How does one think Christianly about forced vaccinations or any mandate that encroaches on your personal rights of a decision on what you put in or on your body? In this message, I will help you think through the biblical principles regarding mandates and governmental intrusion on the matter of forced vaccinations.
Forge Ministries is pleased to welcome Scott Brown. Well, OK, now I want to turn to my subject, thinking Christianly about forced vaccinations. And my intention really is to proclaim the government of God and God alone over every part of your life and in order to frame the discussion to point it in the direction that I really believe it ought to be directed I just want to read you portions of three texts and the first is Isaiah 43 verses 1 & 2 but now thus says the Lord who created you Oh Jacob and he who formed you Oh Israel fear not for I have redeemed you I have called you by your name. You are mine. You are mine.
The second text calls us to ask, do you love the Lord your God with all your heart? Matthew 22, 36, someone came to the Lord Jesus and said, teacher which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind and then the third text is in Exodus 20 verse 3 and the question is do you embrace God's claim on your whole life because the first commandment of the Ten Commandments is in Exodus 20 verse 3 you shall have no other gods before me and the whole proposition is that you were created by God You have been made in his image and this gives God's claim on your life. Now this this command does not teach that God is your first priority and your family is your second priority and your work is your third priority. This proclaims that there is only one priority and it is to love God with everything that you have and as our brother quoted earlier to live as Christ and that's really kind of a summary of what I want to say here on the matter of jurisdictions and forced vaccinations.
Now there are five headings under which I've organized my thoughts. And the first is thinking Christianly about jurisdictions. The second is the sixth commandment, God's command to take care of your body. Third, the ninth commandment participating in lies. The fourth command, the fourth is resistance and the final area is the truth.
The truth about you and me and our lives. So with that I'd like to pray. Father pray that you would illuminate our minds with your word we are so thankful scripture is sufficient for every part of life we're so thankful that you created us and now we know Lord it's to us that our whole lives would be laid before you in service. Amen. So thinking Christianly, how does how does one think Christianly about forced vaccinations or any any mandate that encroaches upon your personal rights of decision for what you put in your body and we live in a moment where we're experiencing governmental and institutional and employer tyranny like we've never seen before and I want to be very clear here I'm not going to give any kind of medical analysis of this subject.
I have grave concerns about the particular injections being forced upon us, but I'm not here as a doctor. I'm not a doctor. I'm not here to tell you about vaccines. I'm not arguing about whether or not you should personally take a vaccine. Do your own research about that vaccine.
Come to your own conclusions. God has appointed you as the governor of your body. So that's the perspective I'll be coming from. But what I would like to do is help us think through biblical principles regarding mandates for the care of the body and particularly the this matter of the intrusion of a forced vaccination and what should our response be. So first of all, all authorities are designed by God and God has instituted spheres of authority on the earth.
He set positive duties to those authorities. He has set limitations upon each of these authorities and there are many places that you can go to examine this way that God has created the world. You could go to Psalm two, verse one, Isaiah nine, verses six and seven, Matthew 28, 18, Romans 13, one and two, Colossians one, 15 through 20, First Peter two, 18, Ephesians six, five through eight. And I'm going to give you some more in this message. But God has created various jurisdictions.
I think you can identify at least five jurisdictions that God has ordained. The family, first, second, the church, third, the civil government, fourth, the individual, and finally the employer. And each of these has its own responsibilities and sphere of authority. And it's very important that we learn how to think Christianly about authorities because God has given all of us authorities over our lives. You know one of the most difficult things is that we we're being taught to think like Christ.
All our lives are being thought to think Christianly and whenever a challenge comes whenever an unusual thing hits the fan We have to bring it before the word of God. And so I pray that that's what we're doing here. Well, this the jurisdiction of the family is charged to multiply and raise children and bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord and prepare generations to see the beauty of the Lord and then the church is charged with the gospel to nourish the Saints and to discipline the ungodly and then the civil government is charged to bear the sword and punish evildoers and to do good the individual is charged to maintain one's own body and mind under the authority of God and the employer is charged to transact business and employ people according to the ethical commands of God to do the will of God for the taking of dominion. Now if we understand this biblical principle for a premise then we can see that how forced vaccinations fit into our thinking we can see that there it's not a small issue at all. In the case of the civil government, one jurisdiction, the government is forcing a needle on the two other jurisdictions, the individual and the family, through government employees and military.
