Pastors Who Shut Down Their Churches examines how Absalom's rebellion fulfilled Nathan's prophecy against David's house, paralleling modern leaders who scattered flocks through guilt and twisted scripture. The sermon argues that true repentance requires both deed and word changes, rejecting private worship substitutes for the corporate assembly mandated by Hebrews 10:24-25. While some churches compromised during the Delta crisis, a faithful remnant remains in Texas, Afghanistan, Australia, and Canada, upholding biblical preaching, sacraments, and qualified elders. Ultimately, the episode urges believers to identify these true churches rather than accepting post-crisis apologies, promoting the upcoming Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference 2023 with Dr. James White and others. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Absalom's Betrayal of David00:05:31
Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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Thanks.
One final time, our text for this Lord's Day is Psalm 63, verses 1 through 3.
The Bible says this O God, you are my God.
Earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you.
My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, seeing your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated and we'll begin.
By way of introduction in your notes, if you'd like to follow along, I've written the following Psalm 63 begins with a heading that says, A Psalm of David.
When he was in the wilderness of Judah.
A psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
If you were with us last Lord's Day, we had a similar context for the writing of that psalm.
The context was that David was a fugitive, he was hiding out, his house was surrounded by militia, men who served King Saul.
But there's a difference in the context of our text today.
Very similar in many ways.
David is on the run.
Once again, he's in the wilderness, he has been effectively.
Severed from the kingdom of Israel.
And therefore, by being severed from the kingdom of Israel, he's been severed from the temple.
He's been severed from, well, the tabernacle at this point because his son Solomon ultimately built and constructed the temple.
But he's been severed, separated from the place of worship, the place where the glory of God dwelt, the place of the presence of God, where there was the praise of God, the people of God, and the presence of God.
But this time, what is ultimately Cast David out as a fugitive on the run.
What's cast him out into the wilderness, to this dry and weary place, is not King Saul and his persecution, but very clearly from the text, we see that the source of David's exile in this particular circumstance is actually his own son.
It's actually Absalom.
We know this because later in Psalm 63, namely verse 11, David is clearly already king.
See, when he was on the run from King Saul, David had been anointed by Samuel the prophet to be the new king of Israel at a certain point, but he was not yet king.
He had not yet come into the throne.
But Psalm chapter 63, verse 11, tells us that David is already king.
And so we can assume by using inductive reasoning that David must be on the run, a fugitive in the wilderness, separated from Israel and the tabernacle and the dwelling place of the presence of God because not of Saul's persecution.
But rather, his own son Absalom.
There are really only two key moments that David is a fugitive it's when he's being persecuted and hunted down by Saul, and later on, it's when he's being persecuted and hunted down by his own son Absalom.
Allow me to read 2 Samuel chapter 15, verses 2 through 5, to provide a little bit of context for his son Absalom and what was going on.
This mutiny that his son acted upon.
It says this, and Absalom used to rise early.
And stand beside the way of the gate.
And when any man had a dispute to come before the king, that being David, for judgment, Absalom would call to him and say, From what city are you?
And when he said, Your servant is of such and such a tribe in Israel, Absalom would say to him, See, your claims are good and right, but there is no man designated by the king to hear you.
The king is not, he's not personal.
He's a good preacher, but not a good shepherd.
Right?
He doesn't, he's not empathetic.
If only we had an empathetic leader.
Right?
I mean, good policies, who cares?
If only there was someone like me, says Absalom, as he intercepts.
Notice what he's doing.
He's intercepting people.
They're on their way to the king.
The king would have dealt with their circumstances, he would have executed justice.
The king was more than happy to meet with his subjects, to meet with the people of Israel.
But Absalom, he's standing in between the people and his father, the king.
He's intercepting them on the way.
And he's saying, I like just the language here.
I like how he says, From what city are you?
And all the person has actually said at this point in their response to that very, very specific question is, I'm from such and such a tribe in Israel.
They haven't even really made their claim yet.
And Absalom says, Man, you are wise.
Your claims are true.
Right?
I mean, now there's a million applications for this.
I can't help it.
And this is self serving.
And I'll confess that up front.
I don't think I'm so much trying to serve myself as it's just my experience.
So I automatically think of, well, this is what I think of.
I think of many senior pastors' plights.
Equality Versus Sameness in Elders00:04:32
This is not the case.
Connor is fantastic.
So please hear that disclaimer.
But many senior pastors who are sinners themselves, they've had plenty of faults on their own.
But there are cases where a senior pastor has an Absalon as his associate pastor.
My dad's shaking his head.
He's come from pastoral ministry.
And it's a common thing where the senior pastor, he's usually most often in the pulpit.
And he's the buck stops here guy.
And not the buck stops here after.
Shifting blame to every single party you can imagine and then saying the buck stops here.
You guys might be familiar with examples like that, but an actual buck stops here, a guy who actually takes responsibility and then responsibility that's not even really his often is attributed to him because, again, he's the visible, he's the tip of the spear.
He is the visible leader.
So there can be a plurality of elders, which I would argue for.
I do believe that that's the biblical polity, that there should be a plurality of elders and that those elders should have equal weight and authority when it comes to making decisions for the life of the church, that the senior pastor doesn't get two votes.
So, the elders are equal in weight and authority.
But it does make sense that one elder, right, because we're not egalitarian.
And there is a difference, right?
So, there's a difference in a plurality of elders who have equal weight and authority versus saying that they're all the same.
Equality and sameness, androgyny, are two different things.
See, our culture has completely hijacked the word equality and made it androgyny.
So, we can't be equal unless we're the same.
Right, so you can't have a difference of people and an equality of worth and value under the law without androgyny, which is precisely just for the record.
I mean, that's that's that's what you know, the at least second wave, not necessarily first wave feminism, you know, working on the widget factory and helping to build planes for World War I and II.
That's a little bit different, and even there, we had some roots coming in.
But second wave feminism is the idea of liberating.
It's liberation of women from what?
From the misery, the absolute misery, oh, the horror of being in the home, that prison, the home.
That I'm a wife and a mother, and everyone knows how miserable it is to have children.
Goodness gracious, could you imagine a worse sentence than motherhood?
And so, feminism, in all its compassion, in all its great kindness, liberated these poor, oppressed, trapped women from the home.
And now, what we ultimately have, employers loved it, by the way.
You know who loves feminism more than women?
Men.
Wicked men.
Behind every feminist pulling the strings, laughing maniacally, is a man.
In the name of feminism, women are gonna just go ahead and hand out sex like candy.
