NXR Podcast - THE CONFERENCE - Christian Power - David Reece - Session 7
Aired: 2025-05-31
Duration: 47:13


=== Serving Those You Rule (14:59) ===

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[00:00:21]  We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
[00:00:27]  So, my goal is to talk to you about Christian power in theory and then to also lay out for you some principles for how to grow in power.
[00:00:34]  So we'll start out.
[00:00:36]  We'll get through, and I had to throw away so many slides.
[00:00:39]  I am so sad about that.
[00:00:40]  But I'm probably not going to get through all of them anyways, so we'll do what we can.
[00:00:45]  So what I want to start out with for you is a text of Scripture that relates to thinking about power.
[00:00:52]  And I think this is a particularly important text of Scripture that helps us to think about why it's important for Christians to pursue power.
[00:01:01]  So if you have a Bible on your phone or whatever, I encourage you to follow along.
[00:01:04]  But the book of Judges chapter 9 deals with this idea of men who are unwilling to seek power as well as men who are willing.
[00:01:15]  And so let's read the text.
[00:01:19]  Judges chapter 9 verse 7.
[00:01:22]  Now when they told Jotham, he went and stood on top of Mount Gerizim and lifted his voice and cried out and he said to them, Listen to me, you men of Shechem, that God may listen to you.
[00:01:34]  Context is, There's Abimelech who is becoming king, and he's coming to the inauguration party to say something that Abimelech will really love to hear.
[00:01:44]  So let's see what he says.
[00:01:45]  Listen to me, you men of Shechem, that God may listen to you.
[00:01:49]  The trees once went forth to anoint a king over them, and they said to the olive tree, Reign over us.
[00:01:56]  But the olive tree said to them, Should I cease giving my oil with which they honor God and men and go to sway over trees?
[00:02:04]  Then the trees said to the fig tree, You come and reign over us.
[00:02:09]  But the fig tree said to them, Should I cease my sweetness and my good fruit and go to sway over trees?
[00:02:15]  Then the trees said to the vine, You come and reign over us.
[00:02:20]  But the vine said to them, Should I cease my new wine, which cheers both God and men, and go to sway over trees?
[00:02:27]  Isn't that great, sway over trees?
[00:02:30]  Then all the trees said to the bramble, Oh, Abimelech actually might not be real happy being compared to the bramble.
[00:02:38]  You come and reign over us.
[00:02:40]  And the bramble said to the trees, If in truth you anoint me as king over you, then come and take shelter in my shade.
[00:02:48]  But if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.
[00:02:54]  Now, therefore, if you have acted in truth and sincerity in making Abimelech king, and if you've dealt well with Jerubbabel and his house, and have done to him as he deserves.
[00:03:06]  It continues on for a bit there with negative things.
[00:03:08]  The point is he's just gone and killed a bunch of men who were from the house of Jerubbabel.
[00:03:13]  And Drubble was one who had ruled well, and killing all of his household was a horrific thing to do.
[00:03:18]  This all is giving context for that parable.
[00:03:21]  But the parable that's laid out here is this you've got these different trees.
[00:03:27]  You've got the oil from the olive tree.
[00:03:29]  You've got the vine, and obviously the wine that comes from it.
[00:03:32]  You've got the fig tree and the sweetness of eating figs.
[00:03:35]  And these are all productive men.
[00:03:38]  And if productive men will not rule, the result will be.
[00:03:46]  That unproductive men will rule.
[00:03:49]  Now, what would you rather be ruled by?
[00:03:51]  Somebody who's very useful, fruitful, effective, competent, or somebody who says, I'm not very competent, I'm not very hardworking, but I sure would love to control what you produce.
[00:04:04]  I would love to rule over you.
[00:04:09]  There's this danger that if godly Christian men will not rule because they have their own estates to enjoy, they have their own property and positions to enjoy, their families to enjoy, they have other things to do.
[00:04:23]  If they don't do that, the danger is that the bramble will rule.
[00:04:26]  There is this desire in the race of men to dominate and control other men.
[00:04:33]  The desire to control other men is the desire, the lust, to take their productivity.
[00:04:40]  Now, you can steal a man's wallet.
[00:04:42]  You can steal property from a man.
[00:04:45]  But how much more effective to steal the man so that you get everything he produces?
[00:04:50]  Do you ever feel like with a 30 or 40% tax rate that perhaps 30 or 40 percent of you has been stolen?
[00:05:03]  So this danger, this danger of being ruled by worthless men, bramble bushes, not those who produce sources of honor or cheer or sweetness, but those who would demand absurdities.
[00:05:21]  Look at the bramble bush, what he says.
[00:05:23]  The bramble bush says, In response to being asked to rule, the nominating, the first nomination is pretty good, olives.
[00:05:31]  Second nomination is pretty good, figs.
[00:05:33]  Third nomination is pretty good, vine.
[00:05:34]  You go, ah, productive people.
[00:05:35]  But by the fourth nomination, there was a mistake.
[00:05:40]  By the fourth nomination, they got to the bramble bush.
[00:05:45]  And so the bramble bush says, all the trees said to the bramble, you come and reign over us.
[00:05:51]  And the bramble said to the trees, if in truth you anoint me as king over you, then come and take shelter in my shade.
[00:05:58]  Now, real quick.
