Only God Can Limit The Government

On this episode of The Right Stuff, Pastors Jared Longshore and Toby Sumpter discuss Sumpter’s installment of Christ and Country (Found on the Christ Kirk App) title: Limited Government. What does it mean for a government to be limited? Can man limit government? What does Church and State truly mean? Questions like these will be answered here.

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You get the kind of government you get because of the kind of people you have. It's easy to make excuses and say, well, we would have authority if we had the sin in. And I would say, no, we have the sin in tomorrow. We wouldn't have any more authority. It'd be like the days of the judges when everyone is doing right in their own eyes. You'd have, you know, the polo whites and they'd just be chaos. The reason why the state's not under the law of God, the reason why we've lost Lex Rex in the state is because we lost Lex Rex in the church and we lost Lex Rex in the home. We've lost Lex Rex as individuals. Welcome to the right stuff, everyone. Today I have the privilege of talking to my friend and fellow pastor in the area of pastor Toby Sumter. And we are talking about Christ in Country. That's a new video series out on the Christ Church app and it's totally free. So if you if you want, you simply go on there and get it. And we have a teaching series called Christ in Country that Toby, myself, pastor Doug and pastor Joe Rigny, all participated in. And the first four of 16, we have 16 coming, but the first four have dropped. I did one on a nation of bastards, fatherlessness in America, the breakdown of the family. And then pastor Toby, you did one on limited government. So we're not talking about mine today. We're talking about yours today. Okay. Limited government is the thing. So basically let's just start with why did you choose that topic? What's the burden? How would you explain? This is why I'm going for this at this moment. Yeah. Well, the perennial temptation, the perennial thing that people do is they want to be God. So this goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Did God really say that question is not merely a moral question. That's really a question about government. That's a question about whose Lord? And God had established a government in the Garden of Eden. You should not lead to this tree. Eve says, well, maybe I can. Maybe you can break the law and good things will happen. So of course, they break the law. Good things don't happen. Bad things happen. In fact, but ever since that fallen nature, that instinct, that devilish question is right there all the time in every place. And so when you think about governments, that's as we're talking about is, are we going to have governments under God and under His law, or are we going to have governments that are driven by human hubris or satanic hubris, which is lawlessness, which is always tyranny destruction. Okay. And so what are the, if man wants to be God, civil leaders want to be God? Yeah. What are the, where do the constraints come from? Where do the restraints come from? How is government limited? Yeah. So I would point maybe in a really easy way, in addition to the Garden of Eden, would be the Great Commission. So Jesus, after he died and rose from the dead, said, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go, disciple the nations, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded. So all authority means all authority. And that means he is the king of all the kings, the Lord of all the lords, the president of all the presidents, the judge of all the judges. He is the prime minister over all the prime minister. So if all authority belongs to him, then anybody who claims any bit of authority is either under him and under his blessing and is, is using delegated authority from the Lord Jesus Christ, or they're trying to steal his authority and they're under his curse. They're at war with him. So, but they're in the Great Commission. Jesus says, teaching all the nations, discipling all the nations, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded. So everything that Jesus has commanded, Genesis, to revelation, the entire word of God, is the law that limits all governments. So the series, Christ in country, is primarily aimed at civil government, but it necessarily is constantly talking about other governments. So that includes family government, church government, and even individuals government. So God has established those different kinds of governments. They have different assignments. He's delegated different authority to them, to the to the magistrate, to the civil magistrates, he's primarily given the authority of the sword, to defend life, to punish evil doers, to protect private property. He's given other authority to families and churches. And so all those governments are limited by the word of God. They're limited by Jesus Christ, which is why, incidentally, in the New Testament, all through the New Testament, our submission to lawful authority is always in the Lord. Children obey your parents in the Lord. Why, submit to your own husbands as to Christ. Servant, submit to your own masters as to Christ. Citizens submit to magistrates in the Lord. That's constantly reminding everybody, both sides, those who submit and those who are being submitted to. This is all under Christ, under his word, which is limited government, which means that if a husband tells a wife to do something that's disobeying Christ, the wife says, no, no sir. And same thing for citizens under a magistrate, and same thing for parishioners under a pastor. And so that's all, that's limited government in action. We tend to get it pretty well. And like in the family, in fact, we kind of overemphasize it in the family. Everybody's always, you know, be careful now about submission. Be careful about a wife submitting to her husband or in the church, because you know there's abusive pastors. But you can tell our idolatry when we're not nearly as jumpy about the authority of civil magistrates, police officers, and so on. Although, you know, we're starting to learn it. Yeah, and it's also, I mean, this is where you've set it up quite nicely. I think that there's a clear dividing line thus far as you have expressed it. And as you express it in your video, and that is, Christ is Lord, Caesar's not, Christ is Lord, Caesar's under Christ, civil magistrates are under Christ. And the limiting standard is Christ in his word. And you talk about Lex Rex in there, and Sammy Rutherford. I think that's a dividing line between all of the Christians on one side, like the Christians that really, basically, Christians that get some kind of Christian nation, Christian nationalism, whatever, Christ in them, Christ in them. And secularists that don't have that category. But where things get interesting is a lot of those, secularists, and let me throw in normy evangelicals. We'll hear what you said. And they think that that is going to take the restraints off of, right, civil government. Okay, they hear you saying, well, if Christ is king and he delegates his authority to anyone other than me is the individual. If he's delegated authority to a civil magistrate, wouldn't that beef up? Wouldn't that result in tyranny? I think that would result in tyranny. I'm a little