Well, I really am just so delighted to be with you and happy to be here with you. I've enjoyed our time of fellowship thus far and I've appreciated some of the conversations and questions that have arisen. It gives me hope that some of the things that the Lord's laid on my heart to speak to you about today may really help to speak to some of those questions. Kevin, I really appreciated your sermon earlier. I see you've left your notes up here.

I'm tempted to try to pick up where you left off. I know you didn't get to everything, but there's no way I could. But I'll tell you, if after hearing Kevin Swanson's sermon, I'm not going to call it a talk, he preached to us a little earlier today, If after hearing his message, you don't believe that Satan is indeed a communist, I hope you'll believe it after you hear mine because it's amazing how the Lord has dovetailed some of the things that he's laid on our hearts to share with you this morning. Scott's message on God's design is really what I'm here to talk to you about this afternoon. How has God designed things in His economy?

How would He see things work according to the jurisdictions that He's established? Now, Scott's mentioned my little boy, Valor. I'm going to talk to you first, though, about my little two-year-old son, Victor. His name is Lee Christian Victor. We named him that hoping that before the Lord, He would enjoy a victorious Christian life.

And I'm here to tell you that in many ways, even at two already, He is living up to His name. He's a little man that seeks to be victorious in whatever he does, as two-year-olds so often may do. In fact, sometimes his desire for victory clearly is not yet molded into Christian victory. Sometimes it's a victory that he desires in his flesh. In fact, sometimes he would like to have victory over his mother and me.

You know, I've discovered with him that the truth, that nature really does abhor a vacuum. You heard that before? You studied it? You believe it's true? I believe it's true.

If I don't lead, He will. Even at two. Sometimes, even when I'm seeking to lead, He's willing to step in and lead. And It's amazing. It's sweet how God reveals Himself to us in so many contexts and how He reveals Himself to us even in the context of our families.

And that may bring to mind for you, have you ever seen a two-year-old, or maybe a little boy that's a little older than that, who's truly in charge of his home. Surely your children don't ever seek to take charge in the home where they don't really rightfully have jurisdiction, but have you seen homes where there's a child in charge? Are those children happy? I mean, really? You show me a two-year-old who's in charge of his home, and I'll show you a miserable little boy.

Now in his flesh, he may think that he is ready to be in charge, and he may even desire in His flesh to be in charge. But our families, like so many other jurisdictions that God has established, prove to us that we can't live together united in order before the Lord unless we have proper jurisdictions established. Families need the right boundaries in order to operate properly. My friend Bill Einwechter, who I would just recommend to you, his writings and his talk at the last national conference on jurisdictional issues, describes the relationship of the church this way. He says, the only way to unite the family and the church is first to separate them.

Brothers and sisters, he is so right. Do you ever have any boundary struggles in your own life? Just personally, with friendships, maybe with extended family? Are there ever any challenges that have to do with your jurisdiction where it may bump up against theirs and where boundaries are not clearly established? You know, Even psychologists, even psychology, which I appreciate Kevin's comments on the usefulness of that and the pagan origins of it, or maybe Kevin didn't comment, but I will.

You know, they've even figured out, though, that we need boundaries to have right relationships. They have discovered a biblical truth that God establishes jurisdictions. It's more proof that that broken clock is right twice a day. We've got to have the right jurisdictions established in order to function properly. And I have a bit of news for you about what Kevin talked to us about earlier today.

You know our Christian heritage that we talked about? Those founding fathers who we revere and whose spiritual inheritance we enjoy so much? They didn't come up with the idea of separation of powers. It wasn't original with them. They drew it from God's Word.

They distilled it from God's Word. And The truth is that jurisdictions are established by God. And those men understood those. They didn't understand them perfectly, but they understood them well in many applications. And we've enjoyed the spiritual fruit and inheritance of that for hundreds of years.

And we're now in a situation where the reformation that we would like to see is just a time of putting the brakes on the squandering of that inheritance and returning to godly roots, to right applications and jurisdictions in the church. And there are three primary jurisdictions I want to talk to you about just briefly, and there are ones that I'm confident that you're familiar with. The family, the church, and the state are three primary jurisdictions that God has covenently, biblically established. And let's just spend a couple of minutes talking about some characteristics that those jurisdictions share because there are some things that we can take that are just about always true of covenantal jurisdictions that the Lord establishes. And one of them is that when God establishes and reveals a jurisdiction, He'll let us know the purpose of it.