[00:05:59]  When you look at bramble bushes, are they particularly tall?
[00:06:04]  Are they particularly useful at providing shade?
[00:06:08]  This would be like a king who's short, demanding that everyone who's tall around him walk on their knees.
[00:06:16]  This would be like asking, well, the tall people should have the lower parts of their legs cut off so that my height can be properly respected.
[00:06:24]  These are the kinds of absurdities that you start to see when worthless men rule.
[00:06:28]  Now, The bramble bush demands that they take shelter in his shade.
[00:06:33]  And if they won't, if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.
[00:06:40]  Now, cedars are actually pretty tall.
[00:06:43]  They are taller than bramble bushes.
[00:06:46]  And so if the cedars won't hide in the shade of the bramble bush, he's going to burn them up.
[00:06:52]  These are the kinds of absurdities you get.
[00:06:54]  So emperors think themselves gods.
[00:06:56]  You must worship me.
[00:06:57]  That kind of thing.
[00:06:59]  This absurdity that comes.
[00:07:01]  When unproductive men rule, they start to, in order to feel secure in their rule, they start to make absurd demands.
[00:07:09]  So that's the danger.
[00:07:13]  Now, on the other side of this, we are told by the Lord Jesus Christ in Luke about a way to view governing.
[00:07:25]  In Luke 22, we run into this.
[00:07:31]  And there was also a dispute among them as to which of them should be considered the greatest.
[00:07:35]  These are the apostles at the Lord's Supper.
[00:07:39]  And he said to them, the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called benefactors.
[00:07:48]  Okay, so the kings of the Gentiles, the kings of the heathen, the pagan, the unbelieving world, the only church that existed in the world at this time was the National Church of Israel to be replaced by the universal church to go to all the nations and to bring all of them in.
[00:08:03]  But before the church went universal, when it was stuck there, when it was provincial, at that time, the rest of the world was darkness with the exception of some Gentiles being saved, like Ruth, like Nineveh, things like that.
[00:08:16]  And so what we have is this situation where the heathen, the pagans, Are the ones that when they think about taking power, what they think of is taking power not to serve with power, but to use the power to make the people their slaves.
[00:08:32]  They think, I am the benefactor of ruling over you.
[00:08:37]  I have this job so that I can use you.
[00:08:41]  That is the heathen way of thinking about power.
[00:08:44]  And how many politicians in Washington, D.C., do you think actually have that attitude as opposed to the attitude of, I'm here to serve you?
[00:08:52]  They think you exist to be a cash. cow.
[00:09:01]  The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called benefactors.
[00:09:07]  The problem, the word lordship is not a critique.
[00:09:10]  They have legitimate office, but they abuse it to extract from the people.
[00:09:18]  The problem is not the word lordship.
[00:09:19]  The problem is thinking of themselves as the benefactor.
[00:09:22]  But not so among you.
[00:09:25]  On the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger.
[00:09:29]  And he who governs as he who serves.
[00:09:33]  There's where we get servant leadership.
[00:09:35]  Servant leadership is an often abused phrase, but we need not hate it.
[00:09:40]  The abuse of it is this.
[00:09:42]  Well, if you're the leader, that means you have to serve, which means that you have to let the person you're leading actually lead you.
[00:09:49]  That is not servant leadership.
[00:09:50]  Servant leadership is you act as Lord.
[00:09:53]  You act as the ruler.
[00:09:55]  You give commands.
[00:09:57]  You order.
[00:09:59]  You give imperatives, and they are followed.
[00:10:02]  But you do it for the good of those you rule.
[00:10:07]  You self sacrificially do the burden of planning, of leading, of deploying.
[00:10:14]  You prioritize.
[00:10:16]  That is what lordship is.
[00:10:19]  But you do it not just to extract from those you rule, but in order to serve them and care for them.
[00:10:31]  Among the believers, We are not to treat those that we rule over as cash cows.
[00:10:40]  Not so among you.
[00:10:41]  On the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves.
[00:10:48]  For who is greater, the one who sits at the table or he who serves?
[00:10:52]  Is it not he who sits at the table?
[00:10:54]  Yet I am among you as the one who serves.
[00:10:56]  The Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, was serving with his lordship.
[00:11:03]  He was instituting an element of worship.
[00:11:05]  He was commanding them to forever repeat.
[00:11:09]  Until he returned that ordinance of worship that he instituted.
[00:11:14]  He was exercising authority and doing it for their good.
[00:11:23]  The one who sits at the table is greater.
[00:11:24]  Yet I am the one, yet I am among you as the one who serves.
[00:11:29]  But you are those who have continued with me in my trials.
[00:11:33]  And I bestow upon you a kingdom just as my father bestows one upon me.
[00:11:38]  That you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.
[00:11:41]  And sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
[00:11:46]  There's no negativity here about authority, merely a negativity about the abuse of authority.
[00:11:51]  And so when we think about Christian power, we need to remember that power is a gift from God, and it ought not to be hated.
[00:11:59]  It ought not to be scorned.
[00:12:00]  We should not take on the Anabaptist view that you cannot serve in government in a righteous way.
[00:12:06]  The Lord Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, when they dealt with Roman soldiers, they did not order them to leave their positions of imperial power.