nervous about what you're saying. What do you say to that person? Right. Well, and the answer is no. But that's because if we actually knew the Bible and we actually obeyed it, we'd find that, yes, there's certain elements of authority that are beefed up. But a whole bunch of the stuff that our magistrate's doing now would be completely taken away. So in the Old Testament, the picture over and over again of government, full of human hubris, is of a monstrous beast. So in Daniel, for example, these monsters are coming out of the sea. And there are these Gentile pagan nations and their picture is these beasts, these dragon creatures, horns and claws and teeth. And that's the picture of human government that's broken its chain from the word of God. Now, using Daniel as a picture, Nebuchadnezzar, of course, has this period of madness saying, I am, you know, I am God, basically, look what I have done. And God says, no, actually, when you act like that, you're being beastly. So for a while, you're going to act like a beast. But then after a while, he comes to his senses, cuts his hair, trims his nails and becomes a human again. So unlimited human government untethered from God's word is beastly and monstrous, tyrannical, lawless. But actually when you're chained to God's word, you become humane and you become good for the world. So, you know, just, I mean, as an example, God's word makes it clear that a government, a civil government that taxes his people at 10% or more is claiming to be God. Samuel says that to the people in first Samuel. Like, if you get a king, he's going to be tempted to tax you at 10%. And we would think 10% would be awesome. If we could get, you know, tax rates down 10%. But why is that? Well, because in God's law, a tithe is what God claims. That's what God's offering because he's the high king. And a human, for a human government to say, I need more than God is hubris. This is to say, what you're doing is more important than God, that you know better than God. But that would just be like an example. Other examples might include protecting the Lord's Day. I mean, the magistrate is not, is allowed to actually protect employees from overbearing employers that would make their employees work seven days a week. And that might get worked out differently in different cultures. But the fourth commandment is there and a magistrate can honor that. Like, our constitution does actually in making sure that presidents get that day off. They don't have to sign a bill on Sunday as our constitution allows. So, that's an example, though, of actually limiting the power of the government and limiting the power of other governments. Okay. These people that would be a little uncomfortable. So either normal, evangelical, that's uncomfortable with the idea of Christ being the king over the civil sphere. What do you think they think the limiting power of government is? Well, I'm guessing that, so what the liberal media has done and this is something that's been going on actually since the Enlightenment. But basically, ever since the Enlightenment, there's been this liberal progressive move that says religion, if allowed, to become the lead, is always tyrannical. And that's why we had the Wars of Religion, they say, because people take their faith too seriously. And when you take faith too seriously, you get Protestants and Catholics killing each other and burning people at the stake. And you get Sharia law. You get Islam. And I would say in recent decades, that's the thing that's thrown out there is you're a, you know, Christophashist, meaning you want to do Sharia law on America and put Bible verses on top of it. Well, the thing is that Sharia law really is tyrannical because it's from the Quran and it's not from God's word. So Christian should have laughed that, you know, out of the public square decades ago, are you kidding me? God is nothing like a law. You know, his religion means submit. That's just a completely different religion. But God's law is freedom. God's law is, is liberty. So I think what people envision is they've been cataclyzed by liberal media and progressives that, yeah, you can believe Christianity, you can really believe it. But if you start taking it too seriously in the public square, that means every, you know, all your women are in red dresses and, you know, handmaid's tale, horror story. And, you know, we're a Gestapo spirituality. Like we're going to follow you around checking your thoughts and every square, and we say, no, actually the God's law, the civil government is not allowed to do that. In God's law, a whole bunch of moral responsibility is left up to the individual. And it's no one else's business. And in God's law, a whole bunch of moral responsibilities left up to the family. And it's nobody else's business. And other responsibilities are given to the church. And that's not the state's business. But I think they see, they envision it all morph together into one big, Borg, you know, death star. And it's understandable because that's what human governments tend to do. But I also think it betrays a certain kind of statism. We just assume that if we say we want a Christian nation, that means that the state is going to run all morality. And God's law says, you're not allowed to do that. There's a whole bunch of stuff that the civil magistrate has, there's a fence put around it. Like you can do this much. That's it. And, and all the rest of that, that's for the church to work on, that's for the families to work on, that's for individuals to work on. And one of the fundamental distinctions that I think Christians need to review and relearn and revisit is the distinction between sins and crimes. Because we don't know that distinction. So a lot of modern evangelicals think everything's the same. And so if something's a sin, there's probably going to be a law about it. So, you know, you're going to have laws about all your bad thoughts. And, you know, it's 1984, you know, with the cross on it. And, but the Bible says, no, sins are things that are really wrong before God, but a whole bunch of those sins are individual sins that are between you and God or between you and your family or something that gets worked out with your pastor. And the civil magistrate is not allowed to touch it. The civil magistrate is not allowed to touch it until or unless that sin actually becomes a crime. And that crime is defined by God's word. Okay. Right. So, and that's a defense of, basically you're saying to that, Normie Evangelical or secular conservative type person, hey, when you hear me advocating for Christ being king over the civil realm, here's here's some principles involved. We're actually not going to be that big death star. But if we were to push on them and go, hey, what do you think the limiting principle is? How do you, are you a fan of small government? And I'm thinking this is conservative type person. Yeah, I'm a fan of small government. Right. You know, great. How do you keep it small? Like what, what's the standard by which it's limited? If it's not Matthew 28, if it's not Jesus's king of all things in heaven and on things on earth, what exactly do you use to limit the government? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's a good question. And I think we should press everybody on that. Yeah. I mean, I think maybe the best of them would say something like maybe English common law or, you know, common sense. I know a lot of them have a lot of libertarian lending meetings where they would just say, you know, whatever is not harming other people or something like that. But I think you're left with the whims of the people, the whims of what makes sense to us, which I think is what we've been, you know, which is all basically the fumes left over from a Christian vision of society. So, you know, I think John Locke, I would lay a bunch of blame for this at his feet and say that even though he was still living in a much more Christian milieu and was assuming a whole lot more Christianity than most modern liberals are, he was stripping out the explicit biblical bedrock for his project. And trying, I think, whether consciously or unconsciously to demonstrate that you could have a Christian country or a Christian kind of government without explicit reference to Christ. And so, and that's where I think liberalism comes from in all of its ugliness. Whereas I think people like Sam LaRuthafird, Edmund Burke, others were still recognizing that these how essential God's word was. But I think that project has been going on for a while to say, look, we can use common sense. You know, we can use reason. But of course, John Locke was in the process of jettisoning a regional sin. He said, you know, the human heart is a blank slate. You know, basically if we just teach everybody common sense and basic reasoning principles, they'll look around and say, well, I don't want someone to steal my stuff, so I won't steal their stuff. John Locke thought you could have a limited government, actually a small government whose job was primarily just to protect life and liberty and property. Those were the three things that Locke said would be protected. And he said, you can get that basically just if you teach people well. Because he didn't, he didn't really know, but I think fallen nisco's deeper than that. The original sin goes way deeper than that. No, if you're not converted to God, you turn into a little monster. And you start stealing people's stuff and you don't care that it's stealing other people's stuff. So I think I know that's going further afield than the question you asked. But I think that's the, I think people are still tempted by that Lockean impulse. And so you can have a small government based on common sense by education, by consensus. And there's, I think, an assumption at some level of, you know, there's some kind of neutrality. Yes. Okay. Very good. I'm glad you mentioned Locke and ignorance. So I would signal to everybody. This is a big, great time to click over on Messianic education from Doug because that's his very premise in the secular society. Ignorance is a fundamental problem and therefore education is the Messiah. And the Christian vision is dead in your sins. That's the problem. So Christ is the Messiah. And for you to tie that to Locke is really good. And I think that everything you said was good there about how we'd assess them. And I would add, I just think those people say, well, if it's not Jesus, it's us. You have to have a, you have to have a God of the system. And that's regulating the system that has designed it. You, in your, in your address on Christ and country, you talk about the lordship of Christ means that he actually establishes the purpose of government. That's another way to think about it. It's limited by its design. It's limited by its function. This is what you're supposed to do. And therefore there's, there's guardrails because of the tell us of this institution that I have made over which I rule. And I would say to the secular conservative, if you, I'm principle that Rutherford talks about in Lex Rex is the big thing, because you get into the divine right of kings, how do we say those kings that will know it's God makes the king through the people. This is the strategy. And if you, if you, the divine right of kings problem would be God makes the king shut up. Right. Do you know anything to say? Right. But that's not our problem. It's manifesting not our problem in the United States of America. Our problem is man makes the king. And we've gotten rid of the vertical line. Right. So we make the king. And therefore everyone's pitching to their God to get, to get elected. Right. Instead of any kind of vertical prayer line, this is now, you know, everything that we're doing. So that's what I kind of have in mind. I want, we have to get those people that do want a limited government, a government, but they, we have to shake them out of lock, rousseau, this enlightenment stuff that you're talking about. Right. Which leads to an interesting, I think Burke is an interesting angle. So I've got Burke's reflections on the revolution in France. Burke's riding against the crazy revolutionary principle that I think has now embedded itself in the American psyche. Like this is how basically we think that way. So when you read, I think a Birke and conservative is a different flavor and add something that most people aren't thinking about. Even I think people in the, well, I think it's, I think this kind of Birke and sentiment is starting to be recovered perhaps with like Gen Z. But how much of Gen X and the millennials get this? There's a question. So all that to say, here's something in light of your limited government. I'm going to read you a portion and just ask you what you think about it. Okay. Okay. So he's riding against this notion. But he is saying, here are my opponents. Here's their three propositions. Okay. Namely that we have acquired a right one to choose our own governors. I mean, nothing sounds more American. Right. Nothing sounds more American. What are you going to, are you about to disagree? Are you about to agree with Burke over against this notion that we get to choose our own governors? All right. So I remember Burke's working against this. Yeah. Namely that we have acquired a right to one choose our own governors to cashier them from misconduct, which is to say we get to throw them out. Yeah. To toss them outside. And number three, to frame a government for ourselves. I just feel like I want to read this standing in the Lincoln Memorial. You know, just for the bees. Oh, weird. Okay. And now Burke goes on. This new and hitherto unheard of Bill of Rights, though made in the name of the whole people belongs to those gentleman and their faction only the body of the people of England have no share in it. And then he continues on and basically lays out, particularly they're trying to ground this in the glorious revolution. And Burke is saying this isn't what the glorious revolution was about. He says not one word is said, nor one suggestion made of a general right to choose our own governors to cashier them for misconduct into form a government for ourselves. Now those are three big ideas. You can just do one. It's just basically respond to Burke. Yeah. So one of the things I didn't really get into this too much in in the limited government video. I think I might have an another one, but I can't remember they all blurt together. But one I know that's near and dear to your heart is what one of the glorious things that was recovered during the Reformation was the covenantal nature of governments. And I think I think I did this