But there's a larger force at work, and that is the employer. In the case of the employer, one jurisdiction is forcing a needle on two other jurisdictions, the family and the individual through their induction and retention policies. It's the great corporations of the world that are primarily driving this upon the greatest part of the population the government is doing and on their part of the population of the military and their own employees and corporations have joined in to do the same. And what I'm here to say is that forcing a vaccine on an individual overthrows the legitimacy of the jurisdictional boundaries that God our Creator has established. As Christians we are subjects of the King of Kings and we are required by God to uphold the jurisdictional authorities that he has established in the way he has both defined them in terms of their duties and their limitations.
We are required to uphold the order that God has placed in the world. This is what Christians do. They uphold biblical order. Bringing biblical order to your family, bringing biblical order to your church, bringing biblical order to your mind and your body, bringing biblical order to your business is the business of Christianity and this is God's authority over these things. So the issue is jurisdictional and the question is has the government or the employer the right to require vaccinations is this what Romans 13 teaches and these questions really strike at the at the heart of the authority of God and they strike at the heart of human freedom.
They actually strike at the heart of God's superior ways that he has established to govern the world. So who has the right to demand vaccinations? And the answer is really very simple. Man under God has the right and the solemn duty to decide for himself whether he will choose to be vaccinated. And God, by his own authority, has given individuals and families jurisdictional freedom over their own health and has given to fathers and mothers authority over their families for the care of their children.
These are delegated authorities and it's really very simple. Neither your body nor the bodies of your children belong to Caesar. They belong to God and they have been given to you to manage carefully under the under the will of God. Your body doesn't even belong to you. It belongs to God and God has given you the authority, the personal responsibility to care for the health of your own body.
I want to give you six biblical texts that prove what I've just said to help us think biblically about this matter of jurisdictional overreach and the healthcare of the bodies of your wives and your children. First, governing your body is clearly commanded in 1 Corinthians 6, 19 through 20. Governing your body is clearly commanded in 1 Corinthians 6, 19 through 20. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? Who is in you?
Whom you have from God? And you are not your own. You were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are gods. Your body is not your own.
You were bought with a price. You're not free to do whatever you want to do with your body. You are free, but you're not free to violate the will of God for your body. And don't forget that this includes the way that you cultivate your mind. This includes what entertains you.
It includes what music you listen to. It includes what ideas you embrace. And if you're against the harm of a vaccine, I want to just ask what are you doing about the harm of the other ungodly voices and governments in your life. You may be so strongly against vaccines but you're not against silliness and you're not against the things that this culture would bring into your brain and therefore saturate your life with. Second, the Christian has a duty before God to render his body as a living sacrifice before God, Romans 12, 1, and 2.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And so what we learn here is what you do with your body is an act of worship. And if what we're doing to our bodies cannot be categorized as an act of worship, then we shouldn't be doing it. If you're going to take a vaccine, you ought to take it as some kind of act of faithfulness to God. No matter what we do with our bodies, we must do what we do as acts of worship with our bodies in love and obedience to God.
Third, Pleasing God must be considered even in the way of what we ingest into our bodies. 1 Corinthians 10 31. Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. And then fourth. The health and well-being of our bodies is important to God.
In third, John. Versus Chapter one, verse two. The apostle prays for the physical health of his disciples. Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers. We are made up of body and soul and we have been designed by God, given authority to take good care of not just our souls but also our bodies.
This is a Christian principle. Fifth, there's an example of tyranny over the body which arises out of the experience of Daniel under the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar commanded Daniel to eat the king's food. Daniel determined in his heart that he would not do it And so he made a righteous appeal to King Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel 1.8, but Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank.