[00:12:16]  They ordered them to be content with their wages and not to abuse the people that they had authority over.
[00:12:23]  And so it is important that there be righteous men who exercise power.
[00:12:28]  And it is important that we not take on the attitude of seeking to exercise power in order to be a bramble bush who demands absurd things of people.
[00:12:38]  And so that attitude, if you want power in order to enslave, that needs to be repented of.
[00:12:47]  And if you have resources, And if you are competent, if you are a man of valor, and you have the ability and the characteristics and the qualifications for leadership, and you are shirking it so that other men can carry the burden, you need to repent of that too.
[00:13:05]  It is the duty of godly men to rule, because if they will not rule, we will be ruled by bramble bushes.
[00:13:13]  The great motive for godly men to rule is the fear of being ruled by lesser men.
[00:13:20]  And we are ruled. by lesser men, and even by the tyranny of the rule of women.
[00:13:29]  We need Christian men to rule, and to rule well, and wisely, and to do it for the good of those that govern.
[00:13:39]  Now, I want to talk to you about the definition of Christian power.
[00:13:43]  The definition of Christian power is first broken into what does it mean to be Christian, and then secondly also, what does power mean?
[00:13:51]  So I want to talk to you about power because it's a simpler component.
[00:13:54]  Power is two things when we talk about it.
[00:13:55]  We talk about power in terms of the ability, and we talk about power in terms of the authority.
[00:14:00]  Ability is can I, authority is may I.
[00:14:04]  We have been given authority directly by God to govern the world, but there are institutions where different people have authority to do different things.
[00:14:12]  I have authority in my house, you have authority in yours.
[00:14:16]  You don't have authority in mine, and I don't have authority in yours.
[00:14:22]  There are different pastors of different churches, and there are magistrates of different jurisdictions.
[00:14:27]  And so all of these spheres and all of these institutions, all of their jurisdictions must be recognized and dealt with properly.
[00:14:33]  There is a delegated authority from God.
[00:14:36]  That's where authority comes from.
[00:14:38]  Christian power has to do with two things.
[00:14:42]  Power in the hands of Christians and power used in a Christian way.
[00:14:49]  Power in the hands of Christians involves identifying Christians, and power being used in a Christian way involves identifying the way that Christians ought to rule.

=== Doing What God Commands (14:15) ===

[00:14:59]  Now, when we think about what a Christian is, I've got a list here of stuff that I think helps to define what it is to be reformed.
[00:15:05]  I believe the reformed religion, at its basic level, is a specific religion.
[00:15:12]  The reformed religion is identified with sets of doctrine.
[00:15:16]  The reformed religion includes the solas, tulip, incarnation, and the Trinity.
[00:15:24]  In addition to that, we also have to deal with Adam and Christ as the covenant representatives.
[00:15:30]  And we have to deal with the Westminster Shorter Catechism as a summary of that in history.
[00:15:34]  It's a thing in history.
[00:15:35]  Now, you don't have to hold to the Westminster Shorter Catechism to be reformed, but if you are a reformed Christian, you're not going to disagree with the stuff in the first three questions of the Shorter Catechism.
[00:15:47]  And if you reject any of these things, the Solos, Trinity, Incarnation, Tulip, Adam, and Christ as federal heads, I'm suggesting to you that you and I do not have the same religion.
[00:16:01]  We have to identify what the religion is that we're trying to guard, and as we guard that religion, we want to identify Christian rulers.
[00:16:08]  who hold to these things.
[00:16:11]  Now, the law of God also helps us to understand the way a Christian is, as well as how a Christian ought to rule.
[00:16:19]  And the idea here in terms of what a Christian is, is this.
[00:16:23]  You need to accept that the law of God is the thing that determines what you ought to do.
[00:16:29]  If your ethics are not controlled by God commanding you to do things, you don't think the Christian God is God.
[00:16:38]  He has the ability to tell you what to do.
[00:16:40]  Because he's God.
[00:16:43]  He made you and he defined what's your good and he tells you what's good for you.
[00:16:47]  So his law, this is a way of explaining you have to believe that Jesus is Savior and you have to believe that Jesus is Lord.
[00:16:56]  If you reject his ability to command you, you reject his lordship.
[00:17:00]  If you reject his power to save, you reject his salvation.
[00:17:07]  You must accept him as Lord and Savior.
[00:17:09]  I'm not saying you have to perfectly keep the law to be saved.
[00:17:11]  You can't do that.
[00:17:13]  You have to believe that Jesus kept it for you in your place instead.
[00:17:19]  Now, when we think about Christian power in terms of its organization, these are the four institutions that God has made, and they each have a direct connection by chain of command to the triune God.
[00:17:31]  You, as an individual, have commandments from God that you must perform.
[00:17:34]  Your household receives commandments from God, and you, as a husband or as a patriarch, have authority given by God, and so does the matriarch.
[00:17:43]  She reports to you, she's under you, but she also has authority given.
[00:17:47]  directly by God in terms of her duties to make sure that she is also raising the children in fear and admonition of the Lord.
[00:17:55]  So there is a mutual authority, but the husband is the ruler.
[00:18:00]  He is the head.
[00:18:01]  He can order the wife to do things, but she also has an office.
[00:18:05]  Just like you think about lesser magistracy in terms of the civil sphere, you have higher positions of authority and you have lower positions of authority.
