Join us with Phil Kayser to discuss chapter 9 of Pierre Viret, “When to Disobey.” Titled, “Jurisdictions and callings are ordained by God. Viret addresses the various callings of individuals, pastors, and magistrates. What should individuals do? In this chapter, Viret corrects some of the wrong thinking that he is encountering.

Well, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're talking about the civil government and particularly discussing a chapter, chapter nine of this book, When to Disobey, articles by Pierre Verre. We also have a study guide as well to sort of guide thinking through these chapters. Pierre Verre wrote extensively about the relationship of the church and the civil government. He lived under three pretty difficult governing authorities during his time as a pastor.

He and he was a good shepherd of his people and other pastors to help them understand first of all how to understand a proper role of the civil government and how people should relate to it because there are always wrong ideas. And of course you had a Roman Catholic view and various pagan views that had been affecting civil magistrates, very much like our own times. And so, Vire offers counsel. We're going to deal with chapter 9 here, which is entitled, Jurisdictions and Callings are Ordained by God. And so, Jason, here we go again, and we have Phil Kaiser with us today.

Fantastic. How nice. Welcome, Phil. Thank you. Good to be with you.

Phil is in Omaha, Nebraska, Dominion Covenant Church, a dear sister Church. Some of my friends and family visit you, and they always tell me how sweet it was to be there. So we praise the Lord for you. So, Phil, we're here to discuss this chapter. You know, I've been thinking over the last couple days especially what a wonderful advantage the Christian has in the world.

The Lord shows us how to think about things, how to respond to things, And the people of the world kind of freewheel it, not us. We have boundaries, we have commands, we have explanations for why things are happening. What a blessing it is not to be just lost in the morass of our emotions or where the culture is going to take us or the wind or whatever, and to not be blown around by every wind of doctrine. And so the Lord, He helps us to sort things out. And this chapter is helpful because he addresses the callings of individuals, the callings of pastors, and also the specific callings of magistrates and how we should respond.

And he unpacks some controversial issues on what do individuals do about idols? Do we run around and tear down the idols? Do we walk into the saloon and shoot them up because there's so much evil going on? What do we do? And so Verre deals with that.

And of course, he's dealing with the time and the Reformation where there was an attempt to return to Scripture. And so there was confusion as well. He's correcting some of that confusion. And we need men like that to help us to understand what scripture says about things. And of course, all of us share this conviction that scripture is sufficient, and we've been trying to arrange our lives according to its sufficiency.

And that's what Verre was doing. And he talks to those who want to overthrow governments and he talks to pastors about how they should see their own role in the midst of civil government. So I want to begin by just talking about those roles because he dissects various responsibilities. And so let's talk, I was really, I was really blessed by what he said about the role of the pastor. So let's talk about that first, because he speaks of sort of the boundary lines for pastor leadership.

So what are your thoughts? What did he say? How do you respond to it? Well, he definitely said that pastors who lack the courage to speak to the idols today, and one of the biggest idols of his day and of our day was statism, are, what did he call them? Dumb dogs?

They're not warning, like they should be warning. But a courageous pastor needs to be addressing all of the issues of the day and from the Bible itself. One of the things that the introduction just alludes to is that there was a controversy over this jurisdiction issue, and there were a lot of revolutionaries at the time who called themselves Huguenots, and in trying, and when the leadership was trying to talk to them, they were arguing natural law, and they realized if they don't go back to the scripture and the scripture alone they can't settle this issue. So that's where the pastors came in. They're the ones who were educating everybody.

They were preaching to the magistrates. They were not afraid to excommunicate magistrates, which is not magisterial power, it's not the power of the sword, but it is a declaratory power and God backs up that declaratory power. He binds in heaven what's found on earth. And so from start to finish, they were crystallizing this issue that what the church has, what's the individual family's jurisdiction is, and what the state, that was thundered from the pulpits. And I think it really helped France a lot during the Huguenot crisis.

Yeah. So he uses Isaiah's terminology about the dogs that don't bark. And he's urging pastors to bark, but not shoot. Right? Pastors bark, they don't shoot, at least in the context that he's talking about.

So let's continue to talk about that. I really loved the language that he used about pastoral leadership. A pastor of the church must be the guide to the blind, leading the erring back to the way, proclaiming Jesus Christ to those who are under his charge. And he talked about this reality of the pastor's calling, and that is that he's different. He thinks he must think differently about the church than the average person in the church, and he says that the pastor owes more to the church than the average man.