actually. I did one on the Protestant Resistance theory, which I think I guess will be one coming out. But this all got had to get worked out during the Reformation on Toronto because suddenly there really were conflicts all over the place. And so, but if you think about government as a covenant, that means then, and I think this is what Burke is getting at, is that you don't get to come and so use the example of marriage. You don't get to come and say, I'm going to reinvent marriage. Maybe it's two dudes, maybe it's three dudes and a lady, maybe it's three dudes, a lady and a pet poodle. You don't get to do that. God defines what marriage is. You don't get to pick it out of thin air. I think that's what Burke is fundamentally trying to burn down. He's burning down that thing, which was what the French Revolutionaries were doing. They were not talking about reforming a corrupt system. That's what the glorious revolution was. That's what the American founding was. Even though I think we sometimes probably weren't careful enough in some of the language we used, that's fundamentally what we were doing. We're reforming a corrupt system. But the French Revolutionaries were burning the whole thing down. Not only did they murder and put to death all the hierarchy of the French government, but then they went into the cathedral of Notre Dame and set up a transvestite orgy, like on the high altar of Notre Dame. That's not reforming something that's gone corrupt. That's defiling it. That's blaspheming it. Not only that, they said, you know what? We're going to try out for a while. They were trying to do a 10-day work week rather than a seven-day work week. They were like, we're going to, it was, they explicitly said, we are enthroning the goddess reason, human reason. We are dethroning Jesus Christ. That's what he's talking about. They wanted to reinvent the covenant of government. That's what they meant by. We can do whatever we want. We can make it anything we want. The second thing is, is within covenant, the idea is that, and this is a worked out in, what's the French book, Contra, Taronis, that the French Huguenots worked this out. But they said basically, there's a covenant between God and the rulers, and there's a covenant between the rulers and the people under God. And these covenantal relationships check and balance every side. And they recognize there could be slightly different forms of government. You might have a constitutional monarchy, or you might have something more like we have a constitutional republic. But it, everybody's being checked. Everybody's under God. And the King and the rulers have certain responsibilities under God, in scripture above and all, but then a constitution that limits, you know, tells them, here's the rules we're playing by. And then the King has responsibilities to the people. And the people have responsibilities to the King, like in a marriage, where a wife and husband have particular duties under God. And that doesn't mean then that the King can do anything they want, and doesn't mean that the people can do anything they want. They have particular duties. Now, as in a marriage, a husband can be such a, a tyrant or such an adulterer, flanderer, that he's broken the covenant. And the wife is free to go. The New Testament makes that clear. He's broken the covenant. The covenant's obliterated on the ground. Now, that wife's not free to go out and marry a woman. No, that's not, that's not a marriage. And you're just because that guy treated you like trash, doesn't mean lesbian's, lesbianism is an option, which is what French revolutionaries were doing. And what Burke is condemning, there's a few thoughts. Yeah, yeah, that's a good setup. I mean, it's, I think covenant is the answer. I knew you would agree. Yes. But it's a lost idea. And it's baked in all of these principles that you've talked about. So Christ is King of the, of the civil magistrate. And when that magistrate is installed, and in our tradition, that would be, he puts his hand on the Bible. Yeah. So help me, God, you know, defend the Constitution of the United States, that kind of idea. And the Constitution is itself. You, you go into this and your, in your Christ and country, limited government, address, you talk about this, this very idea of writing down the Constitution is grounded in the covenantal idea. And so maybe I'm, you know, it would have to deal with Burke in detail on his first point of you don't have a right to choose your governors. Well, I'm all four elections. I'm not trying to like get away from elections. But we need to know that when we are, when we are casting our vote for whatever leader it is, we need to know God is actually making the king through the people, which is a way to appropriate Burke, the way I feel comfortable with it. Don't get the idea that you are as an individual choosing. So this was the not my president thing with Trump. I remember the first, the first, the first term of Trump. You had all these people that did not my president. It's like, yeah, but he is. You have, you know, something similar in the church, where, you know, where God is, you know, God selects elders and pastors. He uses the voice of the people, when it's God selecting them. And I think you have the same thing also that this is actually why founders of our country, despite the fact they will sometime say we're creating a government. And that would be places where I'd be like, you may be careful how we say that. But they, they were not at all fans of democracy. Every one of them, in fact, that's why there was no democratic party until I think it was Andrew Jackson, because everybody thought of democratic, democrat as associated with democracy. And everybody thought of democracy as associated with the French Revolution and anarchy. All of them, nobody wanted a democracy. And people throw that around now like democracy, democracy. And the, all the founding fathers are rolling over in their graves. They wanted a republic. That's what they were establishing because, and this went all the way back to the Athenian democracies, because as soon as the Athenians got democracies established, it turned into civil war. And then as soon as they were done mowing each other down, Alexander the Great came marching in. And they said, that's what happens. Greek democracy was a cautionary tale to the founding fathers. And they said, if you have democracy, it's inherently unstable. It turns into mobs and anarchy. And then once you've burned out all that energy, a tyrant walks in. And they, and then they looked at the French Revolution and said, same thing. French Revolution burned it to the ground and as soon as they were done decapitating everybody on guillotine, what happened? Napoleon Bonaparte. So the founding fathers, so out, you know, at the same point, like we're still technically, even though we get to vote on a lot of things, you're voting for representatives. You're actually not voting for all your governors. We've drifted from that slightly. You know, originally senators, for example, were chosen by your state government rather than the people. We changed that and made it direct by the people. But even there, there's limits on what the people can do. The House of Representatives was actually considered like the closest thing to democracy, but then