Therefore, he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. Daniel recognized that God had given him personal and exclusive jurisdiction over what he ate. And. He was not his own, and he refused to submit to the king's unjust command and he appealed to one of the greatest tyrants of all in all of history, Nebuchadnezzar, to that effect. And the example of Daniel in Babylon relates directly to ingesting substances into the body and who has authority over the body you know throughout history we find examples of governments asserting their tyranny over the body.
For many years the Chinese government has demanded a one child rule And they've just recently relaxed it to three children, which is no less tyranny than one child. The Bible says, be fruitful and multiply. That's a command of God. So, we have an example of this. Number six, God has given man responsibility to take care of his own body.
1 Thessalonians 4, 4. That each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor. Your vessel is your body and God has given to his children understanding for how to maintain their bodies. Your soul is not the only thing that God is concerned about. He is also concerned about your body and when a government demands that every person be injected by a vaccine.
That government is usurping the personal jurisdictional freedom over the care of your body. And God has granted power to the jurisdictions that he has ordained. You might ask why would God do that? Why did not God give the civil government authority to force us to eat or inject into our own bodies? And Perhaps one reason is that each person's body is different.
Each person's body reacts differently to various intrusions into their system. So when it comes to the physical health and makeup of our bodies, we're not created equal. The idea of collectivist health care, first of all, it really flies in the face of the jurisdictional matter, but it really flies in the face of medical wisdom. What's collectivism? Collectivism is the principle that a group takes priority over the individual, and you must do the same thing in the health care of your body as the group.
That's what collectivism is. The collectivist demands the same treatment for everybody but the medical community has rejected this. The medical community has always acknowledged that each person needs individualized treatment. You understand this when you go to a doctor for treatment and that doctor desires to prescribe a particular medicine, what is the question that they always ask you? Are you allergic to this?
They ask you that question and the reason they ask you that question is that all bodies are not created equal. You have personal decisions to make about your body. People have different conditions, They have various allergic reactions. I once had an intern many years ago who had a peanut allergy. And if he got near peanuts, if he ate peanuts, he really risked his body going into shock.
Well the rest of us didn't have bodies like that. For us to have a collectivist understanding of peanuts would have been very unloving. We didn't force anyone all of us to eat peanuts because people have different constitutions. Here's the reality. A one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to health care or dietary needs is really contrary to medical wisdom.
Individualized diagnosis and guided individualized therapy is the standard medical procedure and it ought to be and it ought to be preserved and the matter of the collectivist health care where every person is required to have the same treatment it contradicts medical wisdom and really the accepted practices of the health care industry. It's unsound and it should be rejected, but we need to recognize that there's a massive philosophical system behind the idea of collectivist health care. I'll say that again. There's a massive philosophical religious system that's behind the whole idea of collectivist health care. You might try this at home like I did.
If you go to a synonym finder for collectivism, what popped up on mine when I typed in collectivism looking for synonyms in the thesaurus the words that came up were Leninism Marxism Bolshevism Maoism collective ownership state ownership That's what collectivism is. So we all react to different foods, we all react to different injections, and to force the same on every person is not loving. If you say that everyone must get the same vaccine to love your neighbor, you've really missed the point about what loving your neighbor really means. It would be very unloving to my neighbor to force penicillin on him if his body goes into shock Because that happens to many people So this is why good doctors they consider allergies personal health history genetics lifestyle diseases and conditions They consider the differences between males and females and compatibilities of medications. I know an anesthesiologist.
He is telling me that when a woman gets on the anesthetist table she gets a different dose than a man. Her body is different, we're different, and collectivist health care is wrong. The one-size-fits-all medical treatment does not does not comport with either medical or biblical wisdom and someone might object with Matthew 22 18 which commands us to render under Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are gods well your body doesn't belong to Caesar your children don't belong to Caesar they belong to God so this is why I'm wholeheartedly against forced medical treatments whatever they might be and we are now living in a culture where we are being coerced we are being intimidated, we're being pressured, we're being shamed, we're being threatened, we're being compelled, and we're really, and we're being extorted to take a vaccine. In my own state of North Carolina, the state offered a million dollar lottery for the winner to take a vaccine. They were, they're offering $100 and a day off of work to come and get a vaccine.