Who benefits from that?
Not women, right?
In the name of feminism, all of a sudden, corporations, 99% of the time led by a male, all of a sudden, they can pay half the wages, right?
I mean, if you look back to the 1950s, 1960s, It was common to have a single income home.
That one income, employers, they just knew that it was their obligation if somebody was a good worker, if they were faithful and had integrity in their work, in their vocation, it was the obligation of an employer to pay them a livable wage.
And a livable wage meant to provide for a wife and children.
But now, often what you'll hear employers say, even if you go humbly and ask for a raise, and if you were to even bring up the excuse of, Well, I need a raise not because I'm trying to be greedy, not because I'm trying to be lavish, but because I have a wife and children.
What an employer will be at least tempted to say, if they don't outright say, is this they'll say, Well, what gives you the luxury to think that your household should be able to be sustained on one income?
Why is your wife not working?
So, second wave feminism, liberating women from the home, I mean, all it did ultimately was it gave employers an excuse to pay half the wages.
Because it should be two incomes to support a family, which that was not the culture before.
Now, my whole point in saying that is with that also came birth control.
Now, why birth control?
Getting back to egalitarianism, equality versus androgyny.
Livable Wages and Birth Control00:02:49
Because a woman will never be the same as a man.
Never.
Just biologically, it is impossible.
Unless, I mean, it still doesn't make her the same, but at least in one instance, men can't get pregnant, but women can.
Until the birth hormonal pill.
And then, but what if somebody still gets pregnant?
What if they forget to take their pill?
What if it doesn't work?
You know, 99% effective abortion.
Did you know the whole idea of abortion being a woman's right, which is an abomination, an absolute abomination, which we should hate?
It is righteous for us to hate what the Lord hates.
But that concept, a big part of it, was equality.
A woman must be able to abort her child.
First, she needs to be able to take all these kinds of preventative measures so that she never gets pregnant, because again, the horror.
Of children, the horror of pregnancy.
Good Lord, we've got to save women from that disease called pregnancy.
And so, first, you do all that.
But if a child slips through, we have to have a way to handle even that situation so that a woman is exactly the same as a man, so that she has the same rights.
So, the point is, our culture thinks that equality is not merely an equality of worth and value, but it's androgyny, it's sameness.
And all that back to the elders' analogy.
Praise God, I'm remembering how I got here.
The elders' analogy, equal weight and authority, does not mean sameness in terms of gifting.
And so, if one of the elders happens to have a unique teaching gift, all the elders must be, according to Scripture, able to teach.
That's Titus 1, that's 1 Timothy 3.
But if one teaches better than the other elders, then it only logically makes sense that he would teach more often.
And the Scripture affirms this.
1 Timothy 5, when it talks about honoring elders, the idea that we should.
Give a tribute double honor to the elders who rule well, and then it says, especially those who labor in the preaching and teaching the word of God, which implies what implicitly what's being said in that text is that some elders labor more in teaching than the others.
But the scripture also says, two chapters earlier from 1st Timothy 5 to 1st Timothy 3, that all elders to even be qualified must be able to teach.
So, all able elders are able to teach as a term of their qualification, and yet the scripture says plainly that some will teach.
Meaning what?
They're equal in weight and authority, a plurality of elders, but they're not the same.
Do you see the difference between equality and sameness?
So, even though they have equal authority, they're not necessarily the same in their gifting.
The Danger of Empty Words00:08:43
All right, and all that being said, bringing it back to Absalom, bringing it back to David, David, what was happening is he's sitting on the throne.
He is, we're meant to assume, because he's a man after God's own heart, we see all of his righteous exploits as well as his sin.
But his righteous exploits were meant to assume that David is more than able and more than willing to execute justice, to do what is needed for the people of Israel.
As they have a need, as they have some kind of crisis, David is willing to meet with them.
David is willing to handle their situation.
What's happening is not that David is this hard man, that he is this uncaring, unsympathetic man.
What's happening is that Absalom is standing in the way.
He is intercepting the people and he's lying about his father, the king.
He's lying.
And he's saying, oh, if only there was somebody in Israel who was dedicated.
If only this king cared about the people.
He's a great warrior, he's good with policy.
Israel has been blessed by his leadership, no doubt.
But the one thing he's not good at is interpersonal care and compassion for people.
And that, I'm telling you.
The applications are limitless.
You could do associate pastor, senior pastor.
That line's going to get peddled a million times in a million different churches.
But you could also apply it to a president and then members of his administration.
You know, if only the president was his carrying.
If only.
What you're really saying is this.
Absalom, what he's really saying is this.
Say, if only I were king.
Right?
Is that not what he's saying?
If only I were king, I would be better.
I would do this for you.
But the problem is that we have a jerk in office when what we need is an empathetic, caring leader.
Because policies that mirror the law of God at the end of the day may have some value, but if it comes along with an annoying Twitter feed, I mean, can we really measure how much damage that does?
Wouldn't you rather have someone responsible for ending thousands of lives with torture and murder in Afghanistan, but who is empathetic, than someone who seems, you know, kind of annoying and harsh and foolish in their Twitters?
I remember Jesus said something about this.
There was a parable of two sons.
The father asked both of them to go into his field and to work.
Now, one son, in his word, right?
Word indeed, word indeed.
In his word, he said, Yeah, I'll do it.
But then he doesn't show up.
And the other son, in his word, he fails.
And it is a sin.
So I don't want to act as though it's completely absolved of moral responsibility.
He tells his father, No, it's disrespectful.
It's not honoring his father and mother.
It is a sin.
But in his deed, that's in his word, he sins.
But in his deed, he shows up.
Now, Jesus asked the question, and the answer is clear Jesus asked the question, Which one did better?
The son who showed up.
So, according to Jesus, given the dichotomy pitting word against deed, in the mind of Christ, the guy who gives the wrong word but who does the right actions still is not ideal.
There's still sin, but it is an improvement from the one who gives the right word but then does the wrong thing.
I wish the church knew that about nine months ago.
I wish we remembered that.
So Absalom takes the throne.
How does he take the throne?
He does it by winning the hearts of the people.
Oh, that I were judge in the land.
Then every man with a dispute or cause might come to me and I would give him justice.
And whenever a man came near to pay homage to him, here's another one.
It's literally, it's almost comical.
It is almost comical.
It's so similar, it's eerie.
He would put out his hand and take hold of him and kiss him.
Shaking hands.
Kissing babies.
Right?
I mean, he's just the quintessential politician, this guy.