you have to wait two years to fire everybody. What was the word he used? Merchandise? Merch? You know, cashier. That was the word. Yeah. Like, we can cashier our House of Representatives, but we have to wait two years. Senators, you can only do a third of them every two years. So it takes a full six years before you can cashier all of them. So there's limits built into our system of government on that cashiering principle, which I think, I think Burke would generally have appreciated, even if it was a different system than the British. Oh, yeah, 100 percent. You mentioned the democracy concern. Yeah. He actually has a line. A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world. Yeah. You know, so he's, and I think this, I'll give you another few lines from Burke on basically Lex Rex, the law's king. So the king's not above the law. Okay. And then I, I basically, the people are not above the law either. Right. So when a democracy, if the idea of democracy goes awry, and this is to my earlier question, if you think that we, the people are the limiting principle, you are that you're the problem. Right. If that's the way you think, you're actually the problem. And people that think we, the people are the limiting principle, are very happy to hear about the idea of limited government. Right. So if I said our government should be limited, we're going to, we're going to write our government with a redress of grievances. There are, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So we can, you can keep writing that train hard. And everyone there is going to be like gathering their pitchforks and their whatever. But to me, that is the key question. Hey, and by the way, what's the, and you can't say, this group cannot say we the people of the limiting principle has to be God. So Burke kind of talks about that. Let's see if some of these are relevant. This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed upon the minds of those who composed the collective sovereignty, um, then upon those of single princes without instruments, these princes can do nothing. Whoever uses instruments and finding helps, finds also impediments. Their power is therefore by no means complete, nor are they safe in the extreme abuse. Now, he's basically saying the principle of limited government, the principle of law is King has to be applied. And he, he sees it with that whole mob problem that was going on in France that you just elucidated for us. He's saying it's actually more important that they get it. It is therefore an infinite, of infinite importance that they should not be suffered to imagine that there will any more than that of Kings is the standard of right and wrong. Right. Just agreed. And he thoughts of do you see? So let's go cultural read at this moment, which is a great threat. A king that thinks he's above the law or a people that think they are the law. Well, history, and I think a founding of our country would say it, I don't know, I don't know if you can, you can pick one because I think it's like trying to stand on a log in a water. It's just keep spinning. So it's they feed into each other. And so it's like, and I think that you can have both going at the same time. And so you can have real danger of tyranny and everybody's running from one side to the other side of the log. Quick democracy, democracy. And what's democracy doing? What's that populism doing? It's just setting up from another tyrant because the people are being just as tyrannical. So that's a. Napoleon's on the way. Napoleon's on the way. Exactly. So so I think the only answer is we've got to return to the law of God, to the law and to the testimony. And it's the law and the testimony applied to everyone, under God, everywhere, under Christ, everywhere. That's that's the only answer because otherwise all you're doing is just setting up for the next revolution. And that's what the that's what the Greeks did. That's what the French have done. And that's what I think there's been a temptation to do that. Although I think what the founders of our country being steeped in biblical understanding of law put a whole bunch of, you know, the way that you you you put ballast in a ship as you know you you weighed it in the middle down underneath so that it's hard to tip. That's what all our checks and balances are. But it was supposed to be checks and balances from top to bottom. Check some balances on the executive branch, the executive, the legislative, the judicial checks and balances at state level, state, national government checks and balances at the state level checks and balances all the way down to county level checks and balances in the family checks and balances of the church checks and balances with individuals. And as soon as all those things those checks and balances start falling away, you're getting rid of some of that ballast. And that's where it starts getting tipsy and topsy turvy. I think that's where that's where we are. But I think the answer is we've got a whole bunch of barnacles that have grown on the ship. We've got a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be stripped away. The federal government has gotten way too big because it's doing stuff that it wasn't ever designed to do. And I think there are some in our modern moment who you know are asking for a strong centralized government to and they say in the name of Christ come in and you know crush the evil doers. And I would say well the right kind of strong governor who knows where his the limits are would be great. Punish the evil doers. Great. You said earlier you mentioned one of the ways of understanding the limits of government is to know what their tell us is what they're for. One of the things that I've said before is so the primary instrument given to the magistrate is a sword which is why when it goes beastly it turns into claws. It turns into a monster full of teeth and it just mont it just crushes everything and it's wake but when it becomes human it's a man standing with a sword or in the old pictures it's a woman blindfolded woman with a sword but it's human with a sword. Which so if you're following the law of God punishing murderers I would love for a strong civil magistrate that said you know what from now on we're going to do do do process of law and once there's a conviction you know you get one appeal and after that within two years or something like this there's going to be execution. No no more appeals because murderers need to die and if we don't we're disobeying God. I love that rapists same right violent criminals follow the law of God execute justice swiftly because where justice is not executed swiftly evil reigns. However I'm not interested in a strong civil magistrate coming in and deciding how we're all going to have health insurance or run our all our schools even if he's Christian and he says now we're going to have Christian education all across the nation and everybody's going to use this curriculum. No that's tyranny and what I've said before is so imagine government getting out of its lane as soon as it gets out of its lane it morphs into the monster. Okay when it's in its lane biblical lane limited by God's word doing the things it's assigned to do it's humane and it punishes evil doers and it makes everything beautiful. Psalm 72 talks about the justice of