[00:18:15]  And the higher positions of authority receive their authority from God and the lower ones do too.
[00:18:20]  which is why we believe as Protestants that the lesser magistrate can resist a tyrant.
[00:18:24]  The governor of my state, Arizona, could and should have resisted many tyrannical things that the government has done over time.
[00:18:31]  For example, every governor in every state, when the Supreme Court said that it was now legal to kill babies, the response of every governor ought to have been, you have made your ruling, you have neither purse nor sword, we're ignoring it, and we will punish murderers in our state.
[00:18:58]  Every structure of authority has lesser officers, and those lesser officers have duties from God.
[00:19:06]  And so we have a duty of submission, but we have a duty of resistance when we are forbidden from doing what God commands and commanded to do what God forbids.
[00:19:17]  Now, individual household church state.
[00:19:20]  These are instituted in different texts.
[00:19:22]  Genesis 1 and 2 is where the individual is instituted.
[00:19:25]  He's made from the dust and from the breath of life, and he's told to do stuff.
[00:19:29]  The household is made then too.
[00:19:31]  We also find in Genesis 3 and 4 the church and excommunication, and we find in Genesis 9 the establishment of the state.
[00:19:38]  Now, Stephen Wolfe and I, when we discuss, one of the places we have disagreement is on where the origin of the state is.
[00:19:44]  So you can see right here a major place where we end up disagreeing is I'm going to say Genesis 9 is a place where God institutes the state.
[00:19:53]  And he's going to say that there's a natural place, like he mentioned with Turreton, the idea of the natural condition of the state.
[00:19:59]  So that's, I think, a significant place for you to be aware of where the discussion needs to be able to deal with things over time.
[00:20:05]  Now, When we think about getting power, what we have to do is we have to have a strategy to get power because we have finite resources and with that finite set of resources, we have to accomplish goals.
[00:20:20]  Now, a strategy is the art and science of optimizing the choice of available means to the accomplishment of desired ends.
[00:20:30]  Optimization involves speed, cost, getting the most for the least, helping you to do more later.
[00:20:37]  So the components of a strategy include principles of law, determining the constraints of what you're able to do, what you ought to do.
[00:20:43]  Your strategy could involve evil things, and as Christians our goal is to avoid doing evil, that good may come, but rather to do what God commands to bring things about.
[00:20:51]  And here's the thing I think is beautiful about the law of God.
[00:20:54]  I would suggest to you, there's been a little bit of talk about this idea of sacrificing economic growth in order to preserve the family.
[00:21:02]  I would suggest to you that if we follow God's law, it actually does the most to generate wealth.
[00:21:08]  I would suggest to you that when we are careful to allow women to not have to compete with men in every sphere and to go out and off to do all the things that men are doing, that what ends up happening is men make more, they produce more, they are motivated more, they are champions of a house, they are encouraged to go do more, and the women in their house live happier lives, they produce wealth, and they produce human beings who are wealth generators.
[00:21:34]  And that work together does more for the economic growth of a country than if you try to have them both pretend to be men.
[00:21:53]  Now, the principles of law are going to direct us what we ought to do, and I think because God's commands and the nature of reality line up, what we're going to find is that the fruit is better too.
[00:22:06]  I'm not a consequentialist.
[00:22:07]  I don't believe that the ends justify the means, but I do believe that the means that God appoints, pointed at the goals he commands, generates those ends.
[00:22:18]  Now, in addition to this, we have to deal with looking at the ground floor, the determination of the facts on the ground.
[00:22:25]  of what's going on.
[00:22:26]  We've got to make decisions about that.
[00:22:28]  And beyond that, we have to also apply the principles of law to those facts, and then we have to choose an order of operations of what to do.
[00:22:36]  Okay, so that's what we're doing inside of a strategy.
[00:22:39]  That's what I want to encourage you to think about here.
[00:22:41]  So we have the goal, which is to glorify God, fill the earth with the knowledge of God.
[00:22:45]  We've got the means, the law word of God.
[00:22:48]  The regulated principle of life in the Westminster Confession of Faith basically says this.
[00:22:54]  There are no good works except for the things God commands.
[00:22:58]  And we're supposed to do good works all the time.
[00:23:01]  So that means we should be doing stuff God commands all the time.
[00:23:04]  That's what it means to redeem the time.
[00:23:09]  Now, if we think about this duty to do good works all the time and the fact that God defines every good work for us, that's called the regulative principle where we say we should only do the stuff God commands.
[00:23:24]  And if we're only supposed to do the stuff that God commands and we're supposed to redeem the time with good works all the time, We know that our whole lives, everything we do, should be the stuff that God has told us to do.
[00:23:35]  So I'm suggesting to you that is the reformed view.
[00:23:38]  I'm suggesting to you that that's a view that's necessarily flowing out of sola scriptura.
[00:23:43]  The doctrine that we hold to is from scripture alone, and that means our doctrine of ethics would come from scripture alone.
[00:23:54]  Now this is taught in 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 to 17, which says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof. for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
[00:24:05]  Notice the word that.
[00:24:07]  The word that is purposive.
[00:24:10]  The word of God is profitable for doctrine in order that, or so that, some goal can be accomplished.
[00:24:16]  What's the goal?
