Only God Can Limit The Government

0:00You 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 Senate. And I would say, no, we have the Senate 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 the pastor, Toby Sumpter. 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

1:08four 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 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 who's 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

2:12happen. 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,

3:12said, 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've commanded. So everything that Jesus has commanded, Genesis, the revelation, the entire word of God, is the law that limits all governments. So the series, Christ and country is primarily aimed at civil government, but it necessarily is

4:18constantly 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,

5:18which 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. You know, 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

6:26Magistrates are under Christ. And the limiting, 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, Christendom, Christendom, 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 civil government. Okay, they hear you saying, well, if Christ is king, and he delegates his authority to anyone other than me as the individual,

7:33right? You know, if he gives, if he's delegated authority to a civil magistrate, wouldn't that beef up? His, 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 it, in the Old Testament, the picture over and over again of government, full of human hubris is of a monstrous beast. So 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 with horns and claws and teeth. And that's the picture of human government that's broken its

8:41chain 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 percent 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 percent. And we would think 10 percent will be awesome. If we could get tax rates down 10 percent. But why is that? Well, because in God's law,

9:46a tithe is what God claims. That's 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 the 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

10:52the 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 know, you're a, you know, Christophe fascist,

11:54meaning you want to do Sharia law on America and put Bible verses on top of it. Well, the thing is, 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 Allah. You know, his religion means submit. That's just a completely different religion. But God's law is freedom. God's law 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,

12:54and we say, no, actually, in 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 board, 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 that there's a fence put around it. Like, you can do this much. That's it. 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

13:56relearn 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 a 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 norm 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

14:58to 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 a 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, this is king of all things in heaven and all 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

16:03left 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 Sandler-Rutherford, Edmund Burke, others were still recognizing 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,

17:06John Locke was in the process of jettisoning a original 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 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 Locke in 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

18:11of, 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 would be a 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 in the Christian vision. It's dead in your sins. It's a problem. So Christ is a 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 in your, in your address on Christ and country. You talk about the, 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 designs, limited by its function. This is what you're supposed to do. And therefore there's,

19:14there's guardrails because of the telos of this institution that I have made over which I rule. And I would say to the secular conservative, if you 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. 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,

20:17everything that we're doing. Right. 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 Locke, Russo, 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. Yeah. Um, 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 a, um, a Burke and conservative is a different flavor and add something that most people aren't thinking about, even I think people in the, um, well, I think it's, I think this kind of Burkian sentiment is starting to be recovered, perhaps with like Gen Z, um, but how much of

21:18Gen X and the millennials get this is 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, um, against this notion, um, but he is saying, here are my opponents. Here's their three propositions. Um, 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, right? 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 you're, 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, you know, to toss them outside. Um,

22:19and 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 to be so 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 gentlemen and their faction only. The body of the people of England have no share in it. And then he continues on. And, um, 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. Um, he says not one word is said, nor one suggestion made of a general right to choose our own governors to cashier them from misconduct into form a government for ourselves. Now those are three big ideas. Uh, you can just do one. It's just basically respond to Burke. Yeah. Um, so one of the things I didn't really get into this too much in, uh, in the limited government video. I think I might have had another one, but I can't remember. They all blurt

23:22together. Um, but one I know that's near and dear to your heart is, um, what one of the glorious things that was recovered during the reformation was the covenantal, um, nature of governments. Um, and I think I think I did this actually. I did one on the Protestant resistance theory, which I guess will be one coming out. Um, but this was this all got had to get worked out during the reformation, um, pronto because, um, suddenly there really were conflicts all over the place. And, um, and so, um, but if you think about government as a, 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 in a, in a lady, maybe it's three dudes, a lady in this, you know, pet poodle. You know, you don't get to do that. Um, God defines what marriage is. You don't get to pick it out of thin air. I think that's what Burke is a fundamentally trying to burn down. He's

24:28burning down that thing, which was what the French revolutionaries were doing. Um, they were not talking about, um, reforming a corrupt system. Um, 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 were reforming a corrupt system. Um, but the French revolutionaries were burning the whole thing down. Um, not only did they murder and put to death all the, um, hierarchy of the French government, but then they went into the cathedral of Notre Dame and set up a, um, transvestite orgy, like on the high altar of Notre Dame. Like that's not reforming, uh, you know, something that's gone corrupt. That's defiling it. That's blaspheming it. Not only that, they were 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, we're going to, it was, they, they, they explicitly said, we are enthroning the goddess reason, human reason. Um, and we are dethroning Jesus Christ. Um, so, um, that's what he's talking