He doesn't set out jurisdictions without describing His purposes in doing so. They are created and revealed and established by God. And He does it in His sovereignty. He is absolutely in charge, and He has described His purpose and His will for those jurisdictions. His authority, as we've heard already, is absolute.

His sovereignty in those matters is absolute. And he delegates some authority to various jurisdictions that operate. But in doing that, he gives up none of that authority. And that's where some of the struggles in understanding jurisdictions start to creep in. For some reason, there's a challenge among those who observe God's delegation of authority in understanding that while He has delegated some of it, He's not given it up.

He remains sovereign. In any application in which He has delegated authority and established a jurisdiction, He's not done it in a way where He's abdicated any of His own authority in it. All authority in any jurisdiction we want to talk about is derived from God. And it is only rightly properly exercised when it is exercised in a manner that is derivative of the authority that God's given. Now, we can think about the purposes of jurisdiction.

So we see that when we have a jurisdiction, there will be a purpose to it. What's the purpose of the state? I suggest to you that a large part of the purpose of the state is to bear the sword to protect innocent life, to give us freedom and liberty to live godly lives. That's one of the purposes of the jurisdiction of the civil government that God has established. What's the purpose of the family?

Why did he give Adam a wife? So it was not good that man be alone. For companionship, that he commanded them to take dominion, to be fruitful, and to multiply. That the church seeks to enjoy a harvest of souls that equips the saints to fulfill the Great Commission. We see purposes of these jurisdictions are clearly established.

God's not hidden these or been mysterious in what He's done with us at all. He's been very kind to be clear about His purposes and to be clear in how he has delegated his authority. And he is clear about to whom he delegates authority. Third characteristic that we always see in covenantally established jurisdictions by the Lord is that there will be duties involved. Now, try to keep this together and weave it together in your mind because it really is going to apply to so much of what we've talked about earlier today.

God sets out a purpose. He delegates authority. He says, I've delegated to this particular person to do this certain thing. And then God clearly describes the duties that those folks have in the authority that He has delegated. What are My duties in the jurisdiction that the Lord has placed Me in?

And you know, with those duties and responsibilities and authorities which are delegated comes something that sometimes we don't find quite so pleasant. Sanctions attach with those. And these are simply distilled from Scripture for as God covenantally established these duties that He has set out, He clearly lets us know that there are sanctions for not following His will, for not performing these duties in the jurisdiction that he's established for them to be performed in, for the wrong people trying to take jurisdiction in the wrong places. There are bad consequences that attach whenever we decide to do things, but we don't do them God's way. So he set out his purposes.

He's delegated authority to do things. He's described duties. And we get through these three characteristics of jurisdictions and we start to really struggle, it seems, in my experience. Why is there such a tension and a breakdown just in the simple delegation of authority to do godly purposes according to duties that he set forth, understanding that there are responsibilities and sanctions that attach to those things? Why do we struggle so in trying to apply these things?

Why are some of the issues about which we're so concerned in the church today, why do they have so much to do with how authority is or is not being delegated? How is it that the jurisdictions seem to be colliding and in so much conflict with each other, I suggest to you that some of the problem that we struggle with has to do with our understanding of God's sovereignty. Understanding that God has not delegated this authority and abdicated it and given it up. That these things really do work together in concert with each other and that any authority that is assumed by any source, we have to look to what God has delegated and we have to exercise it as He has delegated it, and we have to do it for the purposes for which He has delegated it, and that the right people need to be doing it, and that if those things don't line up with each other, we're going to have problems. We need to understand that like the centurion, we are men under authority in whatever jurisdiction the Lord may have established for us.

I want us to look just briefly at Psalm 119. If you'll just turn there with me. Just a handful of verses that I want us to think about here as we seek to understand and sort of have these things line up in our minds about how God delegates His authority and what He would have us to do. Look with me at Psalm 119. We're just going to read a couple of verses.

Let's begin in verse 9. It says, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart I have sought Thee. O let me not wander from Thy commandments.

Thy word have I hidden my heart, that I might not sin against thee." Those simple verses that are so familiar tell us an awful lot about how these applications of jurisdictions are supposed to work in our lives. How does a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to the Word of the Lord. The psalmist says, With my whole heart have I sought Thee. O let me not wander from Thy commandments.

Do those two sentences there seem to be in conflict with each other? With my whole heart I've sought you. There's the duty of man. To seek God with his whole heart and immediately on the heels of it is acknowledged the sovereignty of God. Oh God, don't let me wander from Your commandments.

