Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. It wasn't very long ago we had 10 men stand before the town commissioners here in our town to talk about the Gay Pride Festival. And I'm here with Trent Moody and Robert Bosley who were there. I hope you enjoy the discussion. One of the most remarkable moments that we walked through over the last few years was the COVID moment where we were just having my daughter's wedding was happening.

And the governor shut down North Carolina churches and said, you can't meet. And it was weird because Deborah and I were just so looking forward to sitting back and reminiscing, but we were on the phone with our elders and deacons trying to figure out what to do the next day. Ultimately, we ended up writing letters to our governor telling him that what he had done was wrong, that the church isn't just essential, it's the Church of Jesus Christ, and that churches are obligated to meet. We will continue to meet. Yes, you've commanded us to social distance.

We will not be social distancing. And there were some interchanges that went back and forth. But the letters that we sent, the two letters that we sent, were full of doctrine, of the doctrine of the Church. And we thought it was right for us to have a voice to instruct the civil magistrate on matters of church. So, and thankfully, we were undisturbed.

We did receive letters back saying, you know, you need a social distance and all this kind of stuff. And they knew what we were doing, but we kept meeting. So we're here to really talk about the church instructing the civil magistrate, the legitimacy of doing such a thing. Yeah. You know, before we get into that part, the first thing in my mind is, often we do have some zeal to want to speak to the civil magistrate.

But my view is that before we speak to the civil magistrate about God, we should really speak to God about the civil magistrate. And, you know, in 1 Timothy 2, Paul instructs the church there to... He says, I therefore... Therefore I exhort, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. And so before we do that, before we speak to them, let's speak to God about the situation, because that's our desire is to live a quiet and peaceful life.

But it is important that we understand as the church, The church really has a unique role in one sense because we understand jurisdictions. We understand the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate. We understand the jurisdictions of the church and of the family and even of the individual. But the church actually speaks into all of those jurisdictions. The church tells the civil government what is good and what is evil.

Romans 13 tells us that they are the minister of God to punish evildoers and actually to reward the good. But we must define as the church, we must be the ones who define what is good and what is evil. And that's really the problem of what we see a lot in our culture today is that we're allowing those outside of the church to define what that is. And that's been a real key problem, I think, with the church. We've remained silent, and we must speak.

I'm really glad you brought up the matter of prayer. It's a lot easier to just complain about what's going on in the civil realm. And today, it's all the rage. And then there's enough to rage about. There are so many disturbing things, more disturbing things than in my lifetime.

So there is a lot to complain about, but it's a lot easier to complain than it is to pray. And I'm glad you brought up prayer first, because the first thing the church should do with their voice is to cry out to God. I was just reading recently in a book by Thomas Watson speaking about this. I think I shared this with you earlier, but he said Christ was more eager to go to the cross than the saint is to approach the throne of grace. And that just really struck me.

Christ was always about the Father's will. And we have opened to us a throne of grace, open, that we might come boldly and make our petitions known. And I think that applies in this situation. We must be going to God for the civil magistrate. We need to pray for these men and women, and we need to also then speak to them about what God's Word says and the clarity of it.

And praying for them, not just for their own conversion, although that's of course necessary. It'd be great if our civil leaders were all Christians, but also going and praying that they would enact just laws, that they would seek justice, that they would do these things that God commands them as the servant of God. Romans 13, they are the deacon, the servant of God, and to govern accordingly. And like you just said, go to them and then tell them what is good, what that duty is. How do you determine what is good?

Well, God's given us very clear instructions. Yes. Yeah. You know, John the Baptist did this in Mark 6. We read about this.

It says, But when Herod heard, he said, This is John whom I beheaded. He has been raised from the dead, for Herod himself had sent and laid hold of John, and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife. For he had married her, because John had said to Herod, It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." So this is an interesting case too, because it's not only talking about what was going on, like a bad law that he was doing. John was actually addressing the moral character of Herod. He had broken the law of God regarding marriage.

I just find that very interesting there. So that is an instance there. We actually have a right and a responsibility to speak to morality in the civil sphere, And we should. And we have a lot to talk about now. The monstrous practices surrounding transgenderism, surgeries, hormone blockers, where you have the civil government paying for the removal of sex organs and permanent sterilization of children.

I mean, these are things that our civil magistrates, some of them are doing and some of them are considering doing, and is it legitimate for us to talk about moral issues? Absolutely it is. And of course, you find the Old Testament prophets were legendary. You know, you have Isaiah, he was, you know, he spoke to four different kings, you know, over a period of many years, and he was speaking biblical morality. Jeremiah suffered greatly.

Elijah speaking about the ethical issues of the day. So we definitely have a pattern in Scripture. But that was the Old Testament. That was the Old Testament. You know in Acts 24, Paul does this.

He does the same thing. And after some days when Felix came with his wife, Drusilla, who was a Jewish, he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. Now, as he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and answered, go away for now. When I have a convenient time, I will call for you. And so...

It wasn't just the gospel message. It wasn't just the gospel. He actually spoke about judgment. He spoke about self-control. Wow.

Yeah, I wonder what the bullet points under the self-control were. Yeah, really. Some pastors were scared to speak about self-control in the church, much less in the civil sphere. You know, we have a rich tradition in the Confessions, in the Baptist Confession, in the Westminster Confession, which are slightly different when it comes to the civil magistrate. But, of course, we know that Christians can be civil magistrates.

The Baptist Confession of 1689 in chapter 24 makes that clear. But there are other things that exist there in that confession that legitimize speaking to the civil magistrate. And it only makes sense that God intends his people, his church, to go and tell this other sphere of authority what is God's standard of right and wrong. Because if we don't, who will? And what then is going to be the basis of their laws?

