A Thumb's Width (Pt 1)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Our help is in the name of the Lord. Today’s scripture reading is Romans 9, 13 through 16. As it is written, Jacob, I loved, but he saw, I hated. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then, it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. So then, he has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens whomever he wills.

Let’s pray. Father, today we come to praise and worship you as the one and only God. We come to worship you because in you is our only hope through your Son, Jesus Christ. You are our creator, our Savior, and our sustainer. We praise you because you are the one that will open our eyes today through your spirit to help us see the ways that we have never seen before, to thank you and to appreciate all that you have done and will do. Help us to see that in all we do is an opportunity to show worship to you in every aspect of our existence. Now as we continue in our service through your spirit, help us to worship in spirit and truth.

In Jesus Christ’s name we pray, amen. As we approach our time of confession, I want us to think back about our opening portion of scripture. I have chosen the sections of Romans 9 very deliberately. There is not a thumbs width of our universe that God is not sovereign over as we meditate on this. Realize that every time we sin, we say we know better than God, therefore making ourselves God. We know through Romans 1 that we would have worshipped the creation instead of the Creator. But in Romans 5-6 we have the glorious but God. Demonstrates His love toward us and that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

We only have to thank a merciful and long suffering God that through His Spirit He has revealed Himself to us. I would ask us this morning to strip away any area in our lives we have not given God the sovereignty he deserves. Now, take a moment quietly and examine in your own mind and confess your own sins, and you who are able and interested are invited to kneel before the Lord. And after we do that, I’ll call us back. Father, thank you that you hear us individually and corporately. Thank you for the promise of reconciliation through your son. Help us through your spirit to believe and to act in ways that will bring you glory, and in ways that we never even consider before.

Grow us in the people that you would have us be, and make us the lights in the community that we should be, and have not been in the past. I pray this in the name of your son and our glorious Savior, Jesus Christ. Please stand. We have the glorious promise written to us in Romans 5 10 through 11 that for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled. Shall we be saved by his life? More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation. You’d like you You can take your copy of God’s Word for our Scripture reading this morning from Romans 9, verses 19-21.

Romans 9, 19-21. You’ll say to me then, why does He still find fault? For who can resist His will? But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Well, what does molded say to its molder? Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use? Let’s pray. Our Lord, our God, our Maker, how good it is to know that You are sovereign and gracious. How glad we are that You are our God and not another. The gods of unbelievers, the gods of the people, those are no good gods. The gods that are powerful are not loving.

The gods that are not powerful offer no hope. And even though you are inscrutable, it’s not because you’re capricious, it’s because you’re infinite. And in your infiniteness, you are great in your power, in your might, in your wisdom, your love and in your grace. And so we give you thanks again that you are God, you are our God, and you invite us to come near to you through your son. Help us remember our place as those who have been created to remember our place as pots and help us to remember that it is great to be in your hands again because of who you are. Keep us from relying on our own wisdom or seeking the counsel of expert men rather than you.

We ought not to trust others for our help since when you stretch out your hand, you cause human help to fail. That you can’t use us, use instruments and means, but you do not want us to rely on anyone other than you. help us do that, make us know your righteousness. Because of that, bring us to peace. Mature us in our believing so that we would have confidence and hope move us to a fearing sort of worship, not so that we would be discouraged and trodden down, but so that we would be lifted up in gladness. Again, because you are glad with us in your son. Show us your wisdom that we would be wise, not for wisdom’s sake, but that we would be wise for walking’s sake.

Demonstrate your strength to us that we would then be made strong in you, not faint in the days of difficulty.

There are many among us, those in our extended family that we care about who are sick or recovering or looking even to labor pains upcoming. We ask that you would continue to be with Evelyn, that you would not only give her physical strength, that you would give her and her family a spiritual peace. Thank you for a successful surgery in the beginning of dialysis. We ask that if a transplant would be good, you would enable that, enable them to pay for that that and enable that to heal her. Think of Mary Kaye who’s here but still recovering. We think of Trevis and the recent difficulties he had. Glad that he’s here. Think of Kim lug who Lord willing is soon to go into labor in these next days. We ask that you would be with others who are recovering him in days of difficulty that they would not faint. We pray on behalf of our national and local governments, the upcoming elections, we want to live peaceful and quiet lives, we want to be godly and dignified, and sometimes our leaders make that more difficult and troublesome than they ought. We ask that