Krispy Kreme donuts down the street for me is offering two donuts. Well that might be a good reason, but you know. But you're free to consider the pros and cons and make an informed decision about whether you choose to get vaccinated. But the civil government does not possess a jurisdiction to make that decision for you. It's tyranny.
I expect this is just the beginning of other tyrannies. I'm not sure the focus for us should be the vaccine. It ought to be the jurisdictional matter. I'm not here to argue about vaccines, but I am here to argue about the preservation of biblical jurisdictions. And frankly, you know, I've dedicated the first two and a half the last two and a half decades of my life to try to proclaim the the power and the beauty and the glory of God's jurisdictional order in the world through the church and the family particularly.
And it's a very important issue. So every person must consider their own personal circumstances. Everybody has customized considerations. My situation will be different than yours. You may make a different decision than I will based on your skills, based on your family, based on your financial needs, based on other matters too numerous to mention.
And I'm not telling you that it's sinful to get a vaccine. What I'm saying is that the decision is yours and it is yours alone and that you ought to educate yourself as best you can before you do so and carefully consider the matter before you proceed. This is God's glory in your life. You have been given this responsibility before God. So the first point is consider the jurisdictional structure of the world that God has ordained.
The second is consider God's command to take good care of your body. Here we enter into the sixth commandment, but The sixth commandment implies that we take good care of our bodies. And as we consider these force medical treatments, we need to remember what it means to obey direct commands of God. And specifically, we should consider the sixth commandment when discussing the topic of forced vaccinations because this commandment requires us to take full responsibility for the well-being of our bodies and the sixth commandment states this, thou shalt not murder, Exodus 20, 13. The sixth commandment is broad.
It encompasses more than just the killing of someone's, someone else's body. It regulates our murderous deeds and also our unkind words, our harsh actions, our hatred toward our brother as the Lord Jesus Christ explained this law in Matthew chapter 5. If you hate your brother it's it's of the same family as a murder. God's commandments they're not wooden they're spiritual they're designed to go to the innermost being of your of your whole life and we should always remember that there are there are various applications every one of the Ten Commandments that's what the Lord Jesus Christ did as he explained the Ten Commandments Moses did the same thing in Deuteronomy as he explained that each of the commandments in terms of various case laws all tied back to the Ten Commandments. Now the framers of the Westminster larger catechism the Puritans they believe that whenever there is a negative command, there is a corresponding positive command and vice versa.
In other words, if we are commanded do not lie, we are correspondingly required to tell the truth. And so that's why those who wrote the Westminster Larger Catechism explained both the duties of the commandment and also the sins of violating that commandment. They state them both positively and negatively. So they ask what is required of the commandment and then what is prohibited by the commandment. So I would just like to read to you this proposition.
Question 68 in the larger catechism, what is required of the sixth commandment? The sixth commandment requires all lawful endeavors to preserve our own life and the life of others. And the authors expand on the duties of the commandment and they say it like this, the duties required in the sixth commandment are All careful studies and lawful endeavors to preserve the life of ourselves and others. And then they further note that we should abstain from, quote, practices which tend to the unjust, taking away the life of any, and we must maintain, quote, a sober use of meat, drink, physical sleep, and also that we ought to consider our neighbor, comforting and suckering the distressed and protecting and defending the innocent. So the catechism leads us to meditate a little bit more deeply, below the surface of the command for its implications.
And the Puritans believe that when it came to a matter of your body, that you should engage in, quote, all careful studies. In other words, you ought to look at the matter deeply. Whatever you put into your body, they spoke of meat and drink. Whatever you put in your body, engage in careful studies. That's what Christians do.
They don't just do what the Gentiles do. They do careful studies according to the Word of God and according to other things that are important to consider. So when it comes to vaccines we ought to know what we're putting into our bodies but only after careful study. I was reading with a group of young men training for the ministry a while back. We were reading Dr.
