respect to the soul, the spiritual.
And they pair with the other descriptions of this world, right? You have a kingdom of the body, a kingdom of the soul, the outer kingdom, the inner kingdom, and the like. They all match and pair. I’m highlighting this for a purpose because we have teachings that say they’re in conflict and other teachings saying they don’t even touch each other.
In other words, to answer the important question, how to live to God in Christ, we have to understand that there are two different yet complementary kingdoms in which we live in, and it cannot be otherwise because sin has fractured reality. Adam and Eve lived in one kingdom. There was no fall.
The fall comes and now you have what? People who are saved and people who are not. There’s already a moral division there. And that division implies that God rules over them equally in the sense that He’s the same God, but there’s a difference, the difference being, of course, in the church.
We have things in the church they don’t have. The biggest thing, of course, is Christ Jesus as our Savior, regeneration and all the wonderful gifts they’re in. And because of this dual citizenship, some Christians get confused.
They sometimes mix the two, claiming, for example, that the king should be the head of the church. We went over that in Sunday School class, right, church history. On the flip side, others contend that the church should have direct power over the nation state.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches this. Obviously, both are wrong. Each kingdom has its own domain of operational responsibility, but they should be, ideally, complementary and even interdependent to some degree.
Yes, that being so does not mean that there’s an airtight separation, is another way of saying this. Although separation of church and state is often used that way in our history of American politics and religion, that doesn’t mean that they can’t have cognizance of each other. So the idea of separation of church and state, which clearly overshadows this question in the sermon, given our history, depends on what you mean by that phrase.
I mean, I’ve studied that, and there’s lots of books on it. I won’t go down that route, other than you’re going to hear it implicitly here. The two kingdoms, coming from the same creator of all, are supposed to work in harmony.
The one, the kingdom of this life, has the goal of preserving and even for thriving of the bodily concerns of mankind. Ideally, we want our families, our businesses, our communities, our nations, to make life better for everyone around us. You’re not more godly by being poor.
That’s what the monks were teaching in the Roman Catholic Church, right? We don’t believe that as Protestants. And again, there’s this way of talking that people kind of apply this in our circles at times. You want to thrive? Well, yeah, but not for my own sake, because I know it takes money to run a church.
So I want that kind of thriving, right? What’s the purpose behind it is the intent. That’s the question. The redemptive kingdom of the church has the ultimate goal of what? Preserving the soul for heaven.
To glorify Christ and to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. In practice, this means that when we go to work for our boss, we want to do both. We want to do good for them in the earthly sense of, he got more money, he got a better job, he got a better quality out of my work, and I feel good about this.
I did a good job. But also, in addition to that earthly goal, you have what? Superadded a spiritual or supernatural goal. I do it for the glory of God.
And you read that over and over again in the epistles, right? Submit to your bosses in the Lord. Work well unto them in the Lord, to your parents in the Lord, for the purpose of and for the sake of honoring him. So we can do the same thing for two different reasons that are complementary reasons.
You can see that if that’s true with the intent, why can’t that be true with the actions? Of how the Christians and the church interact with society. Now these two goals, of course, sometimes come in conflict. And what do you do then? The apostles say, I ought to obey God rather than man.
But we don’t need to go into all the exceptions, because that’s not the point. The point is to point out the purpose, and what’s the relationship, and what are these two kingdoms, and how do we wear and live in those two kingdoms? We don’t always agree on the details. This is true.
The relationship between these two kingdoms. And I hinted at that last week. I think there’s a large domain of how to apply some of the particulars in many ways.
And so in that degree, that’s fine. We can have this debate. But when professors of seminaries publicly express openness to gay partnerships before the law, I don’t think that’s an area of disagreement we can have.
And, you know, 10 years, 11 years now after Obergefell, I think we’re seeing more and more the obvious implications of what has happened in our society, because that was done and excused, and eventually the marriage came along after that. This happened in our circles before the 2015 Supreme Court ruling, the Obergefell decision, that stripped marriage of its natural dignity. The professor wrote, quote, I could affirm domestic partnerships as a way of protecting people’s legal and economic security.
So he was happy with the compromise. Remember that debate? I remember very clearly before marriage just was shoved down our throats, so-called marriage. How did he get to that conclusion? After all, he claimed what? He says we live in two kingdoms.