you would give us leaders in our country who care about righteousness because they worship and fear you, and if there are none of those candidates currently on the ticket and cause us to repent of having been okay with that in the past and move us to take every opportunity you give us to do something about it now including praying. Think of those serving in the military that we’re connected with. Obviously Brian Young as he’s a long way away, Brian Ronk as he’s closer, protect them, give them spiritual encouragement and Brian Young bring him back at the right time. We think on behalf of the families in our congregation, we ask that you would turn the hearts of parents to their children, that you would turn the hearts of children to their parents. We ask that you would help the moms and the dads to be great examples of those who love you with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength. They would raise children and cultivate children who that would be obvious as well worship you. I think on behalf of the witness, not only of Trinity Evangel

Church, but the other Christian churches in our city, in our county, in our state, in our country, help us to be bright lights. Don’t let us hide our light under a bushel. Help us to be salty. Help us to love our enemies in an unspeakable and unbelievable way that would cause others to ask questions about why we’re different. Help us to be bold. Give us open doors for sake of the gospel. Help us be clear when those open doors are open in front of us. We ask that by your grace, by your word, by your spirit, by your people. And even as we worship you this morning, that you would continue to shape us, make us useful and pleasing pots, carrying the treasure of the gospel of grace wherever we go and we pray this in the name of your son. Amen.

Father as I now prepare to speak let my words be those that you would have the people here. Guide us and in all into a deeper understanding of how we should then live. How we should live your glorious gospel in a fallen world. Help each one of us understand the lights we should be. Through your spirit not only guard my words but also have them go into your people’s hearts and have them understand what you would have them understand. I ask that I would be a tool for you and your worship in your son’s name Jesus Christ we pray amen. Now you can be seated and that’s what everybody goes to be right there. Before I start off I’m going to have a drink from a cup made with the Trinity logo on it. This is part of our reaching into our world and having this done. April made these cups and they’re very good and because seamlessly our congregation has helped Judy Reeves and her husband get back on track and she’s with us and she’s so seamlessly recovered we even forgot to put her in the prayer so we are thankful that it

came quickly right and we thank you that you guys can be here and we thank that Cheryl Lynn could be here with us too for that short period of time. Okay let’s start. First I want to read the whole section of what we had given to us piecemeal and then launch in what I hope I can cover here in the next 30 to 40 minutes. As it is written, Jacob my love but Esau I hated. What shall we say then is there injustice on God’s part by no means for he says to Moses I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion so that they it depends not on human will or exertion but on God who has mercy for the scripture says to Pharaoh for this very purpose I have raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. So then he has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then why does he still find fault?

For who can resist his will? But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder? Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? God’s sovereignty is the issue.

There is no such thing as partial sovereignty. We worship a jealous and all-consuming God who demands our worship. But the incredible thing is, He is the one that makes our heart want to worship. Whoa. He wants it, He demands it, and yet He is the one that drives us to that. Which does what for us? It puts us on our knees to worship Him and thank him for that. The all-encompassing term for God’s sovereignty in today’s world and today’s theology is Calvinism. Some people hear that and get nervous and jerky. But as you can see from today’s scripture reading, we could call it Paulism. Or we could just simply call it biblical theology.

God’s in charge. We’re not. There is a God, and you’re not him. You have probably heard us talk about the river of civilization that is coming from east to west. You have heard me talk about the worldview and all the ramifications that it has on our lives. I am exploding at the seams on speaking to you about all the applications and effects this should have on our lives. A Thumbs With is the title of today’s message. It is taken from Abraham Kuyper who has stated poetically that there is not a thumbs with that Christ is not lured over. By personalizing the measurement, it takes it down to you and me. Sean mentioned this, I think it was a couple Sunday nights ago, that in our English translations, it says there’s not one inch.

But in the Dutch, apparently, the literal is thumbs width. I love that part of it, because it puts down to your part of your body what you touch, what you see, and beyond. Not one square inch he’s not lured over. not one thumbs with. At the invitation of B.B. Warfield, Abraham Kuyper was invited to deliver the stone lectures at Princeton Seminary in 1898. That’s 114 years ago he arrived on our shores and gave six lectures. One on Calvinism is a life system, two Calvinism and religion, three Calvinism and politics, four, Calvinism and science, five, Calvinism and art, and six, Calvinism and the future.