the king is like fresh rain showers on a fresh moan grass just beautiful lovely when the king stays in its lane it's like that but as soon as it gets out of his lane he's like a monster and then that monster what you're doing when you say I want the government to run my schools you're asking for a monster in your schools and I don't think there's an accident I don't I know this will sound like a leap to a lot of people but I don't think it's an accident at all that we have lots of shootings in our schools. We've said the government we want the government to run our schools so we have violence in the schools we have violence there are a bunch of kids getting um uh drugged up on meds we have violence um by them being told that they're nothing but ponds gum that's highly evolved and then they do the math and they say so I guess it wouldn't matter if I shoot up my school and they come in on those drugs and they shoot up their schools why because we have a monster running the school um or change the image to health health insurance and health care if you want government running um health care you're asking for a monster to run health care what will happen well babies will be killed and elderly will be killed and then pretty sure pretty soon um health insurance and health care is going to completely destroy people go to socialist countries or governments run it what happens not only do they have portions on demand not only do you have euthanasia but you have people waiting and long lines for many years for basic health services why because a monster runs your health care. All right so let's run let's run with the education let's go practical zoom in to the education one for just a moment um limited government applied to education and it's take Idaho yeah but make it not Idaho just make it a just trying to get a two million two million people in Idaho right it's very small compared to my Florida 20 million previous life you get two million people you have you know school scattered jurisdictions counties let's just go say we want to do it by county um we've got to educate all these students now let's zoom down to the county level county in Idaho we have whatever three schools um the superintendent is elected by the parents so you get a superintendent that's that's elected by the parent representative government that kind of thing yeah uh this half of the superintendent's pay comes from the taxes of Idaho citizens okay half of the um superintendents pay comes from the parents that are actually sending students to the school um and the curriculum the development of the curriculum is based upon that superintendent like that superintendent has ownership okay but councils with the other superintendents down in Boise once a year who are also have paid by the discuss different educational plans and whatnot trainings and what are on um if and um in the main whatever small little office is in Boise that is responsible for education there's a small the two people working in there yeah um they stay out of people's business but if one of the counties um the superintendent starts to um teach the Quran as truth and um in call for Muslim calls to prayer at their at the three schools in their county um the civil magistrate in Boise um shuts it down so the magistrate is not doing it right 60% of the parents want it um in that county right but the civil magistrate says no it's done that's the scenario tell me what you like don't like can we do that can we not do that yeah well um i say it's a lot better than what we have so um i don't i don't think that the the bible does not require Christians to be perfectionists um it's perfect but it doesn't require perfectionism and so if if you have that option on a ballot i'd probably vote for you know every day of the week and twice on Sundays um because it'll be moving us in the right direction you're a birkin conservative we're making progress right we're making progress in the right direction um uh you know i'm an incrementalist it's it's we're working towards a better system it's localizing the system it's shrinking the uh centralized form of it um and there's there's fair points worked out there um however a lot depends on um the direction you're going it so in any given moment you pastorally speaking you know this but you you know you have a snapshot of somebody you know and i don't know they're tatted up and pierced and whatever and you know like how's this guy doing spiritually well if y'all you have as a snapshot you don't know uh you need a you need a what you fill what what's going on is he did he just repent and he come to church or is he a kid that grew up in the church and he's in rebellion you know that that matters so same thing would matter here is it you know if this is um if this is on the ballot for where we've been as a country and where and that that looks like massive repentance to me then it's awesome um however i think there were moments earlier in our country's history where that had that was just coming online and i would be waving my hands wildly saying watch out watch out and and i think i just think um the involvement of the magistrate even at the county level is already asking for something um that's uh i think you're starting to um ask the magistrate to get involved there's no there's no way to do that without saying um uh you know that he has involvement in a way that's starting going to start creeping in now again way better than what we have and the primary thing there being you know we've got to protect um the morality of the public people and churches of our common lord yeah all that so i get that but i would um um biblically speaking education is given to families primarily and i would say the the other a government that has the next most interest in it is the church because the churches concerned with the discipling nations and so it disciples people who then disciple their kids and it has particular uh interest in the propagation of the gospel and the teaching of the word of god and to the extent that all education must be Christian and must include teaching the word of god pastors at least have an interest in that the magistrates have an interest in education being carried out because they want um uh literate citizens and moral and virtuous citizens but it really is at a distance and i and that's the thing that i would say is um now as soon as uh some of those schools really is full on um doing Muslim calls to prayer i don't think you need to have that central headquarters of the education department even if it's only two people in the office for that magistrate to step in and say knock it off we're a christian state um i don't think you need to have any kind of administrative connection to the civil government the civil government can step in simply because he's authorized by god to protect and defend um the true religion um and so i that would be my warning would be to say keep it under the family let the church guard its purity to some extent and then um the the civil government should step in when there's a crime that's been committed okay all right slight pivot but related um the um the the whole question of church and state i think you referenced separation of church and state in your in your um your address on christian country um the Westminster Confession of Faith old versions