Kingdom of man or kingdom of this world, a common kingdom. I think they often use the word common. Common realm.
Well, the problem is not the label. People claim all kinds of labels, I think we know by now, and titles and names to cover their other views. We see this often in politics.
We see this in life. The problem is, by what rule does God rule over these domains? That’s the question. What commandments? What is required of people? Because if you have a kingdom, you have to have a kingly rule.
What’s the rule? It’s the law of God. That’s where the real debate is, and so we get distracted, at least the pastors have, not you in the pew. And the churches are, well, what kind of, are you the real two kingdom or is this a false two kingdom approach to the Bible? Well, it’s really about the question of the law, it seems to me.
What does that really look like? What differentiates it in these matters? And that’s what I’m going to talk a little bit about here. And so in practice, what happens with the people who want to make, it seems to me, a compromise with society, is you set up with two sets of rules for Christians, that you end up with a weekend Christianity that ignores God’s law for everyone else around us the rest of the week. A variant of this essentially uses the teaching of the two kingdoms to rationalize the current social and political talking points of selfish individualism, widespread egalitarianism, and secular pluralism that our forefathers would have balked at.
So that leads us here then to the two kingdoms and living therein. Obviously I’m not going to go into a lot of details, and I literally said we can disagree on a lot of particular applications. But some things we can’t disagree with because they’re literally written to our confessions, and if we don’t agree with our confessions as leaders, then we should simply leave the church, or admit that, and then leave the church, or change our mind, I hope.
The nub of the matter I already mentioned ahead of my own notes, it seems to me, is what about the law of God, and what does that look like in practice? Not, do you believe in two kingdoms? You can believe in two kingdoms, and you end up with obviously crazy conclusions like, gay unions are okay, I confirmed that. What? The light of nature is the phrase our confession uses to describe what I often call natural law. They also use natural law, but the light of nature is what they often use in our confession.
And I have a quote here from Jeremiah Burroughs, one of the Puritans of that era in the 1600s. As God has given two lights to the world, the sun, the greater to rule by day, and the moon, the lesser to rule the night, so he has given two lights to man to guide his course. The scriptures, which of course is the greater light, to guide man, especially in his spiritual condition.
Catch that? The inner life of the man. The kingdom of God, the mediatorial kingdom of God, more narrowly described. Especially the spiritual condition, and those immediate references that he has to God.
Your thought, word, and deeds. For his worship and enjoyment of communion with him. That’s the greater light, that’s scripture.
The other lesser light, the light of reason, to be his guide in natural and civil things, and the ordering of his life for the natural and civil good. Two different purposes, two different sources of knowledge. Now you know he doesn’t believe they’re in conflict.
But we’re hearing today what? There’s a conflict in some circles. And although it is true, religion makes use of reason. And we have help from the scriptures in our natural and civil affairs.
So reason can help religion. And scripture, religion, so he’s using them interchangeably obviously, can help us in natural and civil affairs. That’s where the big difference comes in with that professor, for example.
He’s like, you really can’t, why are you quoting the Bible with civil matters? Ever. He disagrees with our Puritan forefathers. Yet these two lights have their distinct special use according to their distinct conditions of man.
That’s a lot of words, I know. And I’m going to go through here some more. The light of nature, as I said, is a language of our confession.
And I want to highlight then a couple of points from the light of nature. The first thing is, mankind knows there’s a God. And therefore they ought to love that God.
If you know there’s a great creator who made you, what would you be if you just ignored him and snubbed him? You know what that is. It’s like a child snubbing their parents. Even the unbeliever’s like, what’s wrong with you? Honor your parents, love them, something.
And it really struck me when I went through Bollinger’s series, the decades, right? His sermons a couple years ago through the summer. And he goes over the first commandment. And he spent at least three or four pages, I recall, quotes from pagan leaders, pagan philosophers and teachers, that assert not a plurality of gods, but one God, even with the article in the Greek, the God.
I was like, wow, I was never taught that. I mean, I knew Romans 1, 11 or 18 and following says everyone knows there’s a God to suppress the truth and a righteousness. But to actually read the quotes, you’re like, wow, pretty clear to them, isn’t it? And yet we have this weird approach, again, professors like that, who are like, well, we want to follow the noble pagans and let them run the, call the shots.