[00:24:18]  That the man of God may be incomplete, insufficiently furnished for some good works.
[00:24:28]  That is not what the text says.
[00:24:30]  The text says that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished for every good work.
[00:24:36]  That is the sufficiency of Scripture for all good works.
[00:24:40]  So I'm telling you that for power exercise, the Word of God is sufficient for that.
[00:24:45]  In the history of the world, human philosophy has tried to justify power from six different answers.
[00:24:51]  Here are the answers there's no justification for power, anarchy is what we should do, it's going to be great, don't worry about it.
[00:24:58]  Second, the alternative is that's unrealistic.
[00:25:01]  Human beings are monsters, they are going to control each other, they must control each other.
[00:25:07]  All that really matters is might, might makes right.
[00:25:10]  power comes from the barrel of a gun.
[00:25:13]  That's realpolitik.
[00:25:15]  The next one is this idea of natural law where the definition of man includes the idea of man having a political order.
[00:25:27]  So Aristotle's definition of man, man is a political animal.
[00:25:31]  And so the political is inherently built into man.
[00:25:35]  And so once you have a definition of man that's fitting, you've got a definition of the polis and political power, civil power.
[00:25:43]  The other idea, the Lockean social contract.
[00:25:46]  Sometimes people act like social contract theory is something that theonomy is aping.
[00:25:52]  Samuel Rutherford was born before John Locke, just so you know.
[00:25:56]  And John Locke's efforts to make social contract theory.
[00:25:59]  John Locke was, he had Presbyterian parents, and he tried to take covenant theory for government and make it into contract to secularize it and latitudinarianize it and make it so that you could have all sorts of heresy and idolatry in the land underneath this humanistic contract.
[00:26:17]  The next thing is the divine right of kings that says kings can do kind of what they want.
[00:26:22]  They're the rulers.
[00:26:23]  They're the father of fathers.
[00:26:25]  Maybe the state is even a household.
[00:26:29]  And you're his children.
[00:26:33]  And then the next one, divine law.
[00:26:37]  Theonomy.
[00:26:38]  The idea that there's a limit to the government based upon God's law.
[00:26:42]  And there's also a justification for the government based upon God's law.
[00:26:46]  And that could be a normative view where you say the government can do anything unless it's forbidden.
[00:26:49]  Or a regulative view, which is the government can do only that which is commanded.
[00:26:55]  So that's my understanding.
[00:26:58]  Now, civil power has an origin in Genesis 9.
[00:27:01]  Its nature is defined for us in Romans 13.
[00:27:04]  In both of those passages, Genesis 9, you have this idea that the state exists as an avenger.
[00:27:11]  That if you kill a man, you will be killed by a man.
[00:27:15]  And that's not merely he who lives by the sword will die by the sword in some sort of descriptive sense.
[00:27:19]  It's prescriptive that God institutes the sword of the magistrate to kill murderers, to stop evil men, because the earth before the flood was filled with blood.
[00:27:32]  That curse filled the ground.
[00:27:34]  That the earth was full of violence.
[00:27:37]  And there were no men, no magistrates, no righteous kings, no righteous judges.
[00:27:42]  None who would stop these tyrants.
[00:27:46]  And so there's a need for Christian power.
[00:27:49]  God instituted the magistrate to stop a world filled with violence.
[00:27:54]  That righteous power would be brought to bear to smash the teeth of the wicked.
[00:27:59]  And to save those who would be the victims of the unrighteous.
[00:28:07]  Now when we look at the application of this, there's the general equity of the law of God that comes out of the law that's laid out in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
[00:28:17]  The civil laws are laid out there, and they provide some things that are particular and some things that are not particular to Israel.
[00:28:26]  There are general equity pieces.
[00:28:28]  Some of the things that are particular have to do with the form or offices and processes that have to do with the land of Israel or its technology.
[00:28:35]  So you might have low-velocity rocks.
[00:28:37]  And in our modern time, you might have high-velocity rocks coming out of a firing squad's rifles.
[00:28:43]  And those things could be used effectively to stop the wicked and to punish them.
[00:28:47]  Now, when we think about the powers of government and we think about the crimes and punishments that should be given to those crimes, those are the types of things that get addressed throughout Scripture.
[00:28:57]  So those general equity principles are part of what you need for considering civil power.
[00:29:04]  Now, for a strategy as a Christian, we've already looked at this idea that we need to determine the principles of law, determine the facts.
[00:29:10]  We've got to deal with applying those principles to the facts, and we have to have an order of operations.

=== Consolidating Power Strategically (04:11) ===

[00:29:14]  So I want to propose something to you.
[00:29:16]  We are not doing very well.
[00:29:17]  There are a lot of things that are improving for us.
[00:29:19]  That's great.
[00:29:20]  But we still are in a position of weakness.
[00:29:21]  We don't have the domination of the land by the righteous.
[00:29:25]  And as a result, what we need to do is to grow in power.
[00:29:29]  So to grow in power, I believe there's a divinely inspired strategy that is given to us so that we know how to grow in power.
[00:29:37]  The book of Proverbs, Has a number of interesting section heads.
[00:29:42]  Chapter 30 is for those who are waiting to come into power.
[00:29:46]  And it has this little section in verse 24 that reads as follows.