You know, and just for the record, that's on both sides of the political aisle.
You know, but this idea, he's winning the people, but it's through flattery.
It's not sincere.
It's not real.
He doesn't care.
I mean, he cares deeply about someone, but it's himself.
And so he's shaking hands.
He's kissing babies.
He's campaigning.
He's doing a smear campaign, but with careful language so it doesn't sound like it.
If only there was.
I were judge in Israel, but implicitly what he's saying is, my father, the king, does not care about the needs of the people.
So he's doing smear campaigns, but crafty smear campaigns.
He's ultimately what he's doing it's a mutiny, it's rebellion.
It is rebellion against the king, it is rebellion against the order that God has established.
Now, all that being said, it's not really a defense of Absalom, but it's an explanation of the sovereignty of God, even in the suffering of David.
This came about as a fulfillment of the word of the prophet Nathan because of David's sin with Bathsheba.
The prophet Nathan said, What you did in secret in your adultery is going to be done by a member of your own house in broad daylight.
And that's exactly what happened.
David is cast out into exile.
The people side with Absalom because the people don't know.
They're easily swayed.
An empathetic leader?
Wow.
Wow, an empathetic.
Taxes are going to triple, but he's caring, though.
He's caring.
People are going to die all over the world, but he's caring.
Absalom sways the hearts of the people who are uninformed.
Perhaps they had some fake news going on, I don't know.
But they're uninformed, sways the hearts of the people.
The people unite with Absalom, where it's a majority, and they push out David.
And while David's a fugitive in the wilderness, in exile, Absalom takes his concubines, his father's concubines, onto the roof.
Of the powers, and you know what happens.
So, all of the prophetic word of Nathan comes to pass.
And there is a very real sense in which this is the earthly consequence for David's sin.
So, David is not innocent in this.
So, it's not to say that the guy at the top is a victim of the two faced, deceitful, mutinous underling.
That's not the whole picture of the story.
Absalom is responsible.
He is two faced, he is mutinous, he is deceptive.
All those things are true.
And David is an adulterer.
Who sinned against the Lord.
And this is the consequence for his sin.
All that is going on, and that's the context for our text today.
David is a fugitive.
He's in a dry and weary land, not just physically, that's true, but also spiritually.
He is separated from the people of God, and therefore the praise of God, and therefore the presence of God.
And we've already had some texts like this, as I've already mentioned, where David is cut off effectively because of exile, whether it be on the run from Saul or on the run from Absalom.
They're There are multiple psalms where David, in that frame of mind, in that context, he cries out to the Lord and he pins a song to the Lord, a prayer and a song to the Lord, where he confesses to the Lord, he declares his thirst for God, his hunger for the presence of the God that he loves.
And in these psalms, he often, and our psalm today is an example of this, he often mentions in his thirst for God that is always, it is always in some measure correlated.
With his desire, with his deep longing for the presence of God in the sanctuary, the tabernacle.
And what I'm trying to say is this, and we'll get to this point in a moment, but David understands what many evangelicals for the last year and a half have forgotten that there is a sweetness of the presence of God that is unique to the assembly of God's people.
Keys Given to the Church00:09:02
That worshiping privately alone is.
In your daily devotion is biblical, it's right, it's not only permissible or beneficial, but it's mandated, it's commanded.
And yet, there is still a unique sweetness to the presence of God on the Lord's day when the saints gather together to administer, the officers of the church administer the ordinary means of grace to God's people.
Preaching the word, praying the word, and all this public, corporate, public preaching of the word, public praying of the word, public singing of the word.
And public seeing of the word, the only sight that has been prescribed to New Testament Christians, seeing the word as it were in the sacrament of baptism and the Lord's Supper.
There is a sweetness.
Jesus is present uniquely.
Remember Matthew chapter 16, I believe it is.
No, Matthew chapter 18.
So, Matthew chapter 16, remember Jesus says, Who do you think that I am?
to his disciples and Peter, right?
I mean, Peter's like Babe Ruth, so he's always gonna swing as hard as he can, so he's gonna get the most home runs.
You got it.
You got it.
Give them credit.
And also the most strikeouts, right?
Babe Ruth and Peter the Apostle.
Two peas and a pod in that regard.
But this is one of the moments where Peter, he knocks it out of the park.
He says, You are the Christ, the Son of God.
And Jesus says, Blessed are you, Simon of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who's in heaven.
And I say that your name, Cephas, that your name, Simon, will be Cephas Peter, which means rock.
And on this rock, not Peter as Roman Catholicism teaches, but the rock being a true confession of the Christ.
Which you have just demonstrated by my Father who has revealed it.
You could, flesh and blood doesn't do this.
So, Peter, you didn't do this on your own strength, but God sovereignly revealed to you my deity that I am the Messiah, the Christ, that there is one God and one mediator between man and God, the man, the God man Christ Jesus.
And that revelation from the Father as a confession, a profession of faith, that is the rock on which I will build my church.
And then Jesus goes further and says, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
And then he says, I give you the keys.
This is authoritative language.
I give to you the keys.
And now at this point, I would argue exegetically that Peter is standing in representative of the apostles.
So Jesus now says, I'm giving you, being plural, the apostles, Peter representing this, I'm giving you, the apostles, the keys to the kingdom.
The authority.
To do what?
To bind on earth, and it will be bound in heaven.
To loose on earth, and it will be loosed in heaven.
Now here's what's so interesting.
In Matthew 18, that's Matthew 16, but in Matthew 18, Where we have the famous passage of church discipline, Jesus all of a sudden he transitions the subject from the apostles to the church.
The ecclesia is the Greek word, the assembly, the gathering of the saints for worship.
And what Jesus says is this He uses the language, you know, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault privately between you and him alone.
If he listens to you, you've won your brother over.
But if he does not listen to you, then bring along one or two witnesses so that.
Or one or two others, so that the testimony may be established in the presence of two or three witnesses.
But if he does not listen to them, then tell it to the church.
And if he does not listen to the church, then hand him over.
It's the same kind of language as Paul saying, Hand them over to Satan, Hymenaeus, and Alexander, 1 Timothy chapter 1.
I have handed these men over to Satan that they might be taught not to blaspheme any longer.
And Jesus says, Then treat him as an outsider, a tax collector, or a Gentile, which were both outsiders, outside of the people of God, and thereby outside of the presence of God.
But then, the very next words out of Jesus' mouth, right after that church discipline passage, is this.
He says, Whatever you bind on earth.