Albert Martin's book, The Man of God, And in that book he has a whole section about a minister's duty to take good care of his body and he says this, the disciplines essential to the maintenance of good emotional and physical health requires that I discipline my body to keep it under control." 1st Corinthians 9 27. And he bases his proposition that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. He he says that your body is the is the only instrument God has given you to love the world and to proclaim the gospel and to do your duty. He's given you this in your body. Your body matters how you take care of your body matters.
And so he concludes that to allow the body to quote accumulate excessive weight compromises glorifying God in your body. He says you were bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body and Albert Martin he says you he says I am a blood-bought property and he maintains in this section speaking to ministers that they ought not to be ignorant of the impact of various foods. I think that's a proper application of this commandment. Taking care of your body is an act of love toward God and refusing to harm your body is also an act of love toward God. So our bodies are a divine gift to be instruments not under the government of man but under the government of God.
So before accepting an injection we must consider the vaccines potential harm through careful studies and to ask will this vaccine preserve and promote the health of my body this is thinking Christianly about your body and it is it's legitimate to question anything that goes into your body and the health implications. So should a Christian knowingly put something into their body, eat something, inject something that might harm their body? Absolutely not. The sixth commandment requires us to take good care of our bodies and we're not free to ingest anything, inject anything we want. Bring it before God.
God said you are mine. Your body is mine. The second heading after trying to declare this principle that you are not your own, you're a bot with a price, that God has given you jurisdiction over your body exclusively. Secondly, I think that we have been challenged to consider whether we are participating in lies about COVID. Many people are asking, maybe you've been asking this question, is our government lying to us about COVID-19?
Are they lying to us about these medical treatments? Now what I'm going to say under this heading won't be very comfortable for those who believe that their government is telling them the truth. Others may be skeptical. People have different perspectives on what's happening around us and if you believe that the government's and the employers have embraced lies then the ninth commandment is telling you that you have particular responsibilities before God. The ninth commandment declares thou shalt not bear false witness.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor. Exodus 2016 Proverbs 12 22 Makes it clear quote that lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who deal truth truthfully are his delight. In Ephesians 4 25 the Apostle tells that church in Ephesus Therefore putting away lying let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another. The Apostle Peter instructing us in 1 Peter 3 10 for he who would love life and see good days let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit so again I want to turn to the Westminster larger catechism questions 144 and 145 What are the duties required in the ninth commandment? The duties required in the ninth commandment are the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man, appearing and standing for the truth in matters of judgment and justice and in all other things whatsoever, a charitable esteem of our neighbors.
Question 145, what are the sins forbidden in the ninth commandment? The sins forbidden in the ninth commandment are all prejudicing the truth, giving false evidence, suborning, hiring or employing false witnesses, wittingly appearing and pleading for an evil cause, out facing and overbearing the truth, passing unjust sentence, calling evil good and good evil, concealing the truth, undo silence in a just cause, and holding our peace when iniquity calls for either a reproof from ourselves or a complaint to others. It includes hiding, excusing, or extenuating of these sins and I have extracted these phrases from this catechism to focus on the matter at hand. But The catechism is making a claim that there are many ways to bear false witness by participating in a lie. That's what they're saying.
And the authors are pointing out that it's possible to participate in lies without telling boldface lies. We might endorse a lie by our behavior. And I'm not suggesting necessarily that putting on a mask and getting vaccinated can always be judged as lying. I do think that there are occasions where someone might wear a mask for a greater good. If your wife is in the hospital and having a baby and the hospital wants you to put on a hazmat suit and six masks, you ought to put on six masks and the hazmat suit to go take care of your wife.
And I put on a mask to get on an airplane. In fact, before I could even hit the button that says buy, I had to make a covenant with the airline that I would put on a mask. I had to promise that I would do that, and I did that in order to come to this conference. It may be a it may be an expression of compliance or it may be just an expression of reluctant capitulation for a greater good. That's a difficult issue.
You might help one another and myself think through this. It's a very difficult matter. But I think we should ask are we running with liars? You know whenever you're doing something that you see out in the world you should always ask a really important question. Who am I running with?