These responsibilities, these delegated responsibilities that are given to us, these duties that we enjoy, the truth is we have no hope of successfully accomplishing those things apart from the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, apart from the power of God. We won't cleanse our way by seeking the Word of the Lord. We won't seek Him with our whole heart. Apart from God's power, this sometimes creates a tension in people's minds and understandings. How is it that man can be responsible if God is completely sovereign?

Have you ever struggled with that application or trying to answer that question with any of your friends? You know, I really believe that a large part of the answer to that question has to do with faith. Here's the truth that the Lord seems to be continuing to teach me more and more as I walk with Him. I don't have to completely understand something in order for it to be true. There are certain things that God says we just have to take on faith.

Man is responsible. God has delegated authority. He's given up none of His own. And we have duties before the Lord to seek Him with our whole heart. It is our duty to seek the Lord with our whole heart.

And you know what? If we don't cry out to God, and if it's not by his power that we don't wander from his commandments, then in fact we will wander from his commandments. Because while we're responsible, apart from the power of God, we are powerless to do the things that we would like to do according to the new heart that He's put within us whenever He's saved us. We just struggle with this tension. Sometimes we struggle with the application of our faith.

We don't have to fully understand the mathematics of the Trinity to know that it is true and to have a duty to believe that what God says about being a triune God is absolutely true. And the fact that human mathematics don't get around it very well doesn't make it any less true. And our duty in this area is to have faith. To believe it because God said it's true. Whether we completely and fully understand it or not, we have a duty to behave faithfully in the jurisdictions that the Lord has given us.

We can't let a lack of faith cause us to become synchronistic, and our thinking is we've been admonished already. We can't seek to pragmatically try to gain favor, to minimally influence the world. We are called to be radically obedient, to seek the Lord with our whole heart. And we have a duty, brothers and sisters, to do this in the area of the jurisdictions that God has established. As we talked about earlier, we have to ask the question, not only what would God have us do, but how would He have it be done?

And who would He have do it? Who has the jurisdiction to speak to it? Now we, I think, understand what this word jurisdiction really means. It connotes a responsibility, an authority delegated by God. The words actually mean the right to speak, the jurisdiction or the right to speak to an issue.

We've got to be careful. As we seek to operate properly in the jurisdictions that the Lord has established, we've got to be careful because we tend to swing too far one way or the other. We tend to get fatalistic and say, well, if God is sovereign, then let's minimize my own duty in this area and I really don't need to apply myself to it. It's all going to work out like it's going to work out because God is sovereign anyway. We become fatalistic and we swing way too far over in this direction or we go the other way.

And we think wrongly about God as wringing His hands helplessly in heaven depending on whether or not we do our duty. Neither is true. God is completely sovereign. Man is absolutely responsible and we need to just understand the truth of that situation because God has said that it's so. A couple of other characteristics that I wanted us to just mention.

Covenantally established jurisdictions, as we've talked about earlier, have oaths and sanctions. God makes certain promises for blessings and benefits that will attach if jurisdictions are properly executed. And we can count on sanctions, on curses attaching when we ignore what God says about the jurisdictions that He has established. Even Christians, lots of Christians don't want to contemplate that they could ever be under judgment or suffer a curse, but we absolutely can. Whenever we disobey God, in fact, we invite a curse from Him in the area of disobedience in which we are engaging.

And we as Christians certainly will experience His judgment. In fact, it starts with us in the church. And so we need to understand that. The other thing about jurisdictions that you'll find biblically always to be true is that they are generational even in how they exist as God has covenantally established them. There's a truth of succession that attaches with regard to the jurisdictions that God has established.

And that's one of the reasons that we're here together, is we're concerned about the generational implications of what we're doing as a part of God's church. So I just wanted to lay out, just sort of by way of introduction, some characteristics that we see from Scripture that seems always to be true about God's jurisdictional arrangement. Now, I said something that may have sounded a little strange a little earlier about Satan being communistic or perhaps he's more Marxist or maybe he's an anarchist. I don't know how to describe just exactly all the negative things that I might have to say about him, But I can tell you something that is for absolute certain that you can bank on. Satan does not like the jurisdictions that God has established.

If you look at how these jurisdictions operate, there was a tension almost invariably. And there are always struggles with one jurisdiction potentially usurping the jurisdiction of another. I gave you just a little simple example with my little son being very willing and eager to take jurisdiction where he doesn't necessarily have it. We see other examples that really illustrate this in a more compelling way. We're going to spend some of the rest of our time talking about some of those.