I thought that was really interesting. And we all understand that. We think differently about the flock than the flock thinks about itself. We are charged to. And so He just speaks of the difference of the life of the pastor and the life of the church member in this whole mix of the civil magistrate.

He has a heightened responsibility. In a lot of ways, this is kind of a problem. A pastor isn't really the buddy of everybody in the church. We're not buddies, we're shepherds. We wear a different hat, you know, and I know pastors who kind of pine away, I don't have any friends.

Well, that's actually not their primary role is to be buddies, and a pastor has to accept that. So he's a guide to the blind to keep them from straying. At the bottom of page 115, he says they really ought to resign from being pastors if they're not willing to preach the whole word to the whole person. And it does take courage to do so. I've talked to pastors who have said, I don't dare to use John's topic XYZ because if I do so, I will lose some fighters.

I've had several actually who have said that. And what I have told them is they're being faithless to God, to their calling and to their sheep. They really are being faithless. So it takes courage to really, operate within the jurisdiction of the church. By the way, it wasn't just the state that they believed had a subjection to the regulated principle of government, the church did as well.

But the church could only do what God had specifically authorized it to do. They had experienced big government under Rome, and they were fighting against that as much as they were fighting with the Word of God against stateism. And he makes this distinction for the church. He says, the pastors are not obligated to take up the sword and arms to usurp to himself the office of the ruler and meddle what is properly and particularly given to the magistrate. So, he's really urging the pastors to stay in their lane, not just, and of course, he's going to speak about how the civil government stays in his lane, but he's really urging pastors to stay in their lane as well.

Pete But he makes a distinction, so there is some nuance here. Most of the chapter is given to two of the three jurisdictions, the civil magistrate and the church. And he says while a pastor in a church has no warrant from Scripture to cross over the jurisdiction into the civil magistrate's turf, so to speak, to act that the pastors have the ability and the duty to speak across the line of the jurisdiction. He says this at the top of 15 about the duty of a pastor to speak to the civil magistrate. If the magistrate does not do this, the minister fulfills his duty when he condemns by the Word of God what it condemns, and when he points out and daily teaches both by word and deed to every man what he must do.

So the church has an obligation to instruct the civil magistrate on what scripture says and in the categories. Yes, yes. You know, elsewhere in his collected writings, he speaks of three symbols for the three different authorities. The state had the sword, the church had the keys, which included discipline, but it was all declaratory keys. And he spoke of the Bible as being the key to knowledge.

I think that was from Luke and then the family having the rod. And so it was really Verre who helped in large measure a lot of the other leaders in the Huguenot Reformation. Keep those three distinctions and those three symbols in line. Yeah, and I think this is the big point, you know, stay in line in that sense. And of course, that's been the concern we've had over the last year and a half is, what does it look like when the civil magistrate steps out of its lane?

And then how should we respond to it? Yeah, and also subjects out of their lane. I think Phil already touched on this, but he begins the chapter by speaking of revolutionaries who are appealing to Scripture and saying that they're attempting to justify their rebellion against the civil magistrate from Scripture. So the chapter is really given to laying down a baseline of the correct understanding of Scripture versus the incorrect usage of Scripture that these revolutionaries that are advancing. David Larkin He calls them wicked people.

He says that pastors should censure them. So He calls pastors to the obligation of censuring, you know, those others, whether they be pastors or individuals who are going to go and destroy property, they're going to pull out their swords and things like that. He says that these people are stirring up a great deal of trouble and actually drawing grievous persecution. Yes. And In his other sections in this book, he speaks about that, that the misbehavior of the church just draws more persecution, so the church should be careful.

Right, the whole revolutionary impulse is still with us, even in reform circles, where people try to throw off all authority. We've seen some people taking it to its logical conclusion of egalitarianism. If you don't submit to the authorities that God has put in place, that's where it eventually goes, is egalitarianism. He attributes it to four things. It's either thoughtlessness or vainglory or rashness or inconsiderate zeal.

Verre was uncompromising in his language in talking. He really wanted to come hard against those who wanted to reject really the pattern of Scripture in that sense. Pete As he's drawing the lines of what a pastor should do and what a pastor does not have warrant from Scripture to do, on 116, he uses the prophets as a sort of model for us. They preached against idolatry, they preached against the sins of the people, but they didn't go destroy idols, and they didn't go stone idolaters because they believed that was work that God had given to another jurisdiction to do. So Again, those who speak the Word of God speak to everything.

