The Authority of God

So I'm going to talk about a sermon today. It's an introduction to three sermons. That covers a couple of questions that people have asked me about. They'd like covered maybe in a sermon. We're going to give a little introduction here, and then I'm going to get into some scriptures, and they're going to be very simple, basic scriptures. Oh, why is he starting here? Remember, I always say, until you know the premise, you can't know the conclusion. You have to have a premise to build on.

And we're going to look at a premise today and build off of that so that we can actually have some major discussions in the next two sermons that are given on an expanded understanding that actually approaches many aspects of life. The United States Constitution is based on the Declaration of Independence. Now, the Declaration of Independence makes one famous assertion that's supposed to be the foundation of the society of the United States.

And it is this. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now that sounds really amazing.

And it actually is. But it's also fraught with logical and spiritual issues. It is fraught with a whole lot of problems. It's like the United States Constitution. It's a brilliant piece of work, the Declaration of Independence, made by a group of brilliant men.

The men who put together the government of the United States were a remarkable group of men. But it's not biblical. There's some biblical principles in there. Which in the United States Constitution is as much a result of the British Enlightenment movement that happened back in the 15th, 16th, 1700s, which was a philosophical movement. It's as much a part of that, or more, than the Bible, even. That's why Thomas Jefferson, I mean, he didn't even believe Jesus was divine. Now Washington did. I mean, they were all over the place in their religious beliefs. Benjamin Franklin wasn't sure. If you read some of Jefferson's letters that he wrote, you can find them in the National Archives.

Just go online and you'll see his letters. He just basically blatantly said he didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. That's why he actually created an edition of the Bible. He edited the New Testament in English, in which he dropped out any references to Jesus Christ's divinity. In fact, he erased all his miracles from the Bible.

I have a copy of the Jeffersonian Bible. You can buy it. It's his edited version of the Bible. So here we have these rights that are given to human beings by God. Okay. Well, if God gives us rights, and they would go on to say rights are protected by law, then what are the laws of God that apply to these rights? Where is the list of the laws of God and the U.S. Constitution that protects the rights or even defines the rights? We'll talk about that a little bit. Of course, they're not there. How about pursuit of happiness?

Are there limitations on the pursuit of happiness? I suppose. Some people say, my pursuit of happiness is the use of different drugs that the government says are illegal, therefore the government is wrong. Or if I wish to get drunk, why can't I get drunk? Because that's my pursuit of happiness. There's a logic and a moral problem in the very statement. How do you define the limits to how we can define happiness? Or liberty? And a big part of liberty was that there would be the liberty to own property, which is actually a biblical point.

The liberty to own property is part of biblical principles. But what if I wish to build a toxic waste dump on my property that makes all my neighbors sick? Is that okay? Now we're still arguing those things today. It's been a long time, right? We're approaching 250 years now since they did this, pronounced this Declaration of Independence. And we still haven't been able to define what those statements actually mean. So if we take the belief—now I'm just laying a premise here, okay? If we take the belief that all these rights are given to us by God, then there are some things we have to conclude that God has the right to determine rights.

If God has the right and authority to determine rights, He has the authority to determine the laws that enforce the rights. So therefore, if we take rights from God, we have to state and follow the laws that enforce the rights. I'll show you what I mean in just a minute. If God has authority to defend those rights, then God has to be in charge of the government. And if those laws are broken, they're responsible to God for breaking those laws.

Now, what I just said has to be true if the rights come from God. Yet I don't imagine there's one in ten million Americans who would agree with what I just said. But if He's given us the rights, it's because of His authority and that He establishes the laws and He has the right to govern the enforcement of those laws. So it's really a meaningless statement in terms of the reality of God-given rights. Because it's not just enough to say, I receive this from God.

So by the way, this is why the U.S. system, as brilliant as it is, and you and I have been sort of privileged to live what we have because you and I have received the benefits of a government that has allowed us freedom and actually a system that has produced a wealth that we all sort of share at one level or another. But it will fail. All human systems will fail because they're not governed by God.

And I just find it fascinating a belief that we have rights from God, but we're not governed by God. Now, you do have an extreme group of people today that believe in what they call Christian nationalism, that literally want to take over the government of the country, not through illegal means, but through elections, and make and enforce what they consider Christian laws on the government or on the country. That would not be good for us. I mean, who's going to determine that? The Baptists? The Catholics? Who's going to determine what laws are going to be governed because we're under a Christian government?