But let's just think together about Satan's disdain and dislike and battle against God's jurisdictional plan. Why would that be? Why would He care one way or the other about whether things are done by the people God has said should do them according to God's will, the Method being the method that God has established. Duties being clearly set out. Generational blessings flowing from proper jurisdictional applications.

Why would Satan care? Why would he care where authority is delegated by God? Satan, by his nature, has a difficult time in the battle that he's chosen against God. What is God's character? He's whole.

He's perfect. He's omnipotent. He's omnipresent. He's omniscient. He knows all.

Sees all. He is everywhere. Does Satan share that at all? Sometimes I think we give Satan too much credit. I think sometimes we think Satan really is everywhere.

That he has some of the power and authority that is reserved to God and that he does not enjoy. Satan is not omni-anything. He has limited resources, and he's got to focus them in limited places. So why would Satan want all power concentrated, say in central government? Why would he want the state to usurp all the power of the state and of the family?

Doesn't that make his job so much easier? If he can just do mischief in one place because all the power is concentrated there, isn't that an easier battle for a finite being to try to engage in? There are reasons that Satan doesn't want your families to be healthy. There's reasons that he doesn't want churches to operate as they should. There's a reason that he doesn't want the state.

There's a reason that he hates God's approach to jurisdictions. That enemy, that roaring lion, that evil and rebellious fallen angel, Satan, he's not like God in his power. And with his limited resources, he doesn't like decentralized power. He doesn't like checks and balances. So he seeks to kindle that sin nature and he wants to encourage different jurisdictions to usurp the authority that God has described for others.

And he would, I believe, like to see power really improperly concentrated in one place. I think history sort of bears this out, doesn't it? Haven't we seen centralized absolute power just result in horribly abusive authorities and just terrible abuse? And I know a number of historical examples probably come to mind with Hitler and obvious tyrannies. Our enemy though sometimes is more subtle than this.

Sometimes he enjoys seeking to manipulate jurisdictions to be perverted in some ways that may not be so obvious to us. And I wanted us to talk about a handful of those. How many of you here are familiar with the different ways that churches can be structured? I see quite a few hands going up. You understand that churches can even be corporations if they want to.

In fact, in America it's far more common for a church to be a corporation than for a church not to be. I see lots of heads nodding. You all are pretty well familiar with that. At least many of you are. We have seen that jurisdictional abuse result in a real impotence in the church in terms of speaking to the issues of our day.

And it really illustrates how the jurisdictional abuses that we experience can have such dire consequences. Who is the head of the church? Christ, who bought it with His own blood. What does a corporation acknowledge about its head? It acknowledges that the state is sovereign.

It is a creature of the state. And many of you have probably thought about this. Some of you may not ever have. A corporation is a creature of the state. Ephesians 1, 20 and 23 says that Christ is head over all things for the sake of His church.

Ephesians 4, 15, and 16, Christ is described as the organic head of the church. In Romans 5, 12, He's presented as the covenantal head. In Ephesians 5, 23, and 24, he's described as the organizational head. Christ purchased His church with His own blood. He owns it.

And yet, 90 plus percent of churches in America have acknowledged the state as their creator. They've acknowledged the state as the one who is sovereign over them. That's what a corporation does. It acknowledges the sovereignty of the state over it, and it describes itself as a creature of the state. So the great majority of our churches today by self proclamation are creatures of the state.

How did we get there? Some of you may be familiar with the history of it, I'll just give you a couple of minutes. Lyndon Johnson was no friend of the church as he began to rise to political power in our country. And he introduced legislation to try to diminish the power and influence that the church experienced and enjoyed in public life. And he said, let's dangle a carrot out here in front of the church.

Let's give them some benefit that they might enjoy in exchange for that. Let's put chains on them. Let's attach strings. And that carrot that he dangled out there was sort of two-fold. It involved some liability protection.

We're familiar, I think, with the liability protection that corporations enjoy. That's why some businesses choose to incorporate. He also dangled a carrot out there, counting on the ignorance of the church. And this one worked out really well as well. He said, We'll make them legally tax-exempt as we dangle this temptation before the church to submit itself to the jurisdiction of the state.

And what strings will we attach to it? We'll say what they can and can't talk about. We'll describe what political activities they can be involved in. We'll tell pastors what kinds of sermons they can preach and whether they can be politically charged or not. You know, the American Revolution was described in England as a Presbyterian-Parsons rebellion because pastors were so involved in speaking to the issues of the day and the covenantal violations that had occurred between England and America that led to the American War for Independence.