says that the civil magistrate must take order to call synods to see this what what's conducted there is according to the mind of god et cetera punish blasphemy suppress uh suppress heresy all that stuff and abuses of church worship tomas hobbs leviathan just thinks that that's a great idea you know all ministers like ourselves ecclesiastical ministers would be underneath this um right you know steven wolf from irrascan him now feels like three four years ago here on a podcast you recommending that joe baden be able to tell me how to administer the sacrament or something i how to do my job he quit you know yeah so i'm saying we joked around about this kind of thing yeah we we know we're still a long way from the ideal uh of what we would want this to look like we're trying to actually bang out what it would look like american was minister is reduced american was minister has taken away some of that stronger language from the old was minister the american was minister says that the civil minister it has the duty to protect the churches of our common lord establish churches in our in our what eight or nine of the first american colonies had established churches that's the setup i thought berk was interesting on this point so if we're going to limited government if we're saying that crisis king over the government we know we have a friend time and client i think is about to try to drop a very strong political Protestantism i've interviewed him that the the very heart of Protestantism is that the civil master has the right to his own theological judgment his independent theological judgment because of the roman church that you talked about in your that you talked about briefly here and you talk about in limited government before the reformation the romes and charge so that's the that's the setup i'll just read a bit of berk so you can see where he's at and then i want to talk about established church but more so the role of an actual synod in what it could look like in limiting state power um so this is from reflections on the revolution in france uh it is on some such principles that the majority of the people of england far from thinking of religious national establishment unlawful hardly think it lawful to be without one in france you were holding mistaken if you do not believe us above all other things attached to it and beyond all other in our and beyond all other nations and when this people has acted unwisely and unjustifiably in its favor as in some instances they have done most certainly and they're very errors you will at least discover their zeal this principle runs through the whole system of their polity they do not consider their church establishment as convenient but as essential to their state not as a thing heterogeneous and separable something added for accommodation what they may either keep up or lay aside according to their temporary ideas of convenience they consider it as the foundation of their whole constitution with which and with every part of which it holds an indesoluble union church and state are ideas inseparable in their minds and scarcely is the one ever mentioned without mentioning the other you like that yeah well I like uh I like most of it I would uh so I want to make a I wouldn't make a distinction between church and state but not between religion and state so he he kind of weaves those all together as if they're quite the same same thing um and uh but I I think the what we've done I think we the American founders having seen um how uh church and state married together can go poorly said let's uh let's have a harder distinction but it was at the federal level and as you said earlier was not the state level states had established churches and so that was still legit under the constitution first amendment did not prohibit states from having established churches at all um but I think the the challenge is that I think when you study scripture you find that there really is um all the going all the back to the Old Testament which is really ironic because um people say theocracy and think that means blending of all the governments but one of the things that God was doing in the ancient world which was unheard of was actually making distinctions between different powers separation of power so even early on and I'm not saying it's pristine or pretty um but Aaron and Moses are a distinction in powers even in the Israelite theocracy it Moses is doing more of the civil thing and Aaron is doing more of the ceremonial thing um and God has started to teach that distinction between civil laws and ceremonial laws um civil laws often have civil penalties tied to them like death penalties like restitution ceremonial laws have ceremonial penalties attached to them like you're unclean you're put outside the camp um and so forth you can't come to worship you can't celebrate the feasts that's something that God's establishing early on and so while I think the church and state ought to be in close communication and maybe in hindsight we needed to make we needed to run back around the other side in the American Constitution and ensure of some kind of Constitution some kind of uh communication between church and state um rather than such a hard separation the key thing is that the state may not and is utterly impossible to be secular um that that's just a different kind of faith that's just a different kind of religion it's not whether you're going to have religion it's just which religion you're going to have and as soon as the federal government decided that it had no religion it wasn't Christianity well all you were doing is in throwning humanism you were just in throwning man uh demos the voice of the people whatever so religion isn't as capable you have to have religion and I think that we should have been far more explicit in our founding um that we were a Christian nation it's implied in a number of ways um but it should have been explicit not that would have saved us necessarily um and I think that it would have been good for there to be some way of defining how church and state would relate in an ongoing way um which we didn't do yeah I I mean I would press this one uh have all my political instincts come out because I'm thinking we you know we have uh jade vance however recently Roman Catholic um but talking of the order of morris you have um you have a strong event jellicole still block where there's pain attention and the american system we have this weird relationship between the still between the the church and the state it's definitely there we know it's there you're still putting your hand on the bible you're not kidding i mean pastors go pray for the president in the overloaf pray for the president um i mean we have um Brooks it's going to dc right he's holding Pentagon prayer services this is this is an um I don't think we're that far from being able to i and i could actually see i mean i could see the first sentence in uh president Donald j trump would just be he just seems like the right kind of guy for it he's like this is this is this is big it's out of my lane you know what do you guys think i can see him being like yeah i'm supposed to do something you tell me Jesus is king over me i need advice from the ministers i could see the guy with seka that advise well i've heard his his office he's got some in office