That won't work either. That won't work either. So why am I giving this? Because we're going to have to understand the concept, the biblical concept of authority. That authority actually means where it begins and our response to it and the difference between God's authority and delegated authority.

Now, we'll have to describe that next time, what that means by that, because we're just going to cover one subject. And what are the responsibilities and limitations of any authority that a human being is involved in? God never delegates complete authority to another human being or to a human being. He just doesn't. Never has. He has never delegated total authority to any singular human being. And whenever authority is delegated, there is always responsibility and there is always limitations to it.

So we'll get to that next time. So let's talk about God's authority. There's a few words that has become difficult to use sometimes in Christianity today because they're seen as bad words. Sin is one of them. Repent is one of them. Authority is another one. That somehow those are bad words. We can't use those words. And yet our entire relationship with God is dependent upon our belief in His authority that He has the right, because He's the Creator, to govern His creation. He has the right as the Creator to govern His creation.

So we're going to go to Genesis. Oh boy, here he goes again. I know about once, at least once every three months, we go back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3 to start something. But that's where so many of these premises begin. Let's go to Genesis 2. Genesis 2. Verse 15. Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. So we understand God created the first human parents, and they had a perfect relationship with him. They had a perfect relationship with each other.

Until Satan came along, they had no difficulties as we know them in life, no sin. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. He gave them a right. Now there's no law yet thou shalt not kill. That thought had never entered anybody's mind yet. That's why human beings. There's no law, don't covet your neighbor's wife. There's no neighbor's wife to covet.

But he says, I don't want you to eat this fruit. Now because of the magical fruit, you cannot decide for yourself what is good and evil. I decide that, God says. It's from his goodness. It comes from his wisdom, what it is. He says you can't decide those things. And if you choose to do so, you will set in motion a curse that will eventually kill you. I'm not sure they understood entirely what death meant.

They had never seen anything die. I mean all the things God, animals, God created, I mean they hadn't been on the earth that long. They never seen anything actually die.

So for God to say that, he had to describe what that meant. He had to tell them that means you cease to exist. You just, it's like you go to sleep and never wake up unless I resurrect you. I mean you're gone. You have no thoughts, no feelings. So he told them that what would happen. He had to explain it. He can't just tell you you'll die and not tell them what it means.

And so they had this right, the right of free will. And they decided, Eve begins with Satan saying, but you will be like God. You will know good and evil. You'll be able to see the two. You'll be able to choose what is really good for yourself. And she bought into that and convinced Adam to go along.

And at that point, there was a certain liberty that human beings had they lost. They lost their liberty and this relationship with God. And they now started to make choices and they found out all choices have consequences. Good consequences, bad consequences.

They had never made a choice that had a bad consequence. Now every choice they made had bad consequences. I mean, the first thing they did was they ran and hid from God because they were ashamed.

They were ashamed that they had done something wrong. Oh, we now know what evil is because we've done it. And they were filled with guilt and they were ashamed. They were ashamed of their own sexuality, which they weren't before. They're just now completely in this befuddled state of we know there's something wrong and something right. They had no idea to figure out what was right and what was wrong.

It was now down to experimentation. God said, I'll tell you, they rejected God telling them right from wrong. Now they're down to experimentation.

And they lost rights.

And they lost this really close relationship with God. They were kicked out of Eden and that's where we've been. We've been on a road leading out of Eden ever since then. And because of that, because of that, we have continued with this cursed humanity. We have continued with this confusion. Every human being has chaos and confusion and sin inside our very nature. Every one of us. That you can't ever really change before God until you recognize that. It's not just something somebody else has. It's what each one of us has.

And that's where this starts.

And God said, okay, let me give you laws to tell you.

These are the things, the really evil things. Don't do these things. But you know, each one of God's laws actually tells us a right.

Remember last week when I talked about, well, it was last week. It was two weeks ago, wasn't it? When I talked about justice.

Went through mishpot in the Old Testament. And how justice is more, a much greater concept than just, you're wrong, you're guilty, here's the penalty. That's not, that's part of justice.

But God told ancient Israel was, I want you to love justice.

In the New Testament, Jesus said judgment, mercy, and faith. Judgment there is a quote, and he's quoting there from Hosea, and that would be mishpot in Hebrew, although he's saying it's in Greek, of course, in the New Testament.