Well, the noble pagans believe that religion and religion should affect society. There’s just no way around it. That’s what they taught.
But you’re not going to hear that whole story. They knew enough to recognize this. And same, of course, with other things, like loving your neighbor.
I, of course, grew up in my circles, maybe you did as well, thinking and believing that when Christ says you’re supposed to love one another, you’re supposed to love your neighbor, though that’s a Christian teaching. And it’s Christian in the sense that Christ said it. It’s true.
And even if the pagans said it, they’re only saying because they’re echoing how God and Christ created all things and wrote it on their hearts. So it’s Christian in that sense, right? But not in the direct, explicit sense of pagans, therefore, can never believe this because they’re not Christians. No, they taught this.
I have quotes where they taught you should love, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, is the golden rule. They taught that without Christ talking to them. But he did.
It’s called creation. It’s natural, the light of nature. What does John 1 tell us? He’s the light of the world.
They reject the light. That’s true. But rejecting the light, as we’re learning here, I hope even through the Bible, when Paul himself quotes pagan poets in the Book of Acts, for example, that doesn’t mean an absolute darkness, but a relative darkness.
They knew enough that there’s something out there called a god. And there’s something about maintaining cohesiveness in society that’s best to not do unto others that you wouldn’t have them do unto you. And the like.
It’s common sense when you realize that. We miss this because of a part of our history and what we’ve had in the debates in the last 100 years, it seems to me. So the creational institutions here, then I want to explain some of my language.
The natural law, I’m telling you right now, is more detailed than what you’re going to hear from these proponents. Because they’re going to argue, I believe in natural law, but they end up having this weird mishmash. That sounds very much like the current way of thinking and doing things in America.
The creation that God has given us, the creational kingdom, has a fundamental foundation. Of course, humanly speaking, that’s how God designed things, biologically, human relationships. The family.
The family is the basis of this kingdom. Not the individual, which is what we’ve been taught for 100 years in the American scene. The family, or the individual in the family, or individual in community, more broadly.
And that’s an important thing. So God, in this kingdom, the natural kingdom, the creational kingdom, the outer kingdom, whatever else you want to call it, the two things there, the relationship, which I describe as the interpersonal connections that we have, it’s organic. And then the institutions.
I use that word institution. That is the formalization of said relationship and responsibilities. The structures that we have.
We talk about family, church, and state as three grand institutions. Yes. And what extends from the family is the church, and the state, and the community, and the businesses.
At least it has historically. And we lose this because our nation is so huge, so spread out, especially the West, just so huge. The population centers, is what I’m saying, are so large that we forget for thousands of years since Adam and Eve, everyone’s been in small little communities.
I mean, towns of 100,000 were huge. That’s a huge city, 100,000. So in other words, the family connection was much more explicit.
You saw it. Yeah, I know that guy. He’s my third cousin over there, and they’re married over there.
And so historically, you see organic growth from the family connection, from Adam and Eve, and going through there, and families get together, they make businesses, families get together, they make schools. A bunch of families get together, you make a what? A nation. Or more precisely, a family to a tribe, to a clan, to a nation.
Now it’s now, of course, set in stone. You have lots of intermarriage between races and the like. That’s true, but that’s more or less how it worked out historically.
There’s no way around it. But what is assumed in these relationships and institutions that formalize these relationships? That there’s a responsibility. There’s a reciprocal relationship.
The superior and the inferior or the equals have some kind of law they have to follow. So we’re back to the law question is really the debate we have in our circles on this question. We should agree that there’s two kingdoms, the natural kingdom, the citizen, businessman, an artist, whatever, and then, of course, a Christian, a member of a church.
And they go hand in hand, or at least they should be. And so as a foundation, the family is the basis for all things. But even before the fall, Adam and Eve were a family.
They were also, as it were, a state. If they never fell, they would have expanded and grown and what, be fruitful, multiply. I guess you would call it the global one human state that all the sci-fi movies like to talk about.
And the future will all be one united race. And that was Adam. We lost that.
Sorry, that’s not till heaven. We’re not getting that right now. But Paul argues before the fall, he says there’s morally binding things before the fall.
Adam was born first, then Eve, and the like is still binding upon us today. And that means the family connection, the family relation, the family basis of society, which was clearly there before the fall, is still binding upon us today. That undergirds, that underlines, excuse me, the assumed argument of individualism that we see in some circles.