25:34about. So they, they wanted to reinvent the covenant, uh, of, of government. Um, and 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, is that, um, and, um, uh, this is a worked out, um, in, uh, uh, what's the French book? Contra, um, Tyrannus, um, uh, that the, um, uh, French Huguenots worked this out. But they said, basically, there's a, um, 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, and the, and they, 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. Um, but it, it, everybody's being checked. Everybody's under God. And the king and the rulers have certain responsibilities under God, um, in scripture above

26:37it 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, um, like in a marriage, um, where a wife and a husband have particular duties under God. Um, 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. Um, they have particular duties. Now, as in a marriage, um, a, a husband can be such a, um, a tyrant or, uh, 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 lesbians, lesbiansism is an option, which is what the front revolutionaries were doing. Um, and what, um, uh, Burke is condemning. Um, there's a few thoughts. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good

27:38setup. I mean, it's, um, I, I think covenant is the answer in them. I knew you would agree. Yes. But it's a lost idea. And it's, uh, it's baked in all of these principles that you've talked about. So Christ is king of the, of the civil magistrate. Uh, 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 in the constitution is itself. You, you go into this and your, um, and your Christ and country, limited government, um, address, you talk about this con, this very idea of writing down the constitution is grounded in the covenantal idea. And so, um, maybe I'm, you know, it'll have to deal with Burke in detail on his first point of you don't have a right to choose your governors. Well, um, I'm all four elections. I'm not trying to like get away from elections. But we need to know that when we are,

28:43when we are, um, casting our vote for whatever leader it is, we need to know, God is actually making the king through the people, right, which is a way to appropriate Burke. In the way I feel comfortable 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, uh, term of Trump. We 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, you know, where God is, you know, God selects elders and pastors. He uses the voice of the people, but it's God selecting them. And I think you have the same thing also that this is actually why, um, founders of our country, despite the fact they will sometimes 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

29:43democratic party until I think it was Andrew Jackson. Because everybody thought of democratic, democrat, uh, as associated with democracy. And everybody thought of democracy as associated with the French Revolution and anarchy. Um, all of them, nobody wanted a democracy. And people throw that around now like democracy, democracy. And the, and the, all the founding fathers are rolling over in their graves. They wanted a republic. Um, that's, 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, um, it turned into civil war. And, um, 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 into the ground and as soon as they were done decapitating everybody

30:47on guillotines, what happened? Napoleon Bonaparte. So the founding fathers, so I, 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. Um, 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. Um, 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, oh, cashier. That was the word. Yeah, like we can cashier our, 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, um, I think Burke, um, would generally have appreciated, even if it was a different

31:52system than than the British system. Oh, yeah, 100%. 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, um, and I think this, um, this, I'll give you another few lines from Burke, um, on basically Lex Rex, the law's king, um, so the king's not above the law. Okay. And then I, I basically, um, 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. Um, 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 you, if I said, our

32:56government should be limited. Right. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, um, write our government with a redress of grievances. Uh, there are, yeah, 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 limited principle has to be God. So Burke kind of talks about that. Let's see if some of these are relevant. Um, this principle ought even to be more strongly impressed upon the minds of those who compose 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

33:58limited government, the principle of law is king has to be applied. And he, he sees it without whole mob, the, um, 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. Um, 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 thought, so do you see, so let's go cultural read at this moment, which is the greater 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, I think it's like trying to, um, to, you know, stand on a log in a water. It's just keep spinning.

35:02So 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, uh, Napoleon's on the way. Napoleon's on the way. Exactly. So, so I, 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. Um, 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,

36:03you know, the way that you, you, uh, you, you put ballast in a ship as you, you know, you, you weighed it in the middle down underneath so that it's hard to tip. Um, that's what all our checks and balances are. But it was supposed to be checks and balances from top to bottom. checks and balances on the executive branch, the executive, the legislative, um, the, uh, 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 at 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, um, that's where we are. But I think the answer is, um, we've got a whole bunch of barnacles that have grown on the ship. We got a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be stripped away. Um, the federal government has gotten way too big because it's doing stuff that it wasn't ever designed to do. Um, and I think there are some in our modern moment who, um, you know, are asking for a

37:09strong 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. Um, 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. Uh, one of the things that I've said before is, um, 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, you just crushes everything in its 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, um, with a sword. Um, 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

38:11appeal. 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, um, evil reigns. Um, 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, um, that's tyranny. And what I've said before is, um, 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. Um, Psalm 72 talks about the justice of the king is like,

39:17fresh rain showers on a fresh moon 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 don't know if 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 pond scum 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

40:18happen? Well, babies will be killed and elderly will be killed and then pretty sure, pretty soon, 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 into the education one for just a moment. Um, limited government applied to education. Let'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 scatter, jurisdictions, counties. Let's just go say, 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.