Kuyper was born in 1837 and died in 1920. We are not worshiping Abraham Kuyper, for those of you that get nervous as we launch on these things or I talk on these subjects, but we are thinking and being driven by one of God’s gifted messengers who spoke about these things and brought them into maybe realms we haven’t thought of before. I clearly think most of the quotes that I’m going to read today and talk about are biblically based, and I think you will find them too. And I don’t think we really have to look any farther than just the passage in Romans that we read. Obviously, we can find all kinds of applications in them all over the Bible, but I purposely focused on that, for that’s the one that makes most people nervous when you talk about God’s sovereignty.

The fellowship of being near to God must become a reality. In the full and vigorous prosecution of our life, it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breeze through our whole existence.” Another Piper quote. He’s really an eloquent man who was quite brilliant, wrote in newspapers every day that he published. He was the prime minister of the Netherlands for, I think, it was four or five years. He caused a church split in the Dutch Reformed Church, causing the conservative wing to break off because it had gone south in denying our Lord.

He’d been through all kinds of things, developed all kinds of schools, Christian-centered things, even Christ-centered labor unions, which for some of us that’s hard to take. But the whole thing is he did see and apply it in his life. There wasn’t a thumbs width that he wouldn’t see as the Lord’s territory. Christ rules not merely by the tradition of what he once was, spake and did endure, but by a living power which even now, seated as he is at the right hand of God, he exercises over lands and nations and generations, families and individuals.” Another quote. Six months into the occupation of the Netherlands by the Nazis, Hitler issued a command that every student who graduated out of Kuyper’s schools was to be hunted down, arrested, and treated as a Jew.

This was 21 years after Kuyper had died. He had that much influence in the institutions that he made out of God allowing him to do it. And those people that taught these principals, when they invaded, they knew those were the enemies. Those were the people they needed to kill.

B.B. Warfield, the man that invited Kuyper to speak at Princeton, was one of the great professors of theology at Princeton Seminary from 1887 to 1921. Some conservative Presbyterians consider him to be the last of the great Princeton theologians before the split in 1929 that formed Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. That’s another man, John Gresham Machem, who did that. And out of this, out of this flow in the river, and the reason I’m bringing all these things up is realize that all these things are coming along all through history, okay? We got Paul that teaches these doctrines. You have Augustine in the 300s.

You have Anselm in the thousands. Then you have the reformers in the 1500s. Then it moves all through the United States from the east, from Jerusalem through Europe. Then it moves to the United States through the Netherlands. Remember that the Mayflower sailed from the Netherlands. And then in our country, we built this up. And out of that, Princeton was one of the first seminaries brought into existence. And those people were, by believing, hardcore Calvinistic Paulism thinking people. So in this section, or the Talks on a Life System, I’m going to read paragraphs and then hopefully comment on them according to the way I’m reading the way you’re feeling about what he’s saying.

Some of these are a stretch for us in today’s world. We like it simple. We like it quick. We like it composed. These people love the language, enlarge the language. And I’m hoping that that’s what we’re doing through our school and through our studies and through what we’re trying to bring back to our civilization, a real understanding of where we came from. I come from a generation where the 60s where it was just deny everything, question authority, the whole thing. I was raised in a generation that rewrote even current history. And my wife is a product of a university that she was a history graduate. And when we got met and started dating and then since we’ve gotten married, as I started to quiz her about history, I realized that her whole mind had been turned upside down by revisionist history, not truly what was happening, but what the professor wanted them to think what was happening.

We wanna know what is happening, we wanna apply ourselves in the world the proper way. So under a life system, Kuyper said Calvinism is the only decisive, lawful, and consistent defense for Protestant nations against the encroaching and overwhelming modernism. This of itself was bound to be my theme. This was brought about in 1898 to the Princeton Seminary. He knew that when he came, that modernism was rampant. The German seminaries had gone south at that time. He was living in Europe. He saw the harm that they had done in the Netherlands, causing good men to start to question their beliefs and stuff. And that’s where God reached down and saved him as a young man, made him a minister.

and then through that process he realized this had to stop and he had to preach against this. In the introduction, a discussion with Calvinism is nothing more than God’s sovereignty. And anybody who reads the Bible understands God is sovereign. And it says in the beginning of the Bible, in the beginning God made the heavens and the earth. And he is sovereign over all his creation. But as we know, Kuyper was only expressing what God expresses in his word.