It also meant that there's a concept that before the law, there's a process of law in which everybody is treated fairly before the law. And the book of Deuteronomy is just filled with instructions. You have to have more than one witness. You have to come before the elders. You have to, even if you're an Egyptian or Babylonian, doesn't matter. You come into Israel back then, and you were convicted or accused of a crime, you had to go through a fair trial. They couldn't take somebody out and stone them because they weren't in Israel. They had to go through a trial also. That's all part of the concept of mishpot, this concept of justice.

That's part of the concept of mishpot, too. That all laws set by God explain rights. Give an example.

Thou shalt not murder.

Now, God can take a human being's life because He created them and He owns them.

We are not allowed to take another person's life except in very specific situations that are explained in the Bible because all life, all human life, belongs to God. It's that simple. You have a right to life. That's why we're against abortion. God gives that unborn child the right to life. It's a right given not by the law of the land or not by the United States government or state governments or anything else. It is a right given by God.

Thou shalt not steal. That means that everybody has a right to private personal property.

Stealing wouldn't make any sense unless you're taking something from somebody else that's not yours. So it means you have the right to have something. You just can't go take something from somebody else.

Even do not bear false witness.

Interesting the way that's put that would include lying, but bearing false witness is means to bring a legal accusation against somebody that's false. Once again, we're back to a fair trial.

And I mean the Bible is very strict about someone telling a lie in a trial or taking a bribe in a trial. Those are serious offenses.

So we understand that God sets up laws to explain these are the human rights. These are the rights you have under the kingdom of God, under the government of God.

And these are the laws that protect society and protect human rights. And also define what rights we have with God, which are basically not much.

Worship God and be humble before God and repent before God. And God gives you the right to come to Him. And that's through Jesus Christ. And that's a whole other explanation here. But we can't even go before God without Christ.

But that's actually a law. If you look through it, it's actually a right that comes from that. He has laws to protect that in relationship to Jesus Christ. So we have these laws, the concept of justice, we have rights, and God has the authority over all this. How do we define that in our lives on a day-to-day basis? How do we make this sort of, okay, we got this big thing we're talking about here. How do we make this real?

In Isaiah 64, and there's two places where this analogy is used in Isaiah. I'm just going to use the one verse here. Isaiah 64.

And verse 8. But now, O Lord, you are our Father. I'm breaking in the middle of a thought here, but this sentence just summarizes something very clearly.

O Lord, you are our Father.

So God has this right over us because He is our Creator.

He has the right to authority over us. We would not have life without Him.

We are the clay, you and you, our potter, and we are the work of your hand.

So we must, if we're going to understand God's authority, we must understand and believe. We must have faith that He is the Creator. He is the absolute Creator. You are created by Him and that He owns our lives. And this is where it gets hard.

I'm my own man. I'm my own person. What do you mean, God owns me? Nobody owns me. God owns us. It is an ownership, authority through ownership. You know, I have children and I'm their father, but I don't own them.

The Bible doesn't say I own them.

I can't treat my children however I want. There's all kinds of responsibilities and there's all kinds of stipulations on what it means to be a father with children, and none of them have to do with ownership. But God owns us.

And because of what happened in Eden, we moved away from that ownership. And we spent all these thousands of years with humanity. We've all been trying to do it our way, ourself, our ways. And nothing works and nothing will work. And God says, come back to me, child, to your father, to your owner, to your Creator, because I'm the only one that knows how this works. He made it. He is the only one. He and Christ, the Father and the Christ, are the only ones that know how this works. Nobody else does.

Nobody else does.

That's what makes it so interesting in Luke 7, where the centurion comes to Jesus and says, now this is a Roman centurion, and he has a servant that's ill, and he asks him to heal him. And Jesus says, I'll come to you. Yeah, sure. I'll come to your house and do that. And he says, oh, you can't go to my house. I mean, a practicing Jew wasn't supposed to go into the house of a Gentile, especially, especially a Roman.

They were the occupying force. They were the enemies of God. They were Satan's tools on earth.

That's how they saw them. And Jesus goes, no, I'll go to your house. He said, no, you don't have to do that. I understand authority. He said, I have power to tell a group of men, go do this, and they do it. I tell another group of men, go do this, and they go do it.

Because they understand who I am as a centurion. Basically, in America, I mean, a captain over a company.

He says, you just tell it. You just say it. And there's powers out here that you control, and it will be done.

And Christ looked at the disciples and said, I even found this kind of faith in all of Israel.

He understands God has authority, and God has control, and God will do what God wants to do.