So, he doesn't specifically say in Matthew 18, I give you the keys.
He says that in Matthew 16.
But Matthew 16, with the apostles, I give you the keys, whatever you bind, whatever you lose.
That's Matthew 16.
Matthew 18, he now is not speaking to the apostles, but the church, the assembly of the saints.
And he uses the same language.
So, it's implicit that the keys now belong to the church because he says, He gives the authority and the responsibility to the church to do precisely what the keys do, which is, again, he says, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
And then Jesus goes one step further.
In Matthew 18, he says, For wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in your midst.
Now, this is funny, it's peculiar because.
For New Testament Christians, and for all Christians for that matter, because we've all been saved by grace through faith in Christ, either looking forward as an Old Testament saint to the Christ or looking back as a New Testament saint to the Christ.
But for the Christian, our body is what?
1 Corinthians chapter 6, it's a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have received from God.
You're not your own, you are bought with a price.
Therefore, honor God with your body.
Shall it take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?
May it never be.
Right?
And so our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, which means what?
Every single Christian has the presence of the Holy Spirit.
And what does the Holy Spirit do?
What Jesus says in John 14 and John 15, he says that the Spirit guides you into all truth.
He'll bring to remembrance all the teachings of Christ.
And ultimately, what the Spirit does is he testifies to and even exudes and exemplifies the ministry of the risen Christ.
So this can be said Jesus Christ, who is physically seated at the right hand of the Father because he has come, he has lived, he has died, he has resurrected and now bodily ascended, bodily resurrected and bodily ascended.
To the right hand of God, Jesus Christ is physically present at the right hand of the Father.
But Jesus Christ, by virtue of the ministry of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is spiritually present with who?
Wherever the Holy Spirit is present, the spiritual presence of the Lord Jesus Christ is also present by virtue of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
So, all that to say, God is omnipresent, and Jesus Christ, as the second member of the Godhead, is uniquely even present, not just in his omnipresence, but uniquely present.
With all believers in all places at all times.
Not just when we gather together on the Lord's Day, not just in church, but if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the spiritual presence of Jesus, the resurrected Christ, his spiritual presence is with you by virtue of the fact that the Holy Spirit is with you.
And the Holy Spirit is guaranteed to be with all those who trust in Jesus because of 1 Corinthians 6.
Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
All that theological framework to make this point.
If you're a Christian, Jesus is present with you.
So, what in the world does Jesus mean in Matthew 18, where he says, Wherever two or three of you are gathered in my name, there I am in your midst?
Because it seems that statement seems to discount the fact that Jesus is present with a Christian by virtue of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, even if they're alone.
Right?
If a Christian is persecuted and taken captive and placed in prison, Jesus is present.
When Peter was imprisoned before the earthquake came and the angel who let him out, Jesus, well, actually, that's, yeah, Jesus, I was thinking timeline, was this during Jesus' earthly ministry?
No, it's after.
He's resurrected and ascended.
So the spiritual presence of Jesus is with Peter by virtue of the Holy Spirit.
And Peter is not gathered with any other believers, he's completely alone.
So when Jesus says in Matthew 18, where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am present.
We must exegete that to mean that Jesus is uniquely present, that there is something special, a greater degree, a heightened blessing, a greater blessing, a more profound sense of the presence of Jesus when we come together.
He's always present even when we're alone by virtue of the Holy Spirit, but He's uniquely present when we gather together.
And David, all that back to our text, David recognizes this.
He recognizes that there is a uniqueness, there is a sweetness to the presence of God that is uniquely belonging exclusively to the assembly, the people of God.
Unique Presence in Corporate Gathering00:05:52
And so, therefore, if he is cut off from Israel and cut off from the tabernacle and cut off from the people of God and the praise of God, he is therefore cut off effectively, at least in one sense, from the presence of God.
That doesn't mean in every sense.
If David thought he was cut off, Cut off from God in every sense, there would be no sense in him praying our text today.
Why pray to God if you're completely separated from his presence?
And David, who wrote Psalm 63, is the same David who also said, Where can I go from your presence?
Right?
Whether I'm in the depths of Seel or whether I'm cast into the sea, there is nowhere that I could go that I would be cut off from your presence.
So David recognizes the omnipresence of God, but David also recognizes the unique sweetness of the presence of God that exclusively belongs to the assembly of God's people.
In other words, you cannot merely worship God with a worship CD in your car or live streaming a sermon.
And say that it is a sufficient substitute to the church.
And yet, Christians, many, have been doing this and saying this for a year and a half.
And here's the kicker not only that, not only saying it's permissible, but condemning those who gather and saying that they're doing it because it's a sufficient substitute for the church, which is theologically and objectively wrong, and it's loving.
To their neighbor.
Right now, we are hating our neighbor in the minds of many who profess to be followers of Jesus.
I get the comments on YouTube all the time.
You guys have probably seen them.
Feel free to come in there and make a defense.
Sometimes I can't, the trolls are overwhelming.
I have to just let them go.
But if you want to get in there and have a YouTube comment battle, you're welcome to do so.
Be polite, be respectful.
But I mean, you see it all the time.
You're hating your neighbor.
What are you doing?
This isn't loving.
This isn't loving.
But it is.
We've been commanded.
We have been commanded to gather with one another.
That doesn't mean that there are no circumstances that the church might skip a gathering because of some serious, serious threat.
The reality, though, is that was, you know, Doug Wilson says that's the position.
He was like, I used to be a reasonable man.
You know, there were circumstances that I could think of where I would have said, all right, we're going to miss this Sunday because there's a tornado coming.
And he said, but after the last year and a half, if I heard that report from the government, I want to believe it.
They said a tornado was coming.
I'd have to assume that they were lying and we'd probably just go ahead and gather.
So, there are actually circumstances where the church may not gather.
But to not gather for so long, for such a small risk, I mean, just it denies the scripture first and foremost, but it also denies the last 2,000 years of church history.
I mean, to quote Martin Luther or Charles Spurgeon, who both had epidemics in their time, where they say, you know, I will not go where my presence is not needed.
Lest I unknowingly inflict harm on my neighbor.
Yeah, that's good.
That's great.
But number one, they weren't talking about church.
And number two, not going to like this.
Number two, they were talking about real sicknesses.
Are you a COVID denier?
No.
But I'm just saying, by comparison, the black plague is not like COVID.
It's not.
You know, when there's a serious pandemic, we need to close churches when someone's walking down the street, ringing a bell saying, bring out your dead.