41:27The superintendent is elected by the parents. So you get a superintendent that's that's elected. Yeah. By the parent representative government, that kind of thing. Yeah. Uh, this half of the superintendents pay comes from the taxes of Idaho citizens. Okay. Half of the 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 superintendents, 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, um, discuss different educational plans and what not trainings and what are on. Um, if, and, um, in the main, whatever small little office is in

42:36Boise, that is responsible for education. There's a small, the two people working in there. Yeah. They stay out of people's business. But if one of the counties, 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. Right. Um, the civil magistrate in Boise, um, shuts it down. Civil magistrates are 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, uh, the, the Bible, um,

43:40does 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 it, you know, every day of the week and twice on Sundays, um, because it'll be moving us in the right direction. So you're a birkin conservative. We're making progress. Right. We're making progress in the right direction. Um, you know, I'm an incrementalist. It's, it's, we're working towards a better system. It's localizing the system. Um, it's shrinking the, uh, centralized form of it. Um, and there's, there's fair points worked out there. Um, um, um, however, a lot depends on, um, the direction you're going it. So in any given moment, you know, pastorally speaking, you know, this, but you, you know, you have a snapshot of somebody, you know, and I don't know, they're tied it 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 fill. What, what's going on? Is he, did he just repent?

44:42And 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 with 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 we're, 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 just think, um, the, um, 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

45:44the morality of the public people and churches of our common Lord. Yeah, all that. So I get that. But I would, 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 concern 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

46:49for 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. Alright, slight pivot, but related, um, the, um, the whole question of church and state. I think you referenced separation of church and state in your, in your, um, your address on Christ in country. Um, the Westminster Confession of Faith, old versions, says that the civil magistrate must take order to call sentence to see this, what, what's conducted there is according to the mind of God, set a rope, punish blasphemy, suppress, uh, suppress

47:49heresy, all that stuff. And abuses of church worship, Thomas Hobbes, 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, Stephen Wolf from Nebraska and him now feels like three, four years ago here on a podcast, you're recommending that Joe Biden be able to tell me how to administer the sacrament or something. I had to do my job and he equipped, 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 of what we would want this to look like. We're trying to actually bang out what it would look like. American Westminster is reduced. American Westminster has taken away some of that stronger language from the old Westminster. The American Westminster says that the civil magistrate has the duty to protect the churches of our common Lord established churches in our, what eight or nine of the first American colonies had established churches. That's the setup. I thought Burke was interesting on this point. So if we're going to limited government, if we're saying that Christ is king over the government, we know we have a friend,

48:52time and client, I think is about to try to drop a very strong political Protestantism, I've interviewed him that the civil, the very heart of Protestantism is that the civil magistrate has the right to his own theological judgment, his independent theological judgment, because of the Roman church that you talked about and your, that you talked about briefly here, and you talk about in limited government before the reformation, the Rome's in charge. So that's the, that's the setup. I'll just read a bit of Burke 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 and what it could look like in limiting state power. So this is from reflections on the revolution in France. 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 nations. And when this people has acted unwisely and unjustifiably

49:59in 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 most of it. So I want to make a distinction between church and state, but not between religion and state. So he kind of weaves those all together as if they're quite

51:04the same thing. But I think what we've done, I think we, the American founders, having seen how church and state married together can go poorly, said, let's have a harder distinction. But it was at the federal level, and as you said earlier, it was not at the state level, states had established churches, and so that was still legit under the Constitution. First amendment did not prohibit the states from having established churches at all. But I think the, the challenge is that I think when you study scripture, you find that there really is all going all the back to the Old Testament, which is really ironic because 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, a separation of power. So even early on,

52:04and I'm not saying it's pristine or pretty, but Aaron and Moses are a distinction in powers, even in the Israelite theocracy. Moses is doing more of the civil thing, and Aaron is doing more of the ceremonial thing. And God has started to teach that distinction between civil laws and ceremonial laws. 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, 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 run back around the other side in the American Constitution and ensure of some kind of communication between church and state, rather than such a hard separation, the key thing is that the state may not and is