[00:29:51]  There are four things which are little on the earth.
[00:29:54]  Little means weak here.
[00:29:58]  But they are exceedingly wise.
[00:30:02]  The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their food in the summer.
[00:30:09]  The rock badgers are a feeble folk, yet they make their homes in the crags.
[00:30:15]  The locusts have no king, yet they all advance in ranks.
[00:30:19]  The spider skillfully grasps with its hands and it is in kings' palaces.
[00:30:26]  These are four activities, four pieces of the strategy to be pulled together that help you to gain power.
[00:30:33]  Strategy one, when you're weak, you need to diligently work to pull in resources like the ant.
[00:30:42]  Resources increase your power.
[00:30:44]  The accumulation of capital is a difficult thing.
[00:30:46]  The accumulation of capital is a part of the process of increasing your power.
[00:30:50]  The rich rule over the poor because they hire them.
[00:30:57]  Now the next thing is the rock badger.
[00:31:01]  You all know a ton about rock badgers.
[00:31:02]  I know they're your favorite animals.
[00:31:03]  You have them as pets.
[00:31:05]  They are groups of animals that live in groups of 5 to 80.
[00:31:09]  Individually, they are some of the most pathetic looking mangy animals you have ever seen in your life.
[00:31:14]  If there are 5 to 80 of them collected in rocks, you will stay away.
[00:31:19]  These weak animals are made strong by being in defensible, fortified positions where they consolidate together.
[00:31:27]  When they're weak, they get together in a place that's defensible.
[00:31:31]  They already control it and they gather together.
[00:31:33]  There's a concentration in the positions you control.
[00:31:36]  If you're in a place that's not a Christian-controlled place, you want to think about, is there a way to consolidate with Christians in a Christian-controlled place?
[00:31:44]  Now, the next is the locust who advances together in ranks without a king.
[00:31:51]  A unified objective and coordinated activity to accomplish a goal, even without officers.
[00:31:57]  You don't have a Christian prince right now.
[00:31:59]  Okay?
[00:32:00]  Can you organize and unify and can you have a goal that you work towards and coordinate your efforts?
[00:32:05]  Then even without that prince right now, you can display the strength of the benefit of unification that occurs there.
[00:32:13]  And the fourth one is the spider.
[00:32:17]  And the spider works skillfully with his hands.
[00:32:20]  And elsewhere in Proverbs, we are told that he who is skillful in his work will not work before obscure men.
[00:32:28]  Who will he work in front of?
[00:32:30]  Kings.
[00:32:31]  And that's repeated here with the spider.
[00:32:33]  And when you work in front of kings, kings tend to pay a better rate.
[00:32:39]  And they tend to have connections for you.
[00:32:42]  And as a result, you can grow in influence.
[00:32:44]  Influence and revenues increase when you work before kings.
[00:32:49]  This is a set of things to do to grow in power.
[00:32:53]  Do you want power?
[00:32:54]  Work diligently.
[00:32:56]  Do you want power?
[00:32:57]  Consolidate with others who are believers in places that are controlled by believers.
[00:33:03]  Do you want power?
[00:33:04]  Work together in a coordinated way towards a common goal.
[00:33:08]  Do you want power?
[00:33:10]  Then what you need to do is work skillfully and you will become known by influential men.
[00:33:20]  Now, the individual has a role to play.

=== Working With Allied Forces (07:32) ===

[00:33:25]  So does the household.
[00:33:28]  So does the church.
[00:33:29]  And so does the state.
[00:33:31]  And I don't have time to tell you about them.
[00:33:34]  They're kind of important.
[00:33:35]  And you should read your Bibles.
[00:33:38]  If you want the slide deck, you can ask me and I'll send it to you and just grab a card back there and we'll send it to you if you want to read any of the things that you weren't able to look at here.
[00:33:46]  But we're talking about the state to a large part.
[00:33:49]  And the state is not the only power source, right?
[00:33:51]  The state is one that's important.
[00:33:53]  But here's the reality.
[00:33:54]  We have a state that is the enemy.
[00:33:56]  We have ways in which we are being blessed by the state as certain parts of the bureaucracy are being torn apart.
[00:34:02]  We are being blessed by a number of things the state is doing.
[00:34:05]  But there still continues to be a cursed condition in having way too expansive of a state.
[00:34:10]  way too expansive of a tax rate, way too much regulation, way too much government spending.
[00:34:15]  All this stuff is ridiculously oversized, doing all sorts of things it shouldn't do.
[00:34:20]  So we're nowhere close, nowhere close to what needs to happen.
[00:34:25]  But as we think about the state, the state's purpose in large part is to focus on the public administration of justice, the waging of just warfare, and night watchman activities to preserve the peace of social order.
[00:34:43]  to stop people running through the streets and burning down police stations or something like that.
[00:34:50]  Now, if we think about the other duties there, to praise what's good, there needs to be an identifying of what's good and what's evil, and the scripture is the source for that.
[00:34:59]  And then there's this recognition of the state's duty to, like Israel, which was a model for the nations of the earth, there's a need for the establishing, of the true religion in the land.
[00:35:15]  There's a need for the settling of the true church in the land and endowing it with resources to then have it be independent and function not as a department of the state but to be able to no longer be in a position where there is a chaos and unsettledness in the church.