of like church outreach or something like that that polo white runs okay and and you know polo white you know all the question marks and everything else but but rumour rumour has it that she's tapped a whole bunch of basically evangelical and bible believing men um who give counsel and apparently she is you know funneling some of that uh she's secretary of the senate there you go so in the spirit of burky and conservativism let's work with let's work with it's messy it's messy it's not working within the warped tradition that we have and i'd say i i think that um if we're looking to limit state power like if you say i my emphasis my concern is it be limited and it be limited under the lordship of christ it seems like there'd be no better time to say it's about time we have a senate about you call it whatever you want senate might be a scary word for you um but it's about time we have an assailant of lords and house of lords we need i i i think it's quite clear within you know burks tradition um that you're going to need that symbiotic relationship between the ecclesiastical authorities and the civil authorities that you know the problems that we've seen in the past are not because of that arrangement or not because of we so it's like the idea of what we particularly in our own this is a this is a conservative say in the tradition um what wisdom thing here when you're dealing with a nation that is grown secular um to herald christ would now is king over the civil government you better follow that up with we need an ecclesiastical because they're not prepared like they haven't been trained and taught we haven't been steeped so the at least one step would be elevating that to where that becomes customary like we understand in the you know in the american context that it is christian ministers right and not a religious assembly not a general prayer meeting but we're actually know we have christian ministers that are now going to be in this kind of conversations so much of this we did to ourselves you know i mean like there were for for about a century or more after the founding of our country it was common for significant actions of denominations to be printed in major newspapers um sermons were routinely preached are are are are um republished in newspapers so at the founding of the country um our um i think our founders were still like legitimately concerned that the church would try to run the state because everybody looked to the pastors um and and and so but i think and the argument for a stronger separation in the founding of the country was that churches would thrive under that they would make them stronger and and and and and freer because they weren't under the thumb of of civil magistrates but when churches stopped proclaiming the whole council of god we made ourselves irrelevant right when we when we just put our finger in the wind and said i think this is what the people want to hear when we became democratic basically um we became irrelevant um we can sign ourselves to irrelevancy um it you know i think it's in a striking way in in in small ways um outspoken pastors have still continued to have a voice in the public square not always for good but certainly have i mean billi gram was a you know was was was a court profit um for several presidents um and i think for for when pastors will step up again and just say simply thus says the lord and preach the whole council of god um you know what i um i could see a some kind of official assembly of some sort sinned something like that that's like called periodically um that's you know we're going to give an official word to the president um or to the congress or to whoever um or at the state level maybe similar things um but i also think there's a strong temptation um to um to what the letter had and not the authority not pulpit you know and god says look here's your authority i gave you my word that's the authority and um you know and and this is i think the temptation or pastors were like you know really drawn to um well maybe if i were a caller or put on a robe then i'll then we can recover it no it's actually the other way around you have to recover the authority and then god um gives it the office it the um and i know this works together and and again how does god call ministers well it's through the people and through you know through an internal call and all these things um but i think um there's a uh it's easy to make excuses and say well we would have authority if we had the sinned and i would say no we have the sinned tomorrow we wouldn't have any more authority we absolutely nothing like you said you know what would we say to him well you'd it'd be a cacophony it'd be like the days of the judges when everyone is doing right in their own eyes you'd have you know the polo whites and you have you know and you might have you know one reasonable person in the assembly and it just be chaos we have to we have to go back to the word of god the reason why the state's not under the law of god the reason why we've lost lex wrecks in the state is because we lost lex wrecks in the church and we lost lex wrecks in the home and we want we've lost lex wrecks as individuals um you um you know you you get um you get the kind of government you get because of the kind of people you have and that parts you know that goes all the way back to playdo i mean you know you can't have the the government the the the quality of the government doesn't rise above the quality of the people and i think the same thing is true of the churches and the same thing is true of the families um so now god can raise up a jossiah god can raise up a hezekiah and do a lot of good but even there in those cases it's highly limited because the people won't go along with a bunch of it um so we need reformation but that means we've got to return back to the law of god the word of god everywhere and i think you know i'd love to see um far more pastors speaking into public life i don't think it actually i don't think we need to wait for some kind of major revolution i think what we need is for pastors to simply read the bible and then say what it says into the microphone and i think if you do that and you do it consistently and you're not doing it just for clicks and likes and you're doing it because you actually believe it and you're asking god to bless it i think um i think it'll happen um you know the um one of my favorite little sections in the gospel of Luke is when um i think it's Luke 3 when um it says that you know in the days of cesar Augustus and Pontius Pilate and such and such was governor of cesarean and such and such was the high priest and such and such was the high priest the word of the lord came to john in the wilderness that's all you need yeah all those all those high ranking officials with all their you know all their letters after their names and all their fancy suits and ceremonies all you need is the word of god and in that spirit you have this christian country um teaching series to check out again it's free and go to christ church it's either christ church app christ kirk app you can find it on the app store scroll down there to the teaching series four of the four until sixteen sixteen coming to be so on limited government and to be thanks for uh joining me today to talk about it thanks for asking man