There's nothing they can't speak to. There are no jurisdictional boundaries there. If the Bible has spoken to it, it can be addressed by a teacher of the Word of God. But it doesn't mean that a teacher of the Word of God is given authority in every way to right every wrong, not at all. You know, I found this section really interesting because he starts with Daniel and he gives examples, and then he gives some extraordinary examples.

He uses that word. I thought that was really helpful to kind of explain some of the unusual occurrences where individuals would pick up the sword. But, you know, he begins with Daniel, and he basically says, no, Daniel, you know, waited for the Lord to correct the sins in the civil government. But then he talks about Gideon. Let's talk about Gideon for a minute, because he's kind of one of those outliers.

You know, Gideon gets up, he tears down his father's idols, he's on the run. Thankfully, his father joins him and, you know, embraces his principle. It's such a neat story. But let's talk about Gideon. Is Gideon the example of the individual blessed by God to raise up the sword?

That's the question he addresses here. Right. And he would say, since the scripture lays out the general rule that the individual can't take it, then we need to interpret it in light of those things. But he gives a number of additional points to prove that Gideon is really not an exception. That his dad was likely an authority.

That's why they went to him to complain about Gideon rather than the elders of the gate. And he gives two or three other examples of why that is the case. And then he says, by the way, when you've got inspired and revelation being given to people, that's a different situation than us, we've got to restrict ourselves to the Bible. Yeah, yeah, he says, well, God told him to do it, and that was an exception. That's kind of how he explains that.

Right. And what did you think about bottom of page 114 where he says for the rest he must leave to the magistrate what belongs to the magistrate or the office of the magistrate is to abolish idols and all instruments of idolatry seems that he is saying that the magistrate has authority for the first people of them all. That's what he's saying. That's a controversial issue, isn't it? Yeah, that was his position.

Right, right. Yeah, a lot of controversy about that. I think there was controversy about it back then as well. There were some people who just wanted the magistrate to deal with the second tape of the law. From my perspective, I think he's more consistent because if God, which God is it that's saying thou shalt not murder?

You know, abortion may not be murder if it's a different God than the God of the Bible. So if you don't have the first table of the law, you can't even define what the second table means. You've got to go to the Bible of the God of the first commandment in order to define anything. Yeah, and I'm sure he's, you know, following the pattern of the godly kings who did that very thing. They tore down the idols.

Unless we take it that way, we don't really have the restriction that he puts on governments at the top of page 115, where he says that his office is also to execute what is particularly given to his charge according to this word. In other words, civil governments are restricted by specifically enumerated powers. So They're enumerated, they're named, they're defined, and they cannot go beyond those powers. And if they do, then they're going into the realm of tyranny. And the huguenots spoke a great deal about lower magistrates protecting their citizens from the tyranny of higher magistrates.

And so they're the ones that have the sword, then the preachers say, hey, you've got a responsibility to protect us. And so it was a beautiful synergy that was happening between family, church, and state, when all of them embraced their own callings. Let's just camp on this matter of calling. He uses these terms, particular callings, slash particular offices, and then extraordinary callings. I think it's worth just batting that around a little bit, because you do have in the Bible extraordinary, exceptional things, But let's just talk about how he describes that.

So he starts this on page 119, and he begins by talking about the particular callings, and he says, this is ordinary and most common. Therefore, it is less easy to mistake, and there is less dangerous of being deceived in it. Meaning, you have these normal systems of the civil magistrate, and it's not extraordinary, and so it's not open to self-deception. On the next page he says this, for we willingly make ourselves believe what we want to believe. What is he saying?

He's saying, yeah, everybody thinks they're Gideon. There's no shortage of people who claim special revelation from God. There's no shortage of people who say, God told me to do this. So the particular callings, the normal way that God works through the institutions that He's established is a lot less liable to self-deception and the things we want to be true but aren't true. Yeah, he's really going after the God told me crowd.

He says they're in grave danger to their flesh, to be subject to their emotions, subject to their desires. I'm just using the language that he's using. He says that they transport us in such a way that we believe them to be the Spirit of God. And then he says we are in grave danger. He uses that twice in the same paragraph, and he you know makes it clear that Satan, you know, often transforms himself into an angel of light.