The Presbyterian Parsons Rebellion. Johnson, no friend of the church, wanted to be sure that the influence of the church was diminished however it could be. So he dangled some temptation out there. And churches bought a hook, line, and sinker. The timing was really right.

The Carnegies, the Rockefellers, corporate America had tremendous, tremendous momentum. And being the savvy politician that he was, he decided that this would be the real crafty way to come in and to make the church impotent in terms of its public influence. Lots of Christians don't realize that most of the martyrs in history, most of all the apostles who were martyred, save John, most of the Christian martyrs that we could talk about were martyred because they refused to accept the state's attempt to exercise authority over Christ's Church. Throughout history this has been tremendously important. Yet churches in America just gave it up without a whimper.

Pastors didn't talk about it. No one was up in arms about it. No one got very concerned about it. So what has been the result? For a little bit of liability protection and for tax exemption that put the church in a worse tax situation than it was before it became a corporation, churches sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.

The IRS itself acknowledges, and if some of you have questions about this I can give you some specific sites after the talk, but the IRS itself acknowledges that the church does not need to apply to it to be tax-exempt in its standing. And in fact, if we understand anything about the First Amendment, we know that this has to be true. How more could government exercise control over the exercise of religion than to tax it. That's the ultimate exercise of control. The church doesn't need to submit to the IRS and ask to be tax-exempt.

The church is already non-taxable. That's a better position than being tax-exempt. The church isn't even under the jurisdiction of the IRS, and there's no reason for the church to submit to that jurisdiction unless the church wants to become a corporation. And then all of a sudden, by giving up that freedom and that sovereignty, the church comes under the jurisdiction of the IRS. People worry about donations being deductible.

The IRS regs themselves describe that charitable organizations need to apply to them except for churches. Because the IRS understands that churches are in a better position than tax-exempt organizations, they're non-taxable. And donations to them are tax-deductible, always have been. Our church is a non-501C3, and for five years we've not had a second's problem in operating this way because we're non-taxable. We don't have to go and submit to jurisdiction wrongly for the carrots.

So there's a quick answer to whether or not the carrots are even valuable enough to chase after. But isn't the question answered without even getting to that? Does it matter that the liability protection really is tenuous and that smart lawyers have been piercing corporate veils to get at people for liability for many years and that in fact bar associations have entire week-long classes telling lawyers how to get through those corporate veils and get to the people who think that they enjoy liability protection because they're within them. I mean, that may be true, and I believe it is true, but does it even matter? If God has established a certain jurisdiction, Do we have the right to sell the church that Christ purchased with His own blood for whatever fabulous benefits might be offered?

It's particularly offensive that so many churches have sold them out for just meager benefits and for a tax status that's worse than if they'd done nothing. More than 90% of our churches have gone down this road. And you think about what the influence of the church was 60, 70 years ago, 50, 60, 70 years ago, versus what it is now. Politicians in the 1940s, 1950s, they were very concerned about the moral sensibilities of those in the church. Are they today?

Pastors whose names you would recognize lament being gagged in terms of talking about the issues of the day in their churches because of their 501c3 status, a status that they think they have to protect at all costs. It's a simple illustration of how this perversion of jurisdiction can prove so terribly harmful. The church has ceased to function as Luther said that it should. He has maybe the best quote I know of about this. Luther said, it's the job of the church to lick the fur of the state, not the feet.

Think about that. Really profound when you think about what a cat does and licking the fur. And yet, the influence of the church. What is it in public life? What do pastors talk about and preach about?

Why have churches incorporated? Because they bought a lie. Because they sold out for a mess of pottage. And what kind of an issue is it? People think, well, it's legal, it's this, it's that.

It's a jurisdictional issue. It's a jurisdictional issue. The Lord set certain jurisdictions for the state, certain jurisdictions for the church, certain jurisdictions for the family. And it really matters to him according to his economy, not just what is done, but who does it and how it's done. Now, that one may not hit quite so close to home as some other applications that we might talk about where jurisdictions get perverted.

What about the issue that really burns with many of us here today? What about this family integrated church movement and these things that we've been talking about today? What about these 14 points that Scott talked to us about today that describe a family integrated and biblical church? Does this jurisdictional question have any impact on that? It obviously has all the impact on it, doesn't it?

If the Lord has said that there are certain jurisdictions that are to be enjoyed, if I dare say that word, Sometimes we don't enjoy having a jurisdiction, do we? Because along with authority comes what? Responsibility. If the father enjoys a certain jurisdiction within his family, How dare he give that up? How dare he hand it over?