Who am I running with? Do you trust the people who are advocating for vaccinations? Do you trust Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who just bought a vaccine or a COVID testing company? Do you trust Dr. Fauci?
Do you trust our president, Joe Biden? Do you trust the people who are running our public schools trying to tell children that they can choose whatever gender they want? Do you trust these people? Do you trust the new transgender quote Rachel Levine, whom Joe Biden appointed as our nation's assistant health secretary? We all have to choose who we're going to run with.
We're very vulnerable to those we listen to and particularly those we run with. So are they telling the truth? It's very important that you've dissected that question. Are they upholding the truth? And the question is are we by our behavior countenancing contradictory information that is broadcast through the agencies, the government agencies, and the employers.
Now the litany of propositions that have been given to us about COVID-19 are hilarious if they weren't just tragic. Of all the things we've been told, we had two weeks to flatten the curve. And then we were told that we had to wear a mask. That was just astonishing. And then we were told two masks were necessary and then we were told that when the vaccine came the society would be free and everybody could go back hugging again and then we noticed that tremendous numbers of the vaccinated were getting sick and then we were told that masks were necessary even if you got an injection and then we were told that the death rates would skyrocket But they didn't.
I told a group of men yesterday a story, Kevin and Swanson and I were to Father Son retreat last week and we were talking about the matter of jurisdictions and then Kevin threw it open for discussion. And a man in the back stood up and he said that people with COVID were walking lethal weapons and then another guy across the room stood up who owned three funeral homes He said that they were told that they would be flooded with dead bodies. They never happened. He said every funeral director in the country knows that the death rates were lower in 2020 than the previous years. You have to ask who's lying, you have to ask who are you going to listen to.
So after a year and a half of observing we have more information about what's going on. You know my view is it's probably wiser to trust the things that you see with your eyes. What the tyrants always want to do is they want to terrify you into some kind of compliance by things that you don't see. You know, one of the founders of Greenpeace who left Greenpeace in a huff after 15 years, he said what the tyrants do is they scare you by things you can't see, like CO2, which you can't see, which comprises less than 1% of the Earth's atmosphere. They scare you with what's happening on the Barrier Reefs, which you can't see.
They scare you with what's happening with the polar bears, which you can't see. And now, I think they're doing the same thing and trying to terrify people in order to bring about a greater result. So is wearing a mask bearing false witness? It could be it could be complying under protest. That's a very difficult matter But I'm very confident that loving your neighbor means that you don't endorse lies.
Loving your neighbor means that you don't let tyranny advance. You raise your voice in the jurisdiction that God has given you. It's not loving to spread fear. It's not loving to promote government overreach. You know on on the day that Alexander Solzhenitsyn was arrested for the very last time after spending years in the Soviet gulags being abused there.
In 1974 he was arrested for the very last time and on that same day he released a very famous essay that was caught all over the world and he ended up giving a commencement speech at Harvard saying many of the same things. The essay was called live not by lies and he urges the Russian people to renounce the lies that they've been told all along. Here's some excerpts from that short essay. The most accessible key to our liberation is a personal non-participation in lies. For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist.
Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person. Our way must be never knowingly support lies. Yes, at first it will not be fair. Someone will have to temporarily lose his job. For the young who seek to live by truth, this will be the first, this will first severely complicate life.
For their tests and quizzes too are stuffed with lies. And so choices have to be made. Not an easy choice for the body, but the only one for the soul. Let us then cower and hunker down while our comrades, the biologists, bring closer the day when our thoughts can be read and our genes edited. Well we have a biblical and civic duty to live not by lies, to protect the family, to protect the church, and to protect the rights of the individual from governments when they lie.
And we face a powerful foe. We face powerful lies. And we're watching a world. Which I think is falls under the category of strong delusions that 2 Thessalonians 2 11 warned of that the whole world would fall under the spell of strong delusions. We're seeing that right before our eyes.
And we have the weapons the Lord has given us, the truth. That's why Paul told the Ephesian Church be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might put on the whole armor of God. The fourth heading under which I want to speak to you is the heading of resistance. Resistance. My perspective is that we have potentially a short window of time to declare to the authorities, to our employers, to the governments, that what they're doing is immoral.