I am speaking to you, our small congregation about this subject over the next two sessions just because we elders in our thinking want all of you to understand why we see our Christian worldview in our worship of our great God to be central to everything we do in our community and our jobs and our families and in our world. The great principle is that there is a particular grace which works salvation and a common grace which God maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it. It rests its process corruption and thus allows the untrammeled development of our life in which to glorify himself as the creator. Now that’s a bunch right there. He’s saying common grace allows us in our Christian influence to go out and influence the world. We in our power of the the gospel living can change lives.

People’s lives are changed by our witness. Now I understand, and believe me, Calvinistic to the bone, all right, God’s sovereignty. I know God does it, who saved you? Did you choose God or did he choose you? Well, I chose him and then I got on the other side of the fence and realized, oh my goodness, he chose me. So the issue is we are the agents and God uses us and we wanna be those agents and we should be excited to be those agents. Calvinism gave the impulse to the new development, which dared to face the world with the Roman thought. I am a human being. I consider nothing that is human alien to me, although never allowing itself to be intoxicated by its poisonous cup.

Even though we know we are a man, we stand on our own, we know that we’re not an island, that God is the one that gives us that power. That’s what he means by that. So the thing is we have to think more deeply, more intelligently possibly than we have about a lot of things. We’re not just gonna lock ourselves in the basement and wait to the rapture, all right? Even though if you read our statement of faith, we do believe that God is coming back and all these things, we haven’t deserted our dispensational thinking. We have probably deserted our dispensational mindset that we get in the basement and we can’t do any good, we can’t change anything.

We can change anything. And if you don’t believe you can’t change anything, think about yourself. God took you, a wretched sinner, and made you into one of his. And you see that all the time. We see that in our own church as God brings people to him and brings us to us. Help us to be those people that can bring those people to the next step and their children to the next step. We stand on great shoulders, and I think we have deserted the tradition, certainly, over the past 100 years. It’s fallen into bad repair. But I do believe, over the last 20, 30 years, that there’s a great movement that people want to see this happen.

And I think that we’re in that river. Remember, there’s a big river that’s always going. Kuiper saw that Calvinists accepted all tribes and nations. And the United States is the perfect expression of Calvinistic thinking and building a country from all kinds of people, the great melting pot, as we call it. But only among Calvinistic nations does it reach its highest perfection. Here in America, it’s achieving the intermingling of all nations of the old world, with a similar climax of this process of human development. It is also exhibited by Calvinism in the fact that under the influence of Calvinism does the impulse of public activity proceed from the people themselves?

In other words, because of Calvinistic thinking, the individual does rule the nation, even though God is sovereign over all the nation. You’ll see more talk about this as we get into the political lecture. That’ll come about tonight. No matter what the mysteries of the future may have yet to disclose, the fact remains that the broad stream of development of our race runs from Babylon to San Francisco. Through the five stadia of the Babylonia, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Islamic, Romanistic, and Calvinistic civilization, and the present conflict in Europe, remember this is 1898, as well as in America finds its main cause and fundamental antithesis between the energy of Calvinism which proceeded from the throne of God found in the source of its power and the word of God, in every sphere of human life exalted the glory of God.

And its character, the French Revolution, which proclaimed its belief in the cry, no God, no master, and which presently in the form of German pantheism is reducing itself to more and more to modern paganism. This is right before the Kaiser in World War I. We’re 1898, World War I is about 12 years off. He also was deeply involved in the Boer War with England in South Africa, which tainted a lot of what he thought about. But the idea he comes and says, we are in that stream, speaking to America. He sees that transfer being made to us. I don’t think it’s too late for us. I think that we have a great nation. We have built a system that does honor the individual and allows him to do under God what he would do.

And I think that we’ve neglected that and we’ve almost let it go. But I think that there’s a lot of people that are saying enough is enough and that’s happening now. Under the section on religion, I wanna give you a few quotes. I’ve got two other sections to go and obviously I’m gonna have to trim this up and add it on the fly here. But in under religion and lastly, who’s whoever rejects atheism as this fundamental thought is bound to go back to Calvinism, not to restore its worn out form, but once more to catch hold of Calvinistic principles in order to employ them in such a form as suiting the requirements of our own century that may recede the needy, the needed unity of Protestant thought and the lacking energy to Protestant practical life.