I mean, just last week I had the opportunity of speaking to two men who are bivocational elders in their local churches, but their day job is that they own funeral homes.
And they said, man, you know, we've been, I know it sounds a little chagrined, but we've been disappointed.
We were promised that business was going to be booming.
And it's been exactly the same as any other year.
Now, this doesn't mean that hospitals haven't been overwhelmed, right?
We don't, see, here's the thing.
There is a baseless denial that is actually a thinly veiled form of cowardice.
So you can be, right?
We want to be courageous.
But did you know you can be cowardly in at least two ways?
You can be cowardly by sitting in your basement for the rest of your life, you know, and getting booster shots every three weeks.
You know, like you can be cowardly in that way.
But you can also be cowardly by a baseless denial.
We don't admit it, and we may not even be consciously aware of it.
But one way that we kind of avoid things that scare us is we just deny them.
It's not real.
So we do need to be careful.
We need to be seasoned and reasonable.
Like, we don't need to have the pendulum overswing.
And end up in the ditch on the other side of the road, and our ability to try to auto correct.
If that makes sense.
Right?
So, COVID is real.
Connor, he's a nurse.
Hospitals have been packed.
There are some real things going on.
Now, that said, some of it's COVID, and it's amazing that COVID cured the flu, right?
There's no flu anymore.
But so, anyways, so even with that, you got to take it with a grain of salt.
We need to be discerning in this time.
But the point is, The things that were going on in the days of Martin Luther, the things that were going on in the days of Charles Spurgeon, when they said, I don't want by my presence to inflict unknowingly, accidentally harm, they're talking about two different things.
Avoiding Pendulum Swings on Worship00:04:11
One, they're not necessarily talking about the Lord's Day gathering.
And number two, they are talking about diseases that wiped out a third of the population.
Smallpox and polio are not the same as COVID.
Just not.
My mother's dad, from the age of 25 to the day he died, was in a wheelchair because of polio.
Right, so you don't have to be anti vaccine to say, I think there's some fishy business with this particular virus and this particular vaccine and what we're hearing in this time.
And so, we want to be careful with that though, because we need the caveats, we need the disclaimers, because we don't want people to tune us out as wacky, weirdo Christians.
We want them to hear what we have to say because we have something from God's word, something that's true, something that's beneficial, something that is helpful.
So, all that being said, The gathering of the saints together is radically important.
Look at verse 2 in our text.
I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, seeing your power and glory.
David is recalling, he's bringing to remembrance, he's savoring and reminiscing the sweetness of God's presence, but where?
He doesn't say, I've seen you in the wilderness.
And that's not that God's not there.
I've already gone to painstaking exegetical links, theological links, to talk about the omnipresence of God.
Even when you're isolated all alone in the wilderness, if you're a Christian, you have the Spirit of God dwelling within you, and by virtue of the Holy Spirit, you have the Spirit of the risen Christ present.
But even then, there is a uniqueness to the presence of Christ that is exclusively belonging to the ecclesia, the assembly, where two or three are gathered in my name.
David is thinking of that.
He's thinking of the sanctuary.
He is longing and missing the unique sweetness of the presence of God that is pleased to inhabit no other place.
God is enthroned upon the praises of his people, the corporate collective praises of his plurality of people.
There is something undeniable, both by experience, I and you, I'm willing to bet, have experienced it in our lives as Christians, but even more profoundly by scripture, there is something undeniable to the uniqueness of the presence of God when believers come together, especially on the Lord's day.
To worship God in spirit and in truth through the administering of the ordinary means of grace.
David misses that.
I've looked upon you in the sanctuary, seeing your power and glory.
But for now, as my son Absalom has committed a full fledged mutiny and lied and cut me off from Israel and therefore cut me off from the praise of God, the people of God, and the presence of God, I am longing for the sanctuary.
You're with me.
If you weren't with me, I wouldn't be wasting my breath.
I wouldn't be writing this down.
I wouldn't be praying this and crying out to you.
You're with me.
But not like the sanctuary.
The way that you're with me when I'm with other believers in the sanctuary is unique, it's irreplaceable.
There is no equivalent, not on earth.
There is no sweeter place.
Charles Spurgeon said that though the church swarms with many faults, it is the sweetest place I know.
It's the sweetest place I know.
Many of you perhaps have been burnt by your previous church.
Right?
I mean, there are so many people who, you know, and I feel for you.
I feel for you.
I experienced this.
You know, I experienced this not because I was pastoring the church, I didn't experience it with myself, but I did experience it with other elders.
They're like, many of us were either a part of a church as a member or serving on an elder board in a church, and we thought that we were being led by or leading with a certain caliber of man.
Right?
Cowardly Pastors Lack Clarity00:15:12
We thought, this is the kind of man who is my pastor.
And then all of a sudden we realize that's not the kind of man who's actually my pastor.
Like, he talks a big talk, right?
He can have dramatic pauses in his sermons.
He's watched enough Paul Washer sermons to mimic the style and sound really sincere, sound really serious.
But when the rubber hits the road, when catastrophe comes, he's hiding in his basement.
And he is repeating, regurgitating the same rhetoric as Gavin Newsom.
What happened to him?
Nothing happened to him.
This is who he is.
It just got revealed.
And it's a mercy.
I want you guys to see that as a loving mercy from God.
It is a mercy that God, by way of his sovereignty and providence, has revealed to his sheep.
Right?
What does Jesus say?
He said that the sheep, they're like sheep without a shepherd.
He weeps for Jerusalem.
He says, The sheep, you would come to me.
He says, Oh, how you would come to me.
And I would long to gather you as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings.
But you're not coming.
And Jesus says, Why?
He says, Because those who will not enter, they will not enter themselves, and they're also keeping you out.
He's speaking to the religious rulers, he's speaking of the guys who preach at the big conferences.
He's speaking about the guys in Big Eva of his day.
That's who he's talking about.
He's saying these guys won't enter themselves and they're keeping you from entering by telling you that you're not loving your neighbor if you obey my commands.
They're lying to you, they're keeping my sheep away.
And Jesus weeps over Jerusalem where that is the case.
And many of you, you've been burnt.
You've been shocked to find out that when the rubber hit the road, When the American evangelical church finally actually had a practical challenge, right?
Why are we so bloated?
Why are we so lethargic and apathetic?
Because we've had it easy.
That's why.
We're all learning in the last 15 minutes what we should have learned over the last 15 years, including myself.
I had to learn alongside all of you the proper exegesis of Romans 13.
I got it wrong.