It's time to speak clearly, loudly, boldly, fearlessly. It's time to educate our companies and our governments on the matters of the Christian view of the body of who owns it on the importance of personal conscience it's time to draw a line in the sand and declare who has the authority over what's injected into a body it's time to assert that it's wrong to violate the conscience of a human being in matters that the Bible addresses. It's time to come out strong against the tyranny because the governments have now resorted to bribery and extortion to motivate people. Delta Airlines just recently announced they're going to charge the unvaccinated $200 a month. That's extortion.
But in many ways the vaccine is a secondary issue. The issue is who has jurisdictional authority over your body. The issue is freedom. The issues surround collectivization of healthcare. Now if you're under a mandate to get a vaccine, I'll just give you my thoughts about it.
First of all, understand the details of your policy. Make sure you really understand what they're saying. Secondly, declare your position to your employer. Exercise your right to appeal via Daniel. Daniel was gracious.
You know Daniel was at the top of his country highly respected by the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar. Exercise your right of appeal and do it right away. You might be pro or anti-vaccine, set that aside. That's not the primary issue. There's a greater issue and you may have only a short window of time and the matter of liberty is so critical at the moment that I'm urging every person around me to make a strong appeal to the authorities that are making the demand and to be patient and to wait and see the effect of the appeal people are being threatened with their jobs The Apostle Paul appealed both to the Word of God and his rights as a Roman citizen in Acts chapter 25 verses 10 and 11.
You can conclude you can be a good Christian and a good American at the same time and appeal to those laws. You can exercise your God-ordained rights that we have been given in our Constitution the Bill of Rights and the Civil Rights Act compliance my counsel is don't roll over and just comply on the threat. Be patient, assert the position. The compliance just allows the cancer to spread further. I have a friend who is in special forces and there were two men that were brought before the tribunal who would not get a vaccine.
And they were told everyone has gotten the vaccine, you need to do it. And one of them got the vaccine and he came out and he said, we were told everybody got the vaccine and my friend said I didn't they lied to you they were manipulating you I would just say don't roll over the only way to affront the tyranny is to confront the tyranny. Speak, write, make your respectful appeal clear and firm and knowledgeably and give information. And you should make it clear that your company is suggesting something contrary to personalized. Health care, it's incompatible with your duty to protect your body and your family and make it plain that your jurisdictional responsibility gives you the freedom of conscious to refuse it and you plan to exercise it and you will not be bribed you will not be extorted you will not be threatened over the personal jurisdictional right that God has given to you.
You might consider engaging your employer on a discussion about liability. Probe if your company is willing to cover the costs in the event that there are complications from the vaccine. Make it very clear the drug companies are held harmless for any damages from the vaccine. Are they willing to accept the damages? Should you resign if your employer makes the mandate?
My counsel is no. Don't jump the gun. Be patient. Press the proposition. Let your employer grapple with the problem of losing you and maybe losing 10 or 20 percent of the employees.
Let them grapple with that. It costs an enormous amount of money to replace a good employee. Some say a half a year salary, some say two and a half, depends on the employee. Your employers understands that. They understand in a really tight job market where nobody wants to work anymore and you still do.
My view is that some of these companies are just virtue signaling. They're gonna wait and see what happens. I'm seeing companies all around granting exemptions from people in my church and that's because I think that they're afraid. Hospital administrators are terrified at the massive numbers of people who will not get vaccinated in their hospitals. In the hospitals around me, it's about 40 percent who have agreed to, low 40s, all the hospitals around me.
That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people to lose. I don't I I'm not confident that hospital administrators are going to crash our entire medical infrastructure. They might. A lot of foolish things are being done.
They might do it. But I would just say set your employer back on his heels in the most respectful, honorable way you possibly can. Don't get hot headed. Don't get red in the face. Don't say foolish things.
Be cool. Be measured and make the appeal. But make the appeal and don't fear man. By the way, Your employer is not your provider. God is your provider.