And he says, if it's God, you know, he understood. If it's God's will, he'll be healed. If it's not God's will, he won't be healed. All you have to do is say it, and the will of God will be done.

Because God has the authority and the power to do that.

If we don't accept God's right of ownership, two things will happen to us, could happen to us. One will be, we'll just get rebellious against God. He doesn't know against God. He doesn't own me. Nobody owns me.

Or, okay, God owns me, and I can't stand it because it's not fair. Because you know ownership means, real ownership means that, well, he's going to do his will in your life. Boy, that's a tough one. We have to talk about that one, too.

What if his will, our will isn't the same? Well, I've wrestled with that one.

Well, not my whole life. Probably since about seven years old.

For well over 60 years, I have struggled with, Oh, God, your will is what?

That makes sense to me. I don't understand that. Why?

Or what happens is, we just started to do this partial obedience, partial faith, partial love of God, and we just feel like we're being battered around by circumstances that we have no control over.

Think about God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

We have some real problems with that, even morally. Right? I mean, that's a question people bring all the time. How can God ask a person to kill their own child and sacrifice that child to him? God condemned that in paganism. In fact, there's one point where he even said, it never even entered my mind they would do something that terrible. And yet he's asking someone who is following him to do that.

And this comes down to Abraham. Absolutely coming to grips with, God owns me, and I value his ownership. He is my Father. He does know what he's doing, does know what he's doing, and I will follow him no matter what.

I want you to think about what it's like to spend three days traveling someplace to kill your own son.

Well, isn't murder wrong?

And you get there, and you build an altar, and your son agrees to it. Understand, your son agrees to be killed. Because, well, if that's what God wants, what kind of monster would ask this? People ask this all the time. But I want you to stop and think about this a minute, because there's something here that's so obvious that we miss. Okay, we absolutely miss.

This wasn't an action to appease God.

You know, the word of propitiation in the New Testament.

Pagans used propitiation, that word, that Greek word was used totally different than we do was in the New Testament by the Christians. Propitiation is what you did to get the gods to give you something, or to earn their favor, or get their attention. So you did a sacrifice, you brought it to the pagan temple, you did a sacrifice to get that god or that goddess to show you attention. Or you brought some kind of money, or you did some kind of ceremony, where you would sing and dance. And whatever you did was to get—you were the propitiation, so that they would say, oh, I like that dance, I'll give you rain. Right? The rain dance. It's amazing how many cauldrons have had rain dances. Oh, good, I like that dance, I'll give you rain.

The New Testament writers used propitiation in a totally different way.

They said propitiation is what God does to bring us into his favor.

Instead of us bringing a sacrifice, Jesus Christ said, I will be sacrificed for you.

Think about that.

God says, you can't dance well enough to impress me.

How many times did you see—Hosea said it, David said it— if I bring a thousand bulls and sheep, is that enough? And they both said, no, it's not. I can't earn God's favor by just sacrificing. I can't produce enough. I can't do enough. And God says, no, the propitiation is something I do, not use the exact opposite of paganism.

So why would he have him kill his son?

When he got there, there were two outcomes that could happen. Only two. If you sort through it, there's only two outcomes. One is, Abraham says, God, I just don't have the faith. I can't do this. And he wouldn't have killed Isaac. I don't know what would have happened next. I do know this. When you read through the life of Abraham, there's three main stories told how he did not have faith.

He didn't have faith. Part of this whole process that goes on for decades is, I'm going to have to teach you faith. I have to teach you something. You have to understand and believe that I am your father, and I'm the potter that mold you into something. And what I'm molding you into is worth more than you can ever imagine.

What I'm doing in your life is more value than anything you can imagine.

And so Abraham goes to Egypt, tells Sarah, you're a beautiful babe, and Pharaoh's going to want you, so say you're my sister. And sure enough, I'm his sister. And all of a sudden, some soldiers show up and whisk her off to the, you know, she's going to be part of the harem.

And then Abraham received all kinds of wealth. He paid the brother, which was the custom, for the sister. And he was a very, he was already a wealthy man. He was a more wealthy man. And now it's like, what am I supposed to do? If I tell him now, he'll kill both of us. His lies, his lack of faith trapped him, and where he trapped him, there was no place to go.