[00:35:31]  So these functions, most of the time Americans are not real happy at listing that out.
[00:35:36]  The Westminster Confession of Faith lays that out in its chapter on the civil magistrate.
[00:35:39]  This is the historic reform position on it.
[00:35:41]  And in America, there was an alteration of the Westminster Confession called the Philadelphia Confession that was written at the time that the American Constitution was adopted.
[00:35:51]  And typically, I would imagine I would rather have my states, my civil sphere, conforming themselves to the teaching of the Bible and the confessions of the Reformed faith, as opposed to having the confession of the Reformed faith conform itself to what the civil government has put into place in terms of no longer establishing.
[00:36:11]  But this is what happened in our history.
[00:36:14]  So these institutions, individual household, church, and state, they interact.
[00:36:18]  They are all spheres of power.
[00:36:19]  And when we think about the state, this is the appointed function of the state.
[00:36:24]  And we live in a time where we have a civil order that is pretty chaotic, and all sorts of tyranny is in place.
[00:36:31]  And there's a process called civil covenanting, which is a way for Christians to organize for their mutual defense and to begin to have training for that mutual defense and to begin to work together to seek to see the true religion established in the land.
[00:36:45]  There's a history of that that I. can't really go into, but we have a book that I'd love to give you for free back there called Civil Covenanting.
[00:36:52]  You're free to grab a copy of it back at our booth.
[00:36:56]  Now, as we seek to expand our power, one of the big things that comes up is we have to be pragmatic.
[00:37:04]  You know, we can't do everything perfectly.
[00:37:06]  We can't manage to do everything that needs to be done amongst ourselves.
[00:37:10]  And what we have to do is we have to recognize that there are co-belligerents.
[00:37:13]  And I want to give you a clear definition of a co-belligerent versus an ally.
[00:37:19]  A co belligerent is somebody who you're not allied to, you haven't made an agreement with, you don't have agreements of mutual assistance, you haven't promised to do anything, you don't have special duties to them.
[00:37:30]  A co-belligerent happens to be fighting the same enemy you're fighting.
[00:37:37]  A co-belligerent is not somebody that you have shared coordination systems with.
[00:37:44]  An ally, on the other hand, you have an agreement to cooperate.
[00:37:48]  You can give them resources.
[00:37:50]  They might give you resources.
[00:37:51]  You can give them votes and a political order.
[00:37:54]  You can share organizations and institutions.
[00:37:56]  You can partner together.
[00:37:58]  You can yoke together.
[00:38:01]  But there are no pacts between Christ and Belial.
[00:38:07]  It is sin to covenant with, to ally ourselves with, unbelieving institutions.
[00:38:16]  When Israel united itself with foreign powers that did not accept Yahweh, the result was condemnation by God that they had entered into wicked alliances and to put their trust in that reed, that broken reed, Egypt.
[00:38:36]  The idea of a broken reed is this.
[00:38:39]  Here's a reed.
[00:38:41]  You lean on the reed, got a little pressure on it.
[00:38:45]  Okay, it might hold a little weight.
[00:38:48]  A broken reed, when you put your hand on it, it stabs you in the hand.
[00:38:57]  Now, if you can choose between a walking stick that stabs you in the hand or no walking stick, which would you choose?
[00:39:05]  Not a hard question.
[00:39:07]  You choose no walking stick.
[00:39:09]  Alliances with the wicked are broken reeds.
[00:39:13]  They're walking sticks that stab you in the hand.
[00:39:16]  So we are required.
[00:39:17]  We can be co-belligerents in the sense that we happen to instantially are fighting the same enemy, but we don't form alliances.
[00:39:25]  And if we refuse to form alliances with the wicked, then you might go, how are we ever going to have the numbers we need?
[00:39:32]  How are we ever going to do what we need to do?
[00:39:34]  How are we ever going to be able to get the power that we need to have?
[00:39:37]  Beloved, I would suggest to you that just like following the law of God is going to make it so that we have more wealth, following the law of God will make it so we have more power.
[00:39:51]  When there's a group of people who will not compromise, but they are like a rock who does the thing you expect them to do, you vote the way you expect them to vote, they do the actions that the law of God commands, what starts to happen is your enemies start to go, those stupid Christians, they're so predictable, we can manipulate them by using the law of God against them.
[00:40:15]  And when people start to mock you for the law of God and think they can trick you by you doing what the law of God commands, you get God to come in and shatter the teeth of your enemy.
[00:40:27]  God loves to shatter the teeth of the enemies of the people of God when they're obeying him.
[00:40:41]  My encouragement is that we be careful to think about applying the law of God in all of these spheres, and in particular as we think about the state.
[00:40:50]  And as we gain power, if you have any power, if you're a man of prominence already, remember my encouragement in the beginning?
[00:40:55]  Do not be ruled by bramble bushes.

=== Shattering Enemy Teeth (06:15) ===

[00:40:57]  Instead, be willing to rule.
[00:41:00]  Be willing to be an officer at a church.
[00:41:02]  Be willing to be a civil magistrate.
[00:41:05]  Be willing to take the risk of starting businesses, of buying capital goods, of deploying your resources to make it so you have spheres that you control.
[00:41:15]  And if you're in power, the neat thing about Proverbs 30 is right after it tells you how to get power, it immediately tells you how to keep it.