As soon as you quit being an atheist and believe in God, you realize, oh my goodness, God is bigger than I am, he made it, I need to serve him. So it puts you into practical life. What does God want me to do with my life? Calvinism, red is God’s sovereignty, is the central domain of our worship at the most high. In fact, in the religious domain, Calvinism is occupied in the first by a particular and impressive position nobody should deny. It is not God who exists for the sake of his creation, the creation exists for the sake of God. But just as the entire creation reaches its culminating point in man, so also religion finds its clear expression only in man who is made in the image of God.

And this is not because man seeks it, but because God himself implanted in man’s nature the real essence, the real essential religious expression by means of the seed of religion, as Calvin defines it sown in our human heart. God is the one that knows that. You deny that, what are you doing? You’re doing Romans 1. You deny the creator and worship the creature. You, you are the one that declares there is no God. And you know you’re lying, Romans 1 says it. The starting point of every motive in religion is God and not man. Man is the instrument and the means. God alone is here, the goal. The point of departure and the point of arrival, the fountain from which the waters flow and at the same time the ocean into which they finally return.

Calvinism proclaimed the absolute equality of all who engaged in the service of the church and refused to ascribe to its leaders and office bearer any other character than that of ministers. We’ve talked about this in our men to men. The Calvinists only saw elders and deacons as the two offices. The conception of the church as a congregation of believers might lead to the conception that it included believers only without their children. This, however, by no means is by no means the teaching of Calvinism. Its teaching on the sub-sheet of infant baptism, oh, I said it, showing quite the contrary. Believers who meet together do not thereby sever the natural bond that binds them to their offspring.

On the contrary, they consecrate this bond, and by baptizing, Baptism incorporate their children into the communion of their church and these minors are kept in this church communion until when of age they become themselves confessors or sever themselves from the church by their unbelief. Now I read Kuyper’s quote, what do we do in our church? We have youth we want them to hear the preaching and the message. They live in Christian families they’re They’re exposed to our Christian covenant with God. They live with us. They see us. We pour that into them. We see that answered back to us. We are their instructors. We are their primary disciples.

And through this, we end up in our camp at the same point Kuiper does, until, when of age, they become themselves confessors or sever themselves by their unbelief. So we’re really in the same bag. And what we’re saying here and in our congregation and the way we worship, is we want the kids, all the youth, everybody, we worship together. We are a body. And as they watch us, as their parents worship, they go, what’s going on here? And they’ll ask those questions. We’ve had many people tell us that. I’ve had it from my grandkids. I’ve had it from my own children. So the issue is, not the infant baptism argument, we’re not going to be doing that.

We do believe in believer’s baptism, but the principle here is Calvinistic in its thinking that we are the people that bring this to them. A national church, i.e. a church that compromising only one in a nation, that nation entirely is a heathen and at most a Jewish concept. So at this he’s speaking out against the national church like the Lutherans and that kind of thing. When you do that, when the government commands which church, you’ve taken what? The sovereignty of the church and put it in the hands of the government. Not good. The church of Christ is not national but ecumenical. Not one single state but the whole world its domain.

And when the Lutheran reformers at the instigation of their sovereigns nationalize their churches and Calvinistic churches allowed themselves to deviate into the same track. They did not ascend to a higher conception than that of the Rome’s World Church, but descended distinctly to lower ground. Happily, I may conclude by bearing witness that both our Synod of Dort and your not less venerable Westminster Assembly have honored again the ecumenical character of our Reformed churches, thereby censoring as unpardonable every deviation from the only right principle. That’s a very strong statement saying, no national church, that we are the church of God wherever we are, and churches stand distinctly on their own.

Finally, in the service of church philanthropy, in the diaconate, which Calvin alone understood, he wrote a great deal about it in the Institutes, and restored to its primordial honor, neither Rome, nor the Greek church, neither Lutheran, nor Episcopal church, caught the real meaning of the diaconate. Calvinism alone has restored the diaconates to its place of honor as an indispensable and constitutive element of ecclesiastical life. But in this diaconate also, the lofty principle must prevail that it may not glorify those who give alms, don’t glorify the deacons, but only the name of him who moved the hearts of the people to liberality.

The deacons are not our servants, but servants of Christ. That which we commit to them, we simply give back to Christ as stewards of what is his property and is his name we must distribute to the poor, our brothers and our sisters, the poor church member who thanks the deacon and who, through his deacons, purposes to make it manifest that for the whole man and for the whole of life, he is the Christus Consulator, the heavenly Redeemer, the anointed and appointed by God himself for our fallen race from all eternity. Glorious words, this is the thing we are talking about in men to men now, that we see this office as a neglected one and not one that’s been elevated to the right term.