That’s what I’m arguing against, basically. And everything else, again, is an extension thereof. Family, I’ll talk about family, community, and state here under the natural or creational kingdom.
Again, the family is the foundation of human life. As the Puritans say, it’s a small little church. It’s a small little kingdom.
It’s where the kids are growing up. And they learn these things to be an adult in the kingdom, in the commonwealth, in the church, in a job, good work ethics, and the like. So in the same rule, that’s what I was emphasizing, of God applies to believers and unbelievers.
Unbelievers, their parents should love their kids. And the kids should love their parents. And we’ve seen this.
I have. And it’s a good thing. I’m glad.
And even if the unbeliever does not agree with God’s law, they want to fight against God’s law, so they think it’s okay to abuse their kids until they’re the age of six, because before the age of six, they’re not very cognizant, so they’re not really human. Are we going to say, well, that’s common law, that’s common kingdom, and God’s law, kind of vague and natural law, it’s not very precise, so we’re going to let the guy get away with it, because that’s what he believes, that’s what he sees in nature. Of course not.
You’re going to say, brother, uh-uh, you can’t get away with that. But God’s law, in other words, still follows and covers and directs pagan families, unbelieving families. I’m glad many of them don’t do that, because they have enough, as we say, common grace upon them that they follow God’s law written on their heart.
So the law should punish them. Community. Schools, businesses, and clubs, of course, often ad hoc associations and the like, they’re still under this natural or creational kingdom.
Schools are a good example, exemplifying Christian influence. We want our children to learn the truths of this world. Their ABCs, their one, two, threes, or they’re going to get in trouble, not be able to support their family.
You don’t just sit there and say, well, they’re Christians, they have some kind of special insight, so I’ve got to have, you know, a Bible text teaching them how to do their one, two, threes and ABCs. No, you learn these things even without the Bible. And you go through training and teachers, you’d like to have Christian teachers.
Why is that? Because you know moral ethics makes a difference in instruction. We use the Bible, Bible illustrations, Bible stories, and moral applications so that we have and believe in Christian schools and have always believed in Christian schools. Schools are part of the creational kingdom.
They would happen naturally, and they have historically. We’ve seen them spring up everywhere because families are like, I’m deficient, I need help. Let’s get together and do something we call a school, right? And teach our kids.
And Christians come along and say, that’s good stuff, but you need some moral instruction. We call that a Christian school. Again, these people here, I say these people, there are people in these circles who don’t like that.
We don’t want to have these things called Christian schools because that’s mixing the two kingdoms, they argue. You see, there’s already, well, even when I say that, you’re all like, who thinks that way? Professors who teach are seminarian who become pastors in the OPC. That’s why, by God’s grace, I’ve been put on that committee to deal with this matter and examine this teaching.
I’m giving you the good teaching so you can have a good contrast with the bad teaching. And like, you don’t believe in Christian schools? Are you nuts? Yeah, they are. Bye-bye, go to the EPC.
Got other denominations you can go to. The OPC has a long, glorious history of Christian schools because we don’t believe it’s some kind of a violation of this airtight distinction of, quote, church and state or Christianity and society. State? No, this is the matter where we really, rubber hits the road, right? Okay, now the state versus the church.
They give the same talking points. You’ll listen to them like, I can’t hear the difference with this professor and this other professor. We don’t seem to have much real-world experience, but from what I know, what am I missing? Well, that’s why you gotta ask specific questions.
And so one professor, who’s like the leading theorists of this radical two kingdom we describe it as often, radical not being a complement to kingdom, he was asked, well, since we don’t have any more continents to inhabit like we did in North America, let’s imagine in the future a bunch of Presbyterians get together and we all land on Mars and make a new colony. Okay? Land on Mars, we make a new colony. Would you have Sabbath laws? And the professor said, I think you already know the answer.
Because somehow Christians don’t need civil law to help us obey God at all because we’re that good of a Christian. You’re a pretty good Christian, right? You don’t need civil law, do you? What happened to the second use of the law, which is to guide, direct us, and correct us? That’s a mixing of church and state. I don’t know what kind of Presbyterian that is.