53:05utterly impossible to be secular. That's just a different kind of faith. It'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 throwing humanism. You were just in throwing man, 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 that we were a Christian nation. It's implied in a number of ways, but it should have been explicit. Not that that would have saved us necessarily. 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, which we didn't do. Yeah, I mean, I would press this one to have all my political instincts come out because I'm thinking we, you know, we have JD Vance, however recently, Roman Catholic, but talking of the

54:06order of Morris, you have, you have a strong evangelical still block where there's pain attention. And the American system, we have this weird relationship between the, still between 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 Oval Office. Praise the president. I mean, we have Brooks going to DC. He's holding Pentagon prayer services. This is an, I don't think we're that far from being able to, and I could actually see, I mean, I could see the first Senate and 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 big. It's out of my lane. You know, what do you guys think? I can see him being like, I'm supposed to do something. You tell me, Jesus, this king over me, I need advice from the ministers. I could see the guy that would seek out that advice. Well, I've heard his, his office, he's got some office of like church outreach or something like that that Paula White runs. Okay. And, and, you know, Paula White, you know,

55:09all the question marks and everything else. But, but rumor, rumor has it that she's tapped a whole bunch of basically evangelical and Bible-believing men who give counsel. And apparently she is, you know, funneling some of that, she's secretary of the Senate. There you go. So in the spirit of Burkian conservatism, let's work with, let's work with it. It's messy. It's messy. It's work within the warped tradition that we have. And I'd say, I think that if we're looking to limit state power, like if you say, my emphasis, my concern is that 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. You call it whatever you want. Senate might be a scary word for you. But it's about time we have an assailant. House of lords. House of lords. We need, I think it's quite clear within, you know, Burk's tradition that you're going to need that symbiotic relationship between

56:20the 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 wheat. So it's like the idea of what we, particularly in our own, this is a conservative, say, in the tradition, what wisdom thing here. When you're dealing with a nation that has grown, secular, to Harold 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 at least one step would be elevating that to where that becomes customary. Like we understand in the, in American context, that it is Christian ministers and not a religious assembly, not a general prayer meeting, but we actually know we have Christian ministers that are now going to be in this kind of conversations. So much of this, we did do

57:24ourselves. 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. Sermons were routinely preached or republished in newspapers. So at the founding of the country, our, I think our founders were still like legitimately concerned that the church would try to run the state, because everybody looked to the pastors. 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 freer because they weren't under the thumb of, of civil magistrates. But when churches stopped proclaiming the whole council of God, we, we made ourselves irrelevant. Right? When we, when we just put our finger in the wind and said,

58:27I think this is what the people want to hear. When we became democratic, basically, we became irrelevant. We can sign ourselves to irrelevancy. You know, I think it's in a striking way in, in, in small ways, outspoken pastors have still continued to have a voice in the public square, not always for good, but certainly have. I mean, Billy Graham was a, you know, was, was, was a court profit for several presidents. 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. You know what? I, I could see a, some kind of official assembly of some sort, sinned something like that that's like called periodically. That's, you know, we're going to give an official word to the president or to the Congress or whoever, or at the state level, maybe similar things. But I also think there's a strong

59:28temptation to, to what the letter had and not the authority. Not pulp it. You know, and as, and God says, look, here's your authority. I gave you my word. That's the authority. And, you know, and, and this is, I think the temptation or pastors were like, you know, really drawn to, 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 gives it the office. The, the, 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. But I think there's a, it's easy to make excuses and say, well, we would have authority if we had the Senate. And I would say, no, we have the Senate tomorrow. We wouldn't have any more authority. Absolutely nothing. Like you said, you know, what would we say to them? 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

1:00:30you 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 Rex in the state is because we lost Lex Rex in the church and we lost Lex Rex in the home and we want, we've lost Lex Rex as individuals. You, you know, you, you get, 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 Plato. I mean, you know, you can't, how the government, 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. So, now God can raise up a Josiah. 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. So we need reformation, but that means we've got to return back to the law of God, the word of God

1:01:32everywhere. And I think, you know, I'd love to see 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, I think it'll happen. You know, one of my favorite little sections in the gospel of Luke is when, I think it's Luke 3 when it says that, you know, in the days of Caesar Augustus and Pontius Pilate and such and such was governor of Caesarea 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. 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

1:02:38word of God. And in that spirit, you have this Christ and country teaching series to check out. Again, it's free and go to Christ church. It's either Christ church app, Christ Kirk app. You find it on the App Store. Yeah. Scroll down there to the teaching series four of the four, until 16, 16 coming. Toby's was on limited government and Toby, thanks for joining me today to talk about it. Thanks for asking, man.