It's going to be their own imagination. If they're an unconverted ruler, that's not going to lead to just laws. That's not going to lead to a society that honors God. We have to be active. We have to go and tell them that God says you should not do this thing.

Right. And you know, Jesus tells us that we are the light of the world, that He's the light of the world, but we're also that light as well. And if we are not displaying that light, the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word and His gospel, we're actually leaving the world in darkness. That's when Jesus came upon the scene, the prophecy, those who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And if we are not, one, speaking the truth of the gospel and the whole, the gospel being the whole Word of God.

And if we're not living the gospel, then we're leaving people, we're leading the blind leading the blind, and they both will fall into a ditch. And surely that is what we are seeing today. So we need to be that light. Just, you know, I think the idea there when the Bible speaks about that is speaking about the sun, the moon, and the stars as being these illuminations or luminaries in the heavens. And we're to be that very thing on this earth that without the sun, moon, and stars, there would be no light upon this planet.

But here we are to be that light. God put us here to be that. Yeah, you have the civil magistrate from time to time is going to be doing things that are not good and they're not lawful. And in the Baptist Confession, it's clear the civil magistrate is to do the things that are good and that are lawful, and believers, you know, should speak up when they vary. You know, something just happened with our church just a few months ago, our town, town of Wake Forest announced that they were going to host a Pride festival right, you know, in historic downtown Wake Forest about 250 feet from where we're sitting.

And so some of the men in our church heard of this, and they mobilized themselves really completely apart from the elders. We had men who mobilized themselves and came to the elders and said, hey, would you, would you help us with this? And we didn't need to help really at all, but we had 10 men the first night of the Wake Forest Town Commissioners meeting come and speak and men spoke different things, different angles to the problem. And of course, most of the town commissioners really couldn't relate to the things that we were saying. They didn't agree with the things that we were saying.

But scripture was quoted, various perspectives were given, but one of the things that I wanted to say is, is this good for the town? Because the town policy states that the events need to be good for the town. And so we were contending, you know, that these things, you know, were not good. Sodomy, drag queen, you know, torquing to your children, the indecency, the pedophilia, the bestiality, the puberty blockers. This is a whole package.

The LGBTQIA2S plus movement is going to keep going to deeper and deeper levels of immorality. And so, you know, as a church, we thought we should speak. And we've had men go every month since then. Even last night, A man went and testified to these, actually to Biblical morality. It is important that we do that.

Again, that's our opportunity to speak to them, defining what is good and what is evil. And these are the things, this type of festival is the things that God, he hates these type things. They are blasphemous to him. And we do not hate those individuals. We desire for them to be saved and come to the knowledge of Christ so that they would be turned from darkness to light.

That's one of the things that Paul speaks about. He's translated us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. And so we want them to be able to see the light and to understand. But again, we're living in an age when people sit in darkness, and we must be that light that shines through the gospel. And we have a somewhat of a unique opportunity where pretty much any town you live in in this country, you're gonna have the opportunity to go like we've been going to the town commissioners and you're gonna have that openness.

I mean, the apostles didn't have that per se. Yes, Paul went before Felix, but it's not like Caesar or Herod was taking public comment. They didn't care. But we have that opportunity. Ostensibly, our local magistrates want to hear from their people, and so we should take that opportunity, and we've done it.

One interesting thing from the Commissioner's meeting last night, there was a separate hearing about some judicial issue, and this man was actually not just giving public comment, but testifying. So they had him take an oath on a Bible in the middle of the board of commissioners meeting. And so our guy who spoke kind of laid into them for the just rank hypocrisy of you're having a man swear an oath to tell the truth on God's word, and yet you're promoting this. Do you not see the problem here? And so it was just a tremendous opportunity to show like this, this, you have this, you see there's some level of authority here.

As magistrates, you need to live by this and enact laws in accordance with this as well. Yeah, exactly. It's a mere formalism to them. Oh, yeah. And it has no meaning other than laying your hand on something.

And even judges, I confronted a judge years ago and asked this judge if they still require that. And they actually said in some cases, they have removed the Bible altogether from a person to swear upon the Word of God and lay their hand upon the Bible to give testimony. And it's really, it's just a remnant of Christianity in the society when they still do that. But yet, what hypocrisy? I said that same thing when I heard that.

I was like, boy, do they see the hypocrisy of that? But, you know, that's why we must speak. If they won't open the Bible, we must tell them what's in the Bible. So let's speak it. And take the opportunity.

It's hard. It's a lot easier to sit at home and complain. But we had probably 10 or 12 guys there last night. It was a long meeting. We were there from 6 to...some of them were there till almost 9.30.

And that's hard to do, but one day a month you can go in and talk to the civil leaders. Absolutely. Yeah, they were three-minute speeches, and it forced our men to really be tight. I was really thankful for them. They didn't speak angrily.

They spoke clearly biblically, the things that were on their hearts. But, you know, we do have a responsibility to speak. I think it was Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Live Not By Lies. His admonition was, you cannot be silent. And I think that's what we want to say.

This is not the time to be silent about the moral issues that are on the table today. And so, let's continue to take opportunity to do that. Any parting shots? I believe it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who also said, silence in the face of evil is evil itself. God will not hold us guiltless.

Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. I think we live in a time where we need to speak, Maybe more than we ever have before. Right, yeah. So let's do it.

Yeah, yeah. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you guys. Thank you guys for the discussion.

Yeah. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. We hope to see you next time. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out churchandfamilylife.com