How dare he abdicate what it is that the Lord has said that he is to do just because somebody else will take the job off his hands. This is just a real practical application, but what have you seen about your children? What can you say about their hearts? Is there anyone who can connect with your children like you can? My grandmother raised foster children while my father and his sister were growing up in their home.

And at any time in that home, there would be 25 plus children sitting around her dinner table. At her funeral, 700 plus children who she had helped to rear in her home came and attended and just desired to honor her. She mothered and my grandfather helped to be a father to so many fatherless children as my dad was growing up. And he just tells stories I could go on about his growing up years. But not all the children who were present in their homes were fatherless.

There were some children even back then who had been taken out of their homes. There were some children who had suffered horrific abuse at the hands of a really, really wicked father. You know what my grandmother always said about those children? You know what my dad confirms to this day? Every one of those children defended mom and dad and wanted to go home.

No matter what they'd done to them, no matter how awful the situation had been, and remember, this is back in the 1950s, the state was not near so quick to interfere in the jurisdiction of a family as it is today. These were awful situations that many of these children had experienced to be taken from their families. And yet these children defended mom and dad and wanted to go home. Why? Because God has put a connection with a parent and a child that is powerful like nothing else we ever see.

Overstatement. There are other amazing examples of God's power, but the power of the connection between a parent and a child is something that we cannot lose sight of. And so God has said in my jurisdictional plan, the duties and responsibilities for the will that I've expressed, for the purposes that I've laid out, just covenantally with those points that we talk about that characterize covenantally established jurisdictions before God, these things are to occur in the family. It is the job of a family to train up a child in the way He should go. He hasn't laid that primarily in the hands of the church.

My friend Jeff Botkin, who many of you may know, has a very interesting standard for child training and child rearing within his family. He wants to train up each of his children to have character that would qualify them for eldership. Now, his sons would be the only ones that he would suggest should be serving as elders. But that's the standard that he strives for. He wants to see the character in those children that would result in them sometime down the road being qualified to lead in the church.

That standard challenges me. That's a standard that's a whole lot more than what many of us are often satisfied to embrace in our own families. What an amazing standard that is. Children who understand that the Word and commandments of the Lord are the foundation of all life and godliness. Children who are trained up in the way they should go.

Remember, that's not the way that they would go. That's not the way that children with hearts full of foolishness would go. Instead, it's the way that they should go. I love what J. C.

Ryle has said about the meaning and application of Ephesians 6.4 that talks about child training in Proverbs 22.6 which specifically tells us to train up a child in the way that he should go. This dear brother says, Believe me, the subject is one that should come home to every conscience and make everyone ask himself the question, Am I in this matter doing what I can? It is a subject that concerns almost all. There is hardly a household that it does not touch. Parents, nurses, teachers, Godfathers, Godmothers, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, all have an interest in it.

Few can be found, I think, who might not influence some parent in the management of his family, or affect the training of some child by suggestion or advice. All of us, I suspect, can do something here, either directly or indirectly, and I wish to stir up all to bear this in remembrance. It is a subject, too, on which all concerned are in great danger of coming short of their duty. This is preeminently a point in which men can see the faults of their neighbors more clearly than their own. They will often bring up their children in the very path which they have denounced to their friends as unsafe." The quote goes on.

I just suggest to you that if we are to discern the character that exists in our children, we need to be doing it so personally. We need to understand the sin nature that we battle there in the rearing of our children, in training them up in the way that they should go. As we've described, foolishness, Solomon says, is bound up in the heart of a child. A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. We must not abandon our children to the guidance of their own wills.

That is so much the fruit of what we see being exercised in the modern church so often today, is children abandoned to the guidance of their own will and put with, instead of their family, lots of others who fit the description of those having foolishness bound up in their hearts. I knew that I had far more material than I would be able to get to in this talk today, and my time is drawing to a close. Understand that so many of these applications that we, where we see problems existing, are applications where jurisdictions haven't been properly respected. And remember that point that we started off with about abdication of responsibility and how nature responds to a vacuum. If fathers, we don't lead, somebody else will.

There's a reason that mothers were so critical to the homeschool movement for so many years. It was because we as fathers weren't doing our jobs in the 80s. And so it was described rightly as a mother-led movement because men had left a vacuum there and something had to fill it, and so the ladies led. And I'm so grateful to see so many of you men here present today hungry to understand how the church is to interact and be in unity with your family in properly applying these jurisdictions. I would love to have more time to talk about the jurisdictional implications of child training together today.