All of a sudden, I was told that we can't have church the next Sunday because everyone will die.
And I didn't know, just like nobody knew.
And I had to tell my people some kind of reason.
I want it to be a biblical reason why we shouldn't gather.
And so I did a video, a 10 minute video on Romans 13.
And it was horrid.
And then I had to get in front of my church and apologize to them four weeks later when I realized that this was a bunch of hullabaloo and we should be gathering.
Now, sadly, a lot of pastors a year and a half later still haven't changed.
And I think, in some ways, even more tragically, many pastors have changed, but they never, in word, admitted it.
Does that ring a bell?
How many pastors do we know?
All of a sudden, they did change their position in terms of action, which is a part of repentance.
It's very important.
It's very important.
So, all of a sudden, they weren't gathering, and then all of a sudden now they are gathering, but what they didn't do is they didn't say, Previously, I was wrong.
You know what happens?
You know what happens when a leader, especially a spiritual leader, a pastor in a church, when a leader repents in their deed, but not in word?
At least one, many things happen, but at least one, one negative effect of that is a lack of clarity for the people of God.
It's confusion.
Because what it implies in the perspective of the people is that we shouldn't gather, that's right and biblical.
And now we should gather, even though nothing's changed, because that's also right and biblical.
So what it says in the mind of the people is you can really do whatever you want.
Right, you have options.
No, you don't.
You have commands.
You don't have options, you have commands.
But what that says, even though they're not verbally saying it, by the example they're setting and their actions, it sets up an example that communicates to the people implicitly that both of these options are valid biblical options, even though logically they radically contradict.
So when you say the church is going to gather this next Sunday, and then the night before, all of a sudden there's a court ruling, and you say that the ninth.
The Ninth Circuit Court is the highest law of the land, and we as Christians are commanded to obey the law of the land, so therefore we're actually not going, even though we said we are going to meet on Sunday, we're changing our mind and not meeting on Sunday because we obey the law of the land.
And then a month later, you say Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church.
These are contradicting positions.
Now, the second one is right, and I am so grateful that they're doing the right thing.
But how hard is it to simply say Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church?
And what I said 30 days ago radically and directly contradicted that, and I was wrong.
I'm sorry.
It's not that hard.
It just takes a little bit of humility.
And your refusal as a leader to be humble, the casualty of that, among many things, but at least one, is confusion.
The people are confused.
So we can't just change, right?
To repentance, to turn.
We can't just turn in our deed.
We must do that.
So there's a way of repenting in word that doesn't repent in deed.
There's a way of saying, I'm sorry to the Lord, but then continuing the very same actions.
That also is sin.
But there's also a way of changing your actions, which is radically important.
And again, I cannot under emphasize how grateful I am for those pastors who have taken a stand in their actions.
But oh, how much more powerful of a witness would it be if they, in addition to repenting in deed, turning in actions, if they added to that a repentance in word?
If they also said, and what I previously said, since you're not all a bunch of blockheads, right?
I think it's insulting.
It assumes that everyone's stupid.
Like they can't see the contradiction.
No, the people of God are not stupid.
And so, giving them their dignity and defending clarity, theological clarity, by saying, We're now going to do this.
And because you're not stupid, you might realize that 30 days ago, I said we're going to do the exact opposite.
And these things cannot be simultaneously true.
This one was wrong.
Right?
50 years of ministry, you've been right 99% of the time.
You can afford to just once be wrong.
That would be awesome.
That would be awesome.
The problem is, we have cowardly pastors.
Pastor, I was just mentioning, not going to name, very grateful for him.
He's not a cowardly pastor.
But I'm talking about other guys now.
We have cowardly pastors, but then we also have prideful pastors.
There's cowardice, there's arrogance.
All these things hurting the people of God.
All these things tempting the sheep, assuaging their consciences, even guilting them if they even try to attempt obedience.
And what it has done is it has scattered the sheep.
All across the world, it scattered the sheep in our nation.
And all of us, in some capacity, like David, have been thinking, Oh, how I miss looking upon you in the sanctuary.
I remember in that context the uniqueness of your presence where I saw your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love, I miss it.
It's better than life.
And because of that, even in isolation, I will praise you.
Some of you, that's been your testimony for the last year and a half.
Wandering in the wilderness, wandering in a dry and arid land.
Oh God, you are my God.
Earnestly, I've been seeking you for two years.
My soul, it thirsts for you.
My flesh, it faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
And I remember the sweetest moments in my Christian life, in the past, where I looked upon you with a great throng and procession.
With the saints gathered together on the Lord's day, I saw you, as it were, with spiritual eyes.
I saw you through the eyes of faith in the sanctuary, in the gathering of your people on the Lord's day.
I miss church.
So many people, I miss church.
And here's the problem it's twofold.
It's not just I miss church because churches aren't allowed to gather.
Well, a lot of them are now, at least in our state, praise God.
But people are still missing church.
Did you know that?
Some of you definitely know that.
That's why you're here.
There are Christians still missing church because even though their churches can now gather, in God's providence of what previously happened, the veil has been lifted and they've realized even though the church may now be gathering, I can't gather there anymore.
So it's not I can't gather there because they stopped gathering, but even now that they've resumed, I still can't gather there because their complicity.
And their horrible exegesis and twisting scripture to hammer Christians who had courage over the head and guilt them and chastise them for biblical courage.
Their actions, their rhetoric, their decisions, all of it.
Now, I cannot in clear conscience before the Lord gather where I used to gather.
And so, even though churches are gathering in states like ours, there are still displaced Christians, misfit toys all over our nation saying, Well, I mean, yeah, some churches are gathering now, and this one down the road is gathering, but I can't go there.
I can't go there.
I can't gather with this church every single Sunday.
Is talking about how disparities equal discrimination.
I can't go to this church that literally in children's ministry is going to train my children if they're white that they're guilty.
I can't go to this church that I can't even distinguish what the pastor's saying because he's wearing a mask during the sermon and where everybody's wearing a sticker.
The greeters are wearing stickers outside that says, I got vaccinated.
Not saying that it's what, but the convey, the message that's being conveyed is like, You must do this or you're immoral.
I can't go there.
And so, even though churches are gathering, what God has done is He has so ripped off the lid with our evangelical leaders that there are still displaced Christians.
Many of you are like David, longing for the sweetness of the presence of God that is special and uniquely and exclusively here on earth, belonging to the gathered assembly.
But it's not just any gathered assembly.
It is a church that biblically constitutes as a church.