A deacon isn’t somebody that stands guard in the parking lot. A deacon is somebody that is looking out for the needs of the congregation and administering to those, where the elders stood to pay attention to prayer and the word, more in a big black and white kind of category. But Calvin is the one that saw that and instituted that in Geneva. Politics. I think I can breeze this through and close it down in the next three minutes or whatever. And then I have short little things for the rest of our service. So I think, just bear with me here, and I do want to get through this part. In order that the influence of Calvinism in our political development may be felt, it must be shown what fundamental political conceptions Calvinism has opened the door and how these political conceptions sprang from its roots principle.

This dominating principle was not so terriologically justification by faith, but in its widest sense, cosmologically, the sovereignty of the triune god over the whole cosmos. In all its fears and kingdoms, visible and invisible, primordial sovereignty which eradicates in mankind and a three-fold deduced supremacy. The sovereignty in the state, the sovereignty in society, and the sovereignty in the church. Man is created from man and by virtue of his birth he is organically united to the whole race. Together we form one humanity not only with those who are not living now but also with all the generations behind us and with all those who come after us.

Pulverized into millions though we may be, all the human race is from one blood. The conception of states, however, which subdivided the earth into continents and each continent into the morsels does not harmonize with this idea. Then only would the organic unity of our race be realized politically if one state could embrace all the world and if the whole of humanity were associated in one world empire. had sin not intervened, no doubt this would have actually been so. So if Adam hadn’t fallen, we would be one big happy world government. Since Adam fell, impossible. No doubt this would have actually been so. If sin, as a disintegrating force, had not divided humanity into different sections, nothing would have marred or broken the organic unity of our race.

And the mistake of the Alexanders and the Augustine and of the Napoleons was not that they were charmed with the thought of the One World Empire, but it was this, that they were endeavored to realize this idea, notwithstanding that the force of sin had dissolved our unity. They want to do it on their own. God wants us to be unified under the three spheres that we talked about before, the state, the society, and the church. And thus, to the first Calvinistic thesis that sin alone has necessitated the institution of governments. This second and no less monumentous thesis is added that all authority of governments on earth originates from the sovereignty of God alone.

God’s own direct government is absolute monocle. But no monotheist will deny it. But Calvin considered the cooperation of many persons under mutual control a republic desirable now that the mechanical institution of government is necessitated by the reason of sin. Because of sin, we cannot have the theistic government at this stage. We who believe in the coming millennium know that Christ will come back and rule in a proper theistic government. But right now, that’s broken. And Calvin considered the cooperation of many persons under mutual control a republic desirable now that the mechanical institution of government is instituted by the reason of sin.

So therefore, we have what we have, okay? In some respects, every man is a sovereign, for everybody must have and has a sphere of life of his own, in which he has no one above him but God alone. I do not point to this overestimation of the importance of conscience, for whomsoever wishes to liberate the conscience where God and his word are concerned. I meet as an opponent, not as an ally. This, however, does not prevent by maintaining the sovereignty of conscience as the palladium of all personal liberty. In this sense, that conscience is never subject to man, but always and ever to God Almighty. Let you not sear your conscience, keep your conscience clear, okay?

Let’s pray. Father, at this time we come to you, renewed and sharpened our conscience. hone it with your word, activate us with your spirit, make us of a people who will honor you until you return. You are the only source of our strength, and it’s in your son’s name we pray, amen. I’m doing so well and I saw 1130 in thought and that’s when I was supposed to end. Then Sean told me that I have till 1130, hey.

All right, we just had the offering, yeah. Oh, be seated. I was so worried about getting through all this stuff, and I didn’t get through it all, and yet we got it done early. So anyway, I wanna incorporate some of this before we actually talk about communion. I give you a lot of quotes. It’s a lot of crazy language that he uses. I wanna commend to you guys. You can go on the internet and get these lectures just in a PDF form and read them for yourselves. They’re amazing. Tonight I’m going to talk about the last three things, science, art, and the future.