We're just about out of time and I want to leave a few minutes for questions because I know that this is a talk that sometimes raises some questions, particularly the legal issues and concerns that the church may have. So let's leave just a few minutes here for further questions and we'll just ask for the brother with the microphone. If any of you have questions, we'll open up the floor for that here for the few minutes that we have left. I had a question for you. Yes, sir.

You mentioned that 501c was not necessary and that incorporation was, I guess, misunderstood to some extent about the protections liability, things of that nature. What are you saying that you're recommending a church use as either a vehicle or something to afford its jurisdictions in protections, liability, and all that? Tim DeYoung Right. This is not the kind of advice that you'll normally get from an attorney. But I would suggest that the church not try to do anything to avoid liability.

We're Christians. If we're negligent and something happens in the church for which we ought to be liable, then we don't need to worry about trying to build veils of protection around ourselves. We need to be prepared to stand for any liability that may rightly be laid at our door. Now, I realize there are lots of frivolous things and lots of ways that people come after churches and people in churches, and I suspect that's exactly what you're concerned about. I see nodding, affirmation to that right now.

For those frivolous things, we need to trust the Lord that the truth will be borne out. My counsel is that churches ought not to incorporate. And It's not based on legal advice so much as it is biblical understanding. Do you have some sort of insurance? I witnessed an event where a boy, there was a situation where a boy was messing around with his friends or whatever.

Some accident took place. The boy went down. He had to get an ambulance, etc. I think that family actually did take some litigation that was very unwarranted. The church was covered under its liability, but is there some other vehicle that you would recommend, or are you saying just nothing at all?

No, there are lots of issues about insurance. People have different views on it. I personally, My understanding is we have a duty to make right things, damages and harm that occur because of things that we may have done wrong. So I don't have a problem with insurance just on its face. Now I know there are insurance companies that support things that we don't like and there are lots of things that we have to factor into the equation.

But our church has insurance. I think that's a responsible way for us to operate if we can have that in a way where we have a clear conscience about having it before the Lord and again we don't, we can't begin to go into all the issues that may surround that. But I don't personally think that it's a sign of a lack of faith or anything along those lines for us to have insurance. I think it's prudence. I think health insurance and some things like that are things that those of us who are charged to provide for our families, we need to be thinking about those kinds of things.

So the incorporation and the legal... You don't have to be incorporated to have that... Understood. But, you know, as hostilities continue to grow with pastors in various groups like ACLU and various other things, they go after people and try to exhaust their funds and things. And there's very insidious types of tactics that they use and these corporations were thought to be a way of avoiding some of these hostile attacks.

I don't think the corporate structure is going to be tremendously helpful in trying to avoid those kinds of attacks either. I think they're going to come either way. And so what the really good lawyers can frequently get through those things. And there are whole, there really are entire seminars about how to, it's called piercing the corporate veil, how to get through that liability protection that is supposed to be such an attractive part to having that corporate entity. I'm not saying there's no liability protection that's afforded by incorporating.

There is. There's some liability protection and it is helpful. What I'm saying is it's not the absolute bulletproof shield that so many people believe that it is. There really are very effective ways of getting through there and that frankly the benefit that's perceived is really not as great as most folks believe that it is. But the bigger point that I would make is that If Scripture tells us that the church is bought with the blood of Christ and it's His, that really settles the issue.

We don't have the option to sell our birthright for a mess of potage, even if the liability protection was absolutely foolproof. Even if nothing could ever go wrong. We still don't have the option to be disobedient in terms of handing the jurisdiction of the church over to the state. Other brothers with a question? Question.

You define the line of jurisdiction as it relates to Christian education between the pulpit ministry or the elders ministry versus the fathers. There is a line that seems difficult to draw. And I don't think it's an absolute line. I think that our pastors do teach our children. I think that in much of what's been said today, other men besides fathers have taught the children who are here, but we've done it in an environment where the families are together, where the fathers are aware of what's being taught, where the children are not separated and put aside to themselves, and where fathers can still do their jobs in overseeing the training of their children.

One of the criticisms that comes is, you're saying no one but a father can ever teach his children. Not at all. Just that a father can't abdicate that whole responsibility. That when someone else does take on parts of it, that He needs to supervise it. He needs to be aware.

He needs to often be present. Now there are some really trusted folks who might teach my children outside of my presence. That is my decision as their father. But we don't draw a bright line and say the church never teaches children. It does it in the way that Scripture describes, not by segregating them, not by buying into evolutionary models that say we have to have all the six year olds here and the seven year olds there and the eight year olds there.