So it's not just two or three gathering in the name of the Lord Jesus and then doing whatever they want.
It's two or three being gathered in Christ's name, covenanting together as a local church and covenanting to be a church according to biblical standards.
Church is not a free for all.
There are things that make you a church, and if those things aren't there, it's not a church.
There may still be many Christians, but it's not a church.
It's a weekly Sunday Christian ministry.
But to be a church, the Bible gives us a criteria the word faithfully preached, and not just exegeted, but applied.
The word faithfully prayed, the word sang, the word seen in the Lord's Supper and baptism with biblically qualified elders and biblically qualified deacons.
All these things.
John Calvin summarizes it like this, and it's helpful because he makes it simple.
Wherever the word is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.
But it's got to be there.
It's not whatever you want.
And oh, how Christians have been longing for this.
I want to end by just reading this something that I wrote back in April.
So, this is actually a portion of a sermon that I preached to the church I was pastoring in California back in April of 2020.
But I think it fits with verse 2 of our text today.
I wrote this Those who maintain that churches should continue to physically gather together, which we would be among those, during the pandemic, were often relentlessly citing Hebrews 10 24 through 25.
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some.
Now, although I wholeheartedly agree that this text, don't neglect the gathering, Hebrews 10 25, it applies to the situation.
But I simply wish that more Christians have been better equipped, including myself, to explain why it is so vital for believers to obey this particular command.
Now, see, Hebrews 3, verses 12 through 13 says this Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God.
But exhort one another that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
So, Hebrews 10, 24 through 25, when properly placed in context with Hebrews 3, 12 through 13, it provides for us both a biblical and logical explanation for the tragedy of apostasy.
These two texts, when cross referenced with one another, I believe it shows us, it paints a very detailed description for us to see how apostasy happens.
In other words, apostasy meaning how some individuals who once belonged to the visible church ultimately chose to abandon the faith and fall away.
How does it do this?
By way of implication.
Guarding Against Spiritual Hardening00:14:50
Hebrews chapter 10, verse 24 through 25, it informs us that the weekly gathering of the saints is the primary context for stirring up one another to love and good works.
Right?
If you look at Hebrews 10, 24, stir up one another to love and good works, and then it doesn't even have another sentence, comma, not neglecting the gathering, as is the habit of some.
So, what the apostle, I believe it was Paul, but what the author of Hebrews is saying is this he's saying, stir one another up to love and good works.
And here's the chief context where that happens.
The gathering.
It's not a schizophrenic, weird.
Paul's not doing what I often do on Sundays and his brain is all over the place.
No, what Paul's doing is he's making a systematic argument.
They absolutely correlate with one another.
Stir up one another to love and good works, and therefore, because you need to stir up one another to love and good works, don't neglect the gathering.
Which implies what?
This gathering of the saints is the chief context where we stir one another up to love and good works.
So that's the first step of the process.
But then the next step.
The next step is Hebrews 3, 12 13, informs us that exhorting one another, which is the same phrase actually as to stir one another up in the Greek, is one of the church's most effective strategies for guarding its members against being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, which eventually causes people to fall away from the living God, a.k.a. commit apostasy.
So let me pause there for a moment.
Hebrews 3, 12 13 says this Be careful, brothers, lest there be found in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart causing you to Fall away from the living God, but exhort one another, which is the same phrases stir one another up.
Hebrews 10 24, exhort one another as, um, and I believe it says today, as long as it is called today, and especially as you see the day nearing.
And so, if we take these things together, Hebrews 3 12 through 13 says that many, the implication is that many at the end of the day, it's not that they'll lose their salvation, but they, 1 John 2 12, I believe, if they go out from us.
It proves that they were never one of us.
So they never had salvation to begin with.
So Hebrews 3 12 through 13 essentially says this that many will be found to have an evil, unbelieving heart that leads them to fall away from the living God.
But, right, the implication with that word but is so do this to guard against that.
So, how do you guard against many being ultimately in the end found to have an unbelieving, evil heart that leads them to fall away from the living God?
The deceitfulness, the hardness of heart that comes from the deceitfulness of sin.
How do you guard people from falling away?
Exhort them.
Exhort them.
That's Hebrews 3 12 and 13.
Take that cross reference with Hebrews 12, verse 24 and 25 by exhorting one another, right?
Stir one, same phrase, exhort, stir up, stir one another up with love and good works, not neglecting the gathering.
So basically, what Paul is doing is he's providing a three step process.
He's saying, gather.
Because in the gathering, that's where we stir one another up to love and good works and exhort one another.
And if we don't do this, if we don't gather, we don't do this.
And if we don't do this, people fall away.
People commit apostasy.
People fall away from the living God.
So, all that is to say, let me find my place again.
In other words, Christians are commanded not to neglect the weekly gathering of the saints because it is the necessary environment for fulfilling their Christian duty of stirring one another up.
And stirring one another up or exhorting one another serves as a powerful defense against the deceitfulness of sin, which creates a hardened, unbelieving heart.
And finally, an unbelieving heart is what ultimately leads people to fall away from the living God.
So, in short, here's the conclusion.
The logical conclusion.
For the past 18 months, Christians and especially pastors have been presented with a simple choice either forsake the gathering to minimize the physical threat of death to our bodies, or continue to gather to minimize the spiritual threat of damnation to our souls.
Now, some overly zealous Calvinists might object at this point by insisting that God is sovereign over salvation, which is true, and therefore He is capable of preserving the souls of His elect, even the absence of physically gathering together on the Lord's day.
However, I might remind these zealous Calvinists that the same God who is sovereign over salvation is sovereign over everything, and therefore, he is also quite capable of preserving the health of his people as they diligently seek to obey his commands.
The choice has been this for a year and a half.
Every Christian has had to wrestle with it, and certainly every pastor has had to wrestle with it.
At the end of the day, the choice is do we neglect the gathering to preserve the body from the threat of the virus?
Or do we risk gathering?
Do we risk gathering?
Try not to be foolish, but risk gathering in such a way that we mitigate the spiritual risk to the soul.
And what we discovered in our nation and in nations across the whole world is that pastors who've been charged with preaching the Word of God and esteeming and defending those things which are ultimately eternal, when push comes to shove, they care more about physical present reality.
Than the spiritual, eternal reality that they said they cared about.
We saw it.
So we don't have to ask anymore, right?
Like, God looks at, you know, man looks at the outward appearance, but God alone sees the heart.
And yet, Jesus says, You'll know them by their fruit.
So there is, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
So God sees the heart, we don't.