When you know our history and you’ve heard some of it from me over the last 20 years, you’re like, that’s not what our forefathers taught in early America. That’s crazy. And it is.
Question 118 of the larger catechism. 118, it’s about the fourth commandment. Why is the charge of keeping the Sabbath more specially directed to governors of families? All right, Radical 2 Kingdom’s like, yeah, governors of families, they ought to enforce the Sabbath in their home.
Great. Oh, and other superiors. Oops.
What are other superiors? Your boss, the magistrate. Right? Obviously, we know the history of Puritanism. The charge of keeping the Sabbath is more especially directed to governors of families than other superiors because they are bound not only to keep it themselves, always, but to see that it be observed by all those under their charge.
We’re not individuals only. We’re individuals and community. The proof text, of course, is the confession itself, or the confession of the 10th commandment, Exodus 20.10. But the seventh day of the Sabbath, any that shall do no work, neither your son nor your male servant, we read it this morning.
Know your stranger who’s within your gates? That stranger within your gates? Poor guy. He didn’t ask for it. It’s against his free will.
And what’s your point? You go to a country, you follow the rules, or you get kicked out. We all know this. It’s not about your free will.
Again, their argument is, you can’t make people Christian. We’re not making them Christian. You’re just making sure they don’t work on Sundays.
They go somewhere else. They don’t like it. Nehemiah, you know this.
He reprimands the public leaders for allowing Sabbath desecrations and the like. Practically, it comes down to this. Do you want your pastor backing you up to have the Lord’s day off, or you want him to say, you’re on your own, buddy.
It’s every man for himself in the American scene. It comes down to something practical like that, doesn’t it? I want my pastor to back me up about the Lord’s day. I want that day off.
Because companies will force you to work on that day. Other practical considerations out of the Confession. It references the Old Testament.
You heard this last week, Isaiah 49, 23. Nursing fathers is the masculine version of nurse. Nurses, they’re nursing fathers of the church.
God didn’t think it was a problem for the church to be helped and assisted. Not spiritual things. They’re not feeding your soul.
The Word of God does, and the preaching does. They’re here to make sure that you don’t get harassed and harangued like, I don’t know, churches in Michigan and Minnesota or wherever it was this year. Things like that, at the minimal.
Also on our Catechism, question 191. You heard this last week as well. What do we pray for in the second petition? A bunch of things.
The kingdom of Satan will be destroyed and the church be countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate. What that looks like. It looks different in America than it looked like in Scotland, than it looked like in Holland.
But that it was something. And what we believe in and officers in the church ought to support. We have no exceptions in our book as such for pastors and the like.
Here it is. Question 108 to the larger Catechism. What are the duties required in the second commandment? According to each one’s place and calling, removing it and all monuments of idolatry.
Right there in the American version. Removing monuments of idolatry? I don’t know, like the Hindu statues in Texas? It’s in our confession. Now, it may not be wise to do it right now.
You may not have the clout or leverage to do it. I grant that. But it’s in our confession.
Do you believe it or not? If you don’t, then what are you doing here in the OPC? Blasphemy laws, Sunday laws. You already know this. I’ve got a lot of detail in history on that.
Evidence, people have written about it. You can’t get away from it. You can’t ignore it other than we know better today.
Okay. You know better than Witherspoon? Who is Witherspoon? Right, the first moderator of the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, 1788. He was meeting there while the rest of our forefathers were meeting in Liberty Hall right up the Constitution.
Right? He signed the Declaration of Independence, so he was no stranger to politics, but he also didn’t believe in mixing them either. There’s a way of mixing it that’s wrong. I grant that.
He helped write the New Jersey Constitution. Some of you have been to New Jersey? The New Jersey Constitution up until like 1930s was the same Constitution. They didn’t change it.
It’s really weird because all the other states were changing the Constitution all the time, it looked like. That Constitution explicitly limits public magistrates and officers to Protestants. Do you know who helped write that Constitution? Oh, that’s right, Witherspoon because he didn’t know his own confession.
This is where we are in our circles, brothers and sisters. And you should kind of laugh like, really? If you know this, why are you arguing contrary to that? If anybody knew the confession, he’s the one to help. They helped write it.
They’re like, here, this is the first, it’s the American edition. American edition was not that contrary to the Scottish edition we are finding out in these particulars.