We just do it in the way that Scripture describes discipleship in the church occurring. So it happens in our church every Sunday. Scott Brown has just described preaching to 8- and 10-year-olds so many Sundays. He's teaching those children, but he's just doing it with their fathers present and with their understanding and with them having the ability to explain things and answer questions and correct if things are said that are incorrect or wrong. So there's a harmony there.

Where there's not harmony is where fathers just say I'm going to check out and I want the youth pastor to just take care of it or some other person in the church to take over my jurisdiction, my duty to teach and disciple my children. Yes, brother? You said that Christians can come under curses for disobedience. How would you square that in light of Hebrews 13, which speaks obviously about Christians if they're disobedient, being chastened. And the idea of chastening is obviously not punishment.

It's corrective. Cursing seems to be, in light of Deuteronomy 28, it seems to be an old covenantal punishment. Well, I wouldn't distinguish. One of the reasons that I would suggest that Christians may sometimes invite a curse or chastening. I'm using those words very similarly.

I don't, I think that's exactly what we experience is the chastening of the Lord whenever we are disobedient or get outside of jurisdictions where we ought to be. But I think that as God dealt with His people Israel and as you just described in Deuteronomy there that our disobedience invites chastening or invites a curse, as it's described there, and that our obedience invites blessing. So I'm using chastening and We could probably be more precise linguistically about what is the exact definition of being cursed. I'm not suggesting that it would never suggest that it affects our salvation any more than your chastening of your own children affects their airship in your family. We remain sons and daughters, but we can be under-chasing, clearly.

Does that help? Thank you, brother. Are there other questions? We have one back here. What do you see as being any big challenges to the jurisdiction of church or family on the near horizon?

One that is particularly troubling right now is gender roles. Standing and saying there are certain things jurisdictionally that men are described as doing in the church and there are other things that are described jurisdictionally as things that are more the roles of women in the church. We see some of those same struggles within the family. In fact, we see lots of breakdown in the family. One of the other really important jurisdictional concerns that I have right now is one that is probably on many of your minds, just in terms of hate crime legislation and the state coming in and saying the church can't speak these truths to the families that are a part of the church because we are going to define biblical truth as some kind of a hate crime.

I think we could probably describe a number of potential challenges that we may see on the horizon. Those are two that I think are pretty big ones for the time in which we live. Thanks for your question. That's a good one. Yes, sir.

Going back to incorporating church status, how would you deal with when you go to open a bank account and the bank institution does not recognize the churches not being incorporated and they require an ID number? That's a really good practical question. Since the Patriot Act and the things that have followed on the heels of that, banks won't set up bank accounts for churches without an employer identification number. An EIN, I believe, is really distinguishable from incorporating and asking to be tax-exempt and clearly stating that you're under the authority and jurisdiction of the IRS and that you want to be a tax-exempt organization under their authority. All you have to do to apply for that bank account is to get an employer identification number.

I think that churches who choose to do that and who do not incorporate have a really strong argument that they have not submitted themselves to the jurisdiction of the IRS. I hope that makes sense. If you self-consciously decide and document that your Church will not be a 501c3 organization because you understand that you're non-taxable and that you don't have the right to submit your jurisdiction to the state in an inappropriate way. I don't believe that applying for an employer identification number, which essentially allows the IRS to number your church, which I don't like. I wish we didn't have to do that either.

But I think that's really distinguishable from the incorporation status where we've specifically submitted the jurisdiction and asked for permission to do certain things and acknowledged that the church is indeed a creature of the state. I think there is a big difference in that in agreeing to be numbered, which is what having an EIN does. But of course the EIN opens the door for banking relationships to be able to do some things that the church would like to be able to do. Some churches solve that by having one individual set up an account and handle things for the church through that account. There are obviously some complications that flow from that.

The accounting and bookkeeping and things for that individual needs to really be done carefully and cleanly to avoid potential problems. But there are a couple of ways to deal with that, but the EIN I don't see as being nearly as problematic as the incorporation issue. So It doesn't fix the problem of being numbered, but that's my perspective on it. I'm not aware of any instances where the IRS has been able to successfully assert jurisdiction over a church just because they had an employer identification number. I think especially a church that self-consciously chose not to incorporate would have an even stronger argument on that front.

All right, well, we've run past time. We will. Scott, do we have time for one more real quick question. Would that come from the IRS? Yes, it's just a simple form that you fill out and a number that you get from the IRS.

That's how that works. All right, brother. We'll have some time for some more questions later. Thank you, brothers and sisters. 1