But there is a way in which, there is a sense in which we see the heart of a man by what he says and by what he does.
You can make judgments based off of a person's fruit.
Their life, their deeds, and out of the abundance of their heart, their mouth speaks.
So, their words and what we have seen, what I'm saying is, church, don't fall for it.
Don't go back.
Right?
Well, no, no, no, I really believe the spiritual thing.
No, no, but when the truth serum was put down your throat providentially by way of circumstance, you said you didn't.
So, once the Delta variant calms down, and now that 80% of the population has been vaccinated, and then pastors say, but the spiritual matter, you've got to get in church.
People.
Of course, they want you to come back to church now.
No, no, no.
How do we know if we can trust them?
Well, maybe some of them have repented.
But here's how you know when you can really take someone by their word.
When there's risk.
When there's a challenge.
How do we know that the church fathers, how do we know that they actually were committed to following Jesus even unto death?
Because they professed, like Polycarp, Christ as they were being martyred.
You don't have to wonder is he being truthful?
Yeah, I think so.
When Christians are going to the lions because they will not deny Christ, We know that their faith is genuine.
But when Christians go, I'll say it like this when Christians are willing to go to the lions rather than deny Christ, we know they're serious.
But when Christians won't even go to church for a virus that kills 0.1% of the population, we know they're not serious.
They're not.
And I'm not trying to be harsh, I'm trying to be truthful.
We must be consistent.
We can't, things will eventually change.
There'll always be a new boogeyman, there'll be climate control, whatever it is.
Right?
There'll always be a new boogeyman.
There'll always be some new crisis because crisis, you can't let a good crisis go to waste.
And crisis serves the left.
So there's always going to be something.
But one day, this thing will eventually not be so prevalent in the minds of people.
And what I'm trying to tell you is this don't forget.
Don't forget the last 18 months.
When the Delta variant calms down, when the hospitals aren't so overwhelmed, when the rhetoric and media and politics begin to die down and it shifts to something else, don't forget.
Don't forget.
Because it's not that people can't change their mind, it's not that God can't grant repentance, but when it comes to discerning the motives of the heart, the clearest sign, the most accurate litmus test, is when the person is under pressure.
Under pressure.
What did they do then?
It's not what do you say after the fact.
You make a lot of bold statements after the fact.
Once more data comes out, once we realize, oh, anybody can do that.
But in the midst of the battle, when it was raging all around you, right, there's a lot of guys, even, you know, who they can shoot a gun at a range.
But if they're in a shoot-off and bullets are whizzing past their face, what do they do then?
That's the test of a man.
That's the test of character.
That's the furnace, right?
The furnace for gold, the cauldron for silver.
But it's trials, it is trials that test the caliber of a man.
And what we just saw through the last 18 months of trials is that we don't have a lot of men.
We don't.
We don't.
And again, I know this sounds self serving.
And so I will confess that.
And the Lord search my heart, if any of it is.
It doesn't have to be this church.
It doesn't.
Because we are not the only ones, right?
Elijah did that.
Well, I'm the only one, right?
He had threats in his day.
But the Lord, Elijah was bold.
But he also reserved 7,000 other men who would not bow their knees to Baal, who would not comply, who would not compromise.
And likewise, There are thousands of other men and thousands of other churches by God's grace that are also courageous and faithful.
We are not the only ones.
We are a small piece of the puzzle that God is using to bring about his manifold wisdom and his glory throughout all the earth.
That said, there are other men.
We're not the only one.
That said, it's Slim Pickens.
There are others, but not nearly as many as we thought 18 months ago.
And for us to miss that is naive.
For us to miss that is foolish.
Good churches, good churches don't grow on trees.
And if you find one, it's worth the drive.
It's worth the commitment.
If you find one, man, if I've learned anything over the last 18 months, similar to David, I haven't been on the run for my life, but similar to David, what I've learned is that there is a sweetness of the presence of God that belongs to his people assembled together.
And that place, the sweetest place on earth, as Spurgeon said, the church, They're a lot fewer and further between than I thought.
And for me, and I hope for you, I hope that your value and your esteem of Christ exalting churches would have been immensely grown during this last season.
And that you would cherish Christ by cherishing his bride.
And that you would do everything you can to love her, to serve her, and to be committed to her.
All right, let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your word.
And we thank you for your church.
We thank you for this church, but Lord, we thank you for all those other churches.
We are not the only ones.
We are not the hero of the story.
Christ is the hero in the story.
As Christ in the parable that he told, our reply on that final day, when he says, Well done, good and faithful servant, our reply is, We are merely servants, we merely did our duty.
You are the hero, Jesus.
You're the hero of the story.
And so, Lord, we pray for our church, but we also pray for all these other churches in Texas, in Williamson County, especially in our nation, and across the world.
We pray for Christian pastors and Christians and churches in Afghanistan.
We pray for little house churches in the police state of Australia.
We pray for pastors like James Coates and others in Canada.
And, Lord, we pray.
We recognize that we are not the only one, and we are humbled to be a part of this remnant that you have reserved, that you're building, that you're expanding.
And just like what Jesus said to Peter, blessed are you, Simon of Jonah, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you.
Lord, we thank you that our understanding of the civil magistrate, our understanding of Romans 13, our understanding of the importance and value of the church, flesh and blood didn't reveal it to us.
In fact, in the last 18 months, Flesh and blood, evangelical pastors, they failed us.
Flesh and blood failed us.
And yet there is a remnant of Christians all over the world that get it because their Father in heaven, through his word, revealed it to them.
So, Lord, help us to cherish, cherish these pearls, these treasures, this revelation, the things that you've taught us over this previous difficult season.
Let it prepare us for whatever lies ahead, whether it be relief or whether it be even greater challenges.
And we pray that in all of it, it would glorify you.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Oh, hi, I didn't see you there.
Thanks for sticking around.
I've got an important announcement to make.
That's the Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference 2023, May 5th, 6th, and 7th, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Theonomy and Postmillennialism.
We've got the speakers that we've already had lined up.
That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, non doctor Pastor Joel Webbin.
But we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge from Real Christianity.
Perhaps you've heard of him.
If not, you should start listening to his podcast.
It's fantastic.
Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team.
We're going to have live panels on Friday night and Saturday night where you'll be able to write in questions and get them answered.
We're also going to have a catered barbecue, Texas style barbecue meal on Friday that's a part of your registration fee.
All that is covered.
So you need to get that.
This is how you do it.
Go and register right now at RightResponseConference.com.