But it’s fascinating when we really think these things through. I know that this is not, I didn’t pick out a passage and preach it. I could have preached through Romans 1 or Romans 9, stopped at each verse, digressed into one of these talks about politics or this or that, and done it that way. Some preachers do that. The issue is we need to think outside our box. We want our church to think outside these walls. We come here to strengthen each other, to be strengthened by God, to worship Him, to ask Him for the things that we ask Him for. But when that happens, it transforms us into something different. And we then go out, and whoever we rub shoulders with, whoever we see, we are that light to the world.

And we can do that by encouraging other brothers and other churches. We are not the only place. That’s the other thing I want you to understand. We don’t have a corner on the truth. We’re flawed individuals like everybody else. Kuiper was not a saint, okay? Calvin wasn’t a saint. St. Paul was not a saint. We are all saints, okay? Remember all of that. It’s, sometimes we get stuck in the thing. Oh, we gotta get our Bible facts. We gotta have this Bible study. We gotta do this, we gotta do that. Actually, our Christian life is probably more important that maybe we mowed the Reeves lawn or helped Ralph with his gutters or whatever, or you gave some dude that needed 10 bucks out on the street.

I don’t know. I don’t know what the thing is, but you, each individual, have these opportunities and need to take advantage of them. And don’t harden your conscience to things. Think outside the box. Think differently than what we normally think. This does not mean we are giving up our truth. All you need to do is go on the website and see our statement of faith. If that doesn’t wear you out, we’ll give you other readings. We can further that along. But the thing is, we want you to take this and make it active. Enjoy it. Have a great time. This is a fantastic opportunity for all of us to grow outside the box we’ve been created in.

I want to give a plug for the school right now. My wife and I and other adults are auditing the omnibus class. Jonathan had the books out in the back. We’ve now come two weeks. In those two weeks, the students have gone through the whole book of Genesis, the whole book of Exodus, written papers, discussed the points in them, looked at them as what they are. Genesis are whole beginning, the whole structure of our societies put out there, all the things I’ve talked about here are put into their nations, governments, how we should act, you know, all the laws, all that stuff’s there. Then Exodus, where God shows he’s immerseable and saving God, reaches down and plucks his people from their slavery and brings them out into freedom and all on and on like that.

Our students are digesting this on a level that’s like crazy. This week it’s the Gilgamesh epic. We are required to read it this week be able to discuss it and then defend it for what it is, a story of the flood, and a whole other civilization. Over I think it’s a seven week period we have to read all of Herodotus history. This is a huge book. I never had this opportunity. I have some of these books in my library. I never went to college. I picked them up on the way. But the The thing is, we’ve been left behind. In our river of civilization, this country was founded on people that knew these things. The great men of our past that founded this country, some of them at 13 years old were going to college already knowing all their Hebrew, all their Greek, all their Bible.

They went to college to go to really get a degree. We go to college and still are trying to teach people how to read. It’s upside down. We need to change this, and we are doing it in our own little way and want this done. So all of that, that’s me preaching and filling up that little section of time that I found that I had. And I’ll give a plug right now for tonight, and here’s my plug. As I grow old, I grow old, I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Now if anybody in the audience knows what that is, that’s good. If you don’t, come back tonight and we’ll talk about Calvinist influence in art by a person you might not have even thought about being a Calvinistic person.

So now we come to communion. We now come to demonstrate of our communion with you in a supernatural way. I would ask that you would open our eyes to be able to understand and communicate better what you have done for us through your son. Help us to understand the power you have given us, through your spirit, to be in the family of God, that you can bring our community to an understanding of you. We thank you that you have put us in your family and given us the symbols to show of our celebration and worship of you. Think about it. We are coming here to be blessed by God, to celebrate what He did for us by taking these elements.

It’s unbelievable what’s happening. And it is supernatural. For those of us that are afraid of the Charismatic movement, don’t think that way. If we are not supernatural Christians, we are not Christians. If God’s spirit is not supernaturally empowering us to live our lives, we are not really living our lives to the abundance that it should be. And we come rubbing off on each other, strengthening each other, sharpening each other, and as we do that, in that communion, we glorify God in our coming together as we do. So as those who have been baptized into the body by faith, and those who have repented their sin and put their faith in Christ, you are welcome to partake of our communion here.

And now for the commissioning. Go now and practice these truths. Be those people in the world. You have the power of the almighty God behind you. Influence your community, your neighbors, your loved ones in our current world, but also for their souls in the world to come. come. Our benediction for today is Romans 15 5 through 6. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.