[00:41:25]  It says this, There are three things which are majestic in pace, yes, four which are stately in walk.
[00:41:35]  A lion, which is mighty among beasts and does not turn away from any.
[00:41:40]  A greyhound, a male goat also, and a king whose troops are with him.
[00:41:47]  Now, the lion, it explicitly says the reason why a lion preserves and maintains and extends his majesty.
[00:41:55]  He's strong.
[00:41:56]  He's mighty.
[00:41:57]  So strength is good.
[00:41:58]  The glory of young men is strength, physical strength.
[00:42:01]  And the glory, once you've accomplished some things, is you also have strength in terms of what you've built.
[00:42:07]  And you have people that follow you to some extent.
[00:42:09]  There's a strength that occurs.
[00:42:12]  So this is a strength.
[00:42:13]  And the display of strength is something that helps to increase Your majesty or your stateliness.
[00:42:21]  The other thing is boldness.
[00:42:23]  He doesn't turn away from it.
[00:42:25]  He's strong.
[00:42:25]  He can beat the enemy.
[00:42:26]  And in addition to being strong and capable of beating the enemy, he actually pushes forward in the confrontations.
[00:42:36]  Now, beyond the lion being strong and bold, there's also the greyhound.
[00:42:40]  And I don't know about you, but what do you associate greyhounds with?
[00:42:44]  Any particular attributes stick out in your mind that you know greyhounds for?
[00:42:48]  Speed.
[00:42:50]  Speedy action, like firing 80% of Twitter in a short period of time, is the kind of thing that inspires awe in unions everywhere.
[00:42:59]  And so there is this effect that occurs when you have people that rather than working in a way where what they're doing is trying to build something, if you have the firing of people quickly, it terrifies those that were ineffectual and caused the other 20% to do amazing things.
[00:43:20]  The idea of greyhound speed, decisive action.
[00:43:25]  Napoleon's armies were known not only for being powerful and effective and him being bold and going on the offensive, but he was also terrifying in his speed.
[00:43:34]  The core system that Napoleon developed was able to defeat the armies of the continent in large part because he organized a system of independent logistics where corps as miniature armies could spread out across multiple roads and increase the throughput of men on roads so the armies could move over distance faster.
[00:43:52]  He eliminated the point of constraint of a single road, and rather than having an army file through one road, he was able to take that and spread it out over a half dozen roads to increase the throughput of men through a road by 6x.
[00:44:07]  That is impressive stuff, which made it so that his enemies were constantly terrified of the movement of his armies and felt like they couldn't figure out where he was or how to defend themselves, which gave him early success.
[00:44:21]  Later on, people started to copy that, and they could move fast too.
[00:44:25]  But speed is terrifying and increases your authority and power.
[00:44:29]  Speed of action.
[00:44:31]  The male goat is known for a couple of things.
[00:44:34]  Some people want to say it's because they ram into each other.
[00:44:37]  I don't think butting your head against other men is likely to inspire awe in your opponents.
[00:44:45]  If you want to try it, I'd be happy to watch.
[00:44:50]  I'll let you know what I feel.
[00:44:53]  The male goat, however, is also known for jumping around on rocks in a way that's very impressive.
[00:44:58]  Agility of movement is the thing that is inspiring there.
[00:45:02]  So you have this idea of power.
[00:45:05]  You have this idea of boldness.
[00:45:07]  We have the idea of speed.
[00:45:09]  And we have the idea of agility.
[00:45:11]  This skillful movement.
[00:45:13]  And lastly, we run into the king.
[00:45:16]  A king whose troops are with him.
[00:45:21]  A king whose troops are with him.
[00:45:24]  Office, legitimacy, inspires majesty.
[00:45:28]  But so does having followers.
[00:45:31]  Numbers inspire other people.
[00:45:34]  A king's glory is to have many people, and to have few followers is his downfall.
[00:45:39]  So building a movement is important.
[00:45:41]  The concentration of people together.
[00:45:43]  And if they're troops as opposed to raw recruits, if they're skilled, it inspires awe.
[00:45:49]  Majesty is encouraged and power thrives when you have these things.
[00:45:55]  We have a recipe for growing in power and we have a recipe for growing it and maintaining it and not losing it.
[00:46:02]  And so those things laid out here are the mechanisms for us to grow in Christian power.
[00:46:07]  And I would suggest to you the place where you can control that most is in your own life with you choosing to work with other people to seek to work skillfully in building your own estate and to seek to work with other Christians and be in churches that are solid, that understand the times.
[00:46:23]  And you need to work with people that understand the need to conquer.
[00:46:28]  Sitting around and waiting or being pessimistic and unwilling to act, being fearful, these are not the things that encourage Christian power.
[00:46:38]  A bold might, speedily exercised with agility, is what is necessary.
[00:46:46]  So my hope is that having considered these things, you will be encouraged if you are fit to pursue power.
[00:46:54]  You will be encouraged if you are not ready for power to support men who are, to work with them and to support them, to gather around them like kings and be troops that help to add to their ability to accomplish things.
[00:47:07]  I hope that if you have other further questions, whatever, you're welcome to reach out to me.
[00:47:10]  And thank you very much for your time and attention.
[00:47:13]  The Lord bless you.