Trust God and let him work it out. Now, I've been telling this to our church, our local church, that it would grieve me if churches and families would be divided over who gets vaxxed and who doesn't. This is a personal decision. I have been encouraging my church, everyone, not to let their hearts move toward unrighteous judgment toward their brother and create a division over vaccines that's not the primary issue here at play it's not the heart of the matter I'm encouraging our church to engage in careful studies like the Catechism states and to decide for yourself and not to bind the consciences of your brother. I think it's good to have discussions.
You can have medical discussions. You can give your opinions. You can educate one another. That's a good thing. But don't divide over it if somebody goes a different direction.
And then the final heading is under the heading of the truth about you the truth about you Are you indifferent to God's ownership of your soul? Isaiah confronted this he said the ox knows his owner but you don't know me. Do you know that your life is not your own? Are you living your life as if it's not your own? This is a matter of salvation, everlasting joy.
Are you unconcerned about the state of your soul? The Bible says the soul that sins shall die. Do you not know that your soul may be required of you tonight? How are you caring for your soul? You may be so concerned about your body but not concerned about your soul.
If you're not concerned about your soul you should ask who you are. Are you a sheep or are you a goat? Conservatives can get all riled up about all kinds of things but they often don't get riled up about their souls. Are you unconcerned about holiness? Are you unconcerned about the theft?
Are you unconcerned about the lying? Are you unconcerned about the immorality that you're engaging in? Turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. Without holiness no one will see the Lord. If you walk by the flesh you will die.
Are you unchanged by the message of the gospel? If your life hasn't changed as a result of embracing the gospel, you're still in your sins. John The Baptist said it so clearly, bring forth fruit in keeping with your repentance. Are you unconcerned about the underlying sins connected to your outward personal problems? Are you uninvolved in your local church, indifferent to your local church when God has told you do not forsake the assembling of one another how can you say that you love God if you don't love his church are you unfocused on the care and feeding soul the souls of your wife and your children.
Deuteronomy 6 makes it so clear that if you love God you will teach your children when you sit in the house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. Are you unconcerned about the means of grace? Are you devoted to the preaching of the word of God, the Apostles' doctrine, the breaking of bread, the prayers, the singing, the fellowship, the evangelism in the local church? Are you unconcerned about worldly mindedness? Do you love the world?
Are you taking every thought captive? Are you unconcerned about your inner motivations and you're more concerned about your outward appearance through pride and hypocrisy? Are you overvaluing your goodness and underestimating your lostness? Are you unmoved by the word of God, not longing for the pure milk of the word? And your soul doesn't say, the nearness of God is my good.
So do you belong to God? Do you believe that you really believe that your body belongs to God, or are you just an anti vaxxer? When you read in Isaiah 43, which I started out with, when you read the words you are mine, does that thrill your soul? Does that comfort you? When you read you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Do you think that includes everything about your life? Including what you put into your body and what you listen to and what you watch. Do you believe that? Do you embrace God's claim? On your whole life, given in Exodus 2033, you shall have no other gods.
Before me. The matters before us had to do with the government of every every part of your your soul and every part of your body. And if you're going to be an anti vaxxer, I want to know if you're an anti worldliness person as well. Because that's the most important thing. The most important thing in the world is to have you embrace the authority of God.
Do you want to do the will of God? Do you think his laws are superior? Do you love his laws? Do you want to do his will? Do you want to follow him?
That's the question at hand. Do you want to uphold his order or your own order? When the Bible says believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, it means that you'll be saved from yourself and saved unto God. And saved unto God. Examine your hearts and your souls and your bodies and say I am his and He is mine.
If you're concerned about the condition of your soul, I'd love to talk to you afterwards. I'll be here. Would you pray with me? Father, We're so grateful for your word to steady us in all the matters of life and godliness and all the things that are happening around us. We are so thankful for you Lord.
All your ways are pleasant ways and all your paths are peace. You are a tree of life to those who embrace you and those who lay hold of you will be blessed amen If you'd like more information about Forge Ministries, including information about our upcoming events, please visit us online at forgeministries.org.