Living in the Redemptive Kingdom
And then lastly, living in the redemptive kingdom.
And I wanted to point out, so I’m pointing out some helpful points here that the church has two parts, the outward and inward as well. You can’t get away from it, can you? Because that’s the human condition. We have a soul, we have a body.
And so God gave us deacons. So the church isn’t just, we’re only about the soul. And more precisely, that’s their main goal, yes, but we also take care of one another, our bodily concerns.
God gave us the deacon office because he says, I want you to take care of the bodily concerns as well. It’s not just a concern, in other words, of the natural, creational kingdom of the local community only. They can do things too.
The church, now you have an overlap of responsibility. Isn’t that interesting? Is this a violation of the church’s state? No. So you can’t, in other words, just reduce Christianity to just merely the inner life, which a lot of Anabaptists did, and so they end up not being even officers of society because somehow that was icky and sinful.
So bodily concerns are not outside the purview of the church, but under, of course, the right conditions. We don’t just hand out money willy-nilly. I preached on that, 1 Timothy 5. And you also, you live the Christian life in the church by the light of nature as well.
People forget this. We’re not biblicists that you have to find a proof text for everything that you do in life. But you can use what I call providential common sense and say, well, why would I want to do that? That’s a means, cause, or occasion to danger myself, although I can’t find an explicit verse on that.
I know the situation and conditions. And young man, you’re not going to do that. You’re not going to go out on that electric bike.
They’re really clamping down electric bikes, apparently, in Colorado. On the highway. The Bible presupposes many things by the light of nature.
That’s why in 1 Corinthians 11, for example, he talks about the nature. Doesn’t nature tell you about long hair and short hair and things like that? Paul’s not always quoting the Bible. This tells us there’s a lot more knowledge that perhaps we’re missing sometimes when we play around with an unbiblical view of the Bible.
And so I asked at the beginning, we read in the Bible that we are pilgrims on this earth, heard this used by professors, men who should know better. We’re pilgrims on this earth, and they make some kind of political conclusion from that. Like, that’s not the point of that text.
It’s not about politics. It’s about reminding you that things in this world will fade away. Don’t put all your hope and trust here.
You could lose your money. You could lose your job. You could lose your family.
Because we’re not staying here. We’re going to heaven. But that doesn’t mean I’ll just give up on my family.
Why do I want to go to work? I’m a pilgrim on earth. No one lives that way. It’s just rhetoric to beat you over the head because they have a particular political view.
They don’t like you exercising what they want you to exercise. Be aware of that. Then, of course, the other one, there’s neither male or female.
Paul also says neither Greek nor Jew. They’re in Galatians. His point is when it comes to being saved in a relationship to Christ, differences don’t make you more saved than another person.
That’s the point of the text. They are literally mixing the two kingdoms. Because the kingdoms of this world, the things of this world is a body.
Male and female distinctions cannot be eradicated, will not be eradicated here and now. In heaven, there’s no marriage. So something’s going to change, obviously.
But right here and now, brothers and sisters, you can’t use that proof text and say, well, now I guess gender differences are just whatever you feel like because there’s no male or female. You think we should all be androgynous? You don’t really believe that. They’re misusing the Bible.
And they’re actually confusing the two kingdoms. You see that? Saving your soul doesn’t make you less womanly or feminine or whatever. So at the end of the day, the reality of God’s two kingdoms is about following the law of the Lord, the same law as you are able, both privately and publicly, to promote the good of your neighbor in those conditions, doing so, of course, with a heart of love and faith.
To one another, that’s loving your neighbor. And above all, to God, the greatest of our loves. And may we all be emboldened by the truth for the glory of Christ’s kingdom.
Amen. Let us pray. Father, God, and Son, Holy Spirit, and glorious Son of God, as your people, may we continue to digest and understand these issues, Lord.
And at the end of the day, come back to the basics, which is we live under your rule. And whether we are in public life, if we’re a public officer or not, we ought to honor your name and do what we can for the best of one another, realizing, of course, that we’re limited often. We can’t do a lot of things when it comes to legal laws, for example.
That doesn’t change the fact we desire to do what is right of the entirety of the Ten Commandments. Help us to this end and give us the patience we need and the insight and the boldness to stand for Jesus and to embrace every day the love of Christ, we pray, by our Lord and Savior. Amen.