And we may find ourselves actually following the devil in our emotions. And we wanna do great things for God, but they really weren't from God. So, later in the chapter, he speaks of the peasants in Germany, and I just finished reading a biography about Luther, and it, close to the end of it, talks about the peasants' rebellion. What happened there? Self-proclaimed prophets said God told them to lead the populace in rebellion, and the peasants followed them into slaughter.

So, I mean, this is exactly what we're talking about here. There's not a shortage of people who say they have direct revelation from God, and there's the risk of them leading the populace into rebellion and slaughter because almost always the one who really bears the sword has the best weapons. And most of the time those people weren't told directly by God and they're leading people into slaughter. So Ray points out when they abandoned the whole principle of Sola Scriptura through their direct revelations, they ended up becoming lawless. And he points out all kinds of, you know, having wives in common, this is page 119.

If you look at that history that you referred to, it's just remarkable. When you abandon solo scriptura, anything is up for grabs. Anything. And he says it's Satan capitalizing on our fanatic desires to hinder the course of the Word of God. Right.

And So it's interesting to me, you know, reading Verre, regularly he's calling his readers to humility and deference over and over again. And of course, this is another one, And he's really appealing to scripture. And he says, you know, not everybody's called to the extraordinary. Stop thinking that you're gonna be Mr. Extraordinary.

Right. You're not extraordinary. And so be a Christian. It takes humility though to have that kind of an attitude. Yeah, oh yeah.

So, he quotes Jeremiah 23, 21, I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran." That's the whole... It's not new to Ardé or Virés. But then he turns to this matter of waging war. He just gives a couple of paragraphs. And this is the very end.

And he, in very succinct terms, states his view of the Church and individuals' involvement in the actual waging of war. So let's try to tease that out. I know he doesn't say much about it, but He says it in a very dense way that's easy to understand. Yeah, let me read a portion of the last paragraph because I can't improve on it. He says, If we do not have magistrates or captains who have been ordained by God to defend us against the abuses of the persecutors.

We must not take up any other arms to withstand the attacks of this battle than those with which Jesus Christ has armed us. He said, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves, but beware of men. But when they persecute you in this city, flee into another." And this is actually setting the table for the next chapter. What do you do if you're a sheep among wolves?

And I love the next chapter, he says, if you start bearing your teeth like wolves, then beware because Jesus fights against all wolves. He's going to fight against you. And so this whole area of trusting that the shepherd does care for his feet, he can protect them is a wonderful concept, which means that if we restrict ourselves to the jurisdictions God has given to us, we're in submission to him and to the authority that he's put over us, we can trust Him to take care of the results. We do not have to take His authority into our own hands. He gives authority to them, He will.

So I think it's a beautiful connection between this chapter and the next chapter. Yes, it really is. I love the next chapter. It's my favorite in the book. But, you know, just to wrap this whole thing up, what Verre is arguing for is a spirit of humility, that we would be a governed people, that we would be hemmed in by the word of God.

This world doesn't want to be hemmed in. Boy, I want to be hemmed in. One of my daughters had a baby, and this baby just loves to be swaddled up and hemmed in. And it makes me think of just the comfort there is to have God speak His Word so that we know how we ought to operate. And I think he just does a beautiful job here to explain the fact that the church is a governed body by God.

And I think Phil hit the nail on the head. Trust in the Lord is the central issue. The insurrectionist says, I'll only ever get what I'm willing to take. And the people of God say, I'll only ever get what God gives me, and He can be trusted to give me all that I need. Pete Yeah.

So, man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. Praise the Lord for that. And you know what? There's a true power that people have in being in submission. It's not just women who are, the word for virtuous woman, it's very valiant, strong.

She's strong because she's in submission. The man is strong because he's in submission to his church. Everybody's in submission. And as that centurion said, I have authority because I also am a man under authority. And I think that's one of the key issues in this chapter that if we maintain our jurisdictions, we're in submission, we have humility, trust in the Lord, God can prosper our way.

Amen. Well, the word of God is sweeter than honey than the honeycomb, and it's so helpful to us. So Phil, thanks for joining us again. It was just a really encouragement to have you and Jason. So thanks for bringing us through this.

What a great chapter. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. We'll see you next time. Churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.