And then God makes the pharaoh sick, and comes up in a dream and says, how dare you take this man's wife? And Pharaoh goes to Abraham and says, why did you do this to me? Why did you bring a curse on me from God? Why? Well, she is my half-sister. No, that no, it's your half-sister. It doesn't matter. It's your wife. You get her back, keep everything I gave you, and just get out of Egypt. Get as far away from here as you can, because we're scared of you. Now, it was Abraham's fault. That guy said, man, this boy's messing it up.

So we get through all these times where Abraham did have faith. He didn't. He didn't. He didn't. Then we'll finally get to this. Now, he could have said, no, God, I don't have enough faith. And I don't know what God would have done next. We don't know. Probably would have said, okay, you're going to have to have another set of trials so you can learn.

Or he would have decided, okay, I can kill him. You know what the outcome is in both of those decisions, because there's only two?

Isaac doesn't die.

It was never God's purpose for Isaac to die. If Abraham said, I can't do it, he doesn't die. If Abraham says, okay, I'm going to do it, we know what God did. No, you don't have to kill him. That wasn't the purpose. Isaac never died either way.

We get caught up in that. We miss the point. The point is, Abraham, do you now believe I'm your father? I own you. And I love you. And I'm always going to do what's best for you. Do you believe it? Hebrews 11. We know why Abraham did what he did, not from Genesis, but from Hebrews 11.

The test wasn't God wanting a human sacrifice. That was never it. It was never going to happen. The test was Abraham.

Do you get a chance to do it? Abraham. Do you get this?

This is going to tell us something the way God does things, but look what happens here. Verse 17. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he would receive the promises offered up his only begotten son, on whom it was said, and Isaac your seed shall be called. Think about this. God had made him a prophet because he didn't have faith to wait for Sarah to have a child. When it was past the time, she could have a child. So he tried to have a child through Hagar, which was actually Sarah's idea.

And now he had a child. So God's given me a child like he promised. And God came along and said, no, no, that's not the one I promised.

I'm going to do it. It's going to be a miracle through Sarah. So he finally got his child. And God said, now this is the one that's going to have children. Because he said, you're going to be a great nation. And it's going to go on for generations and generations.

And it's going to come through Isaac. And he said, now kill him.

Morally, logically, there seems to be nothing there that you can even grab hold of.

Until this, concluding, verse 19, that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead. From which also he received him in a figurative way, a figurative sense. In other words, in his mind, he was going to cut his throat and he was going to wake up.

God would not lie to him.

And therefore, God was going to resurrect Isaac. He was absolutely sure. It is the only conclusion you could come to, or God's a liar.

There is no other way to look at it.

And when he got to that point, God said, you don't have to kill him. You learn the lesson. Here's what God is doing here. And this has to do with ownership.

He wants us to be his children forever. And he's teaching us how to do that.

And he's going to push us beyond what we think our limitations are. You do that with children all the time.

Some relatives were teasing him the other day about two of our grandkids.

They said, they're always saying, that's not how Memaw does it. That's not how Memaw does it. And they said, these girls must have her wrapped around her little finger. And I said, oh no. I said, she always said, oh, would you cut my sandwiches? Why would you do this? And then there is to the point, very calmly, she says, no, you will eat it the way it is.

Or no, you're not going to have any ice cream. You didn't eat your dinner.

And there's no arguing. There's no, you know, they're pushing it. And there's always the point.

Grandma pushes back. And that's it. And that's it. Just everything shuts down. Oh, it's laugh when I hear it happen. But we push them.

You have to do your homework. Oh, Memaw, I don't want to do my, sometimes I'm in my office. I'll be there when they're there. And I'll come downstairs and say, hey, how you doing that homework?

It's going to be another half hour. Oh, good. You'll be smarter.

Oh, man, B-ball doesn't even, you know, support me in this. You push them. You're pushing them, right? You're pushing them. Why? Because if they're going to become functional adults, they have to learn those things. If they're going to be out on their own someday. If they're going to have children of their own in a good marriage. If they're going to keep down a good job. They have to be pushed. They have to be pushed and pushed until, you're not beating on them. You're not pushing them past their limits. But you're pushing them right up to it at times.

You're pushing them.

And you know what they think? You're the meanest person on earth.

Until you finish it. Till they're finished with their homework and say, Meemaw, can I have a cookie now? Well, sure. Come on. And they're all sitting around for a half hour talking and eating cookies. Right?

Push, push, push. But then when they do it, and they realize what's going on.

Because then when mom walks in, they said, I learned my, my multiplication tables of, you know, the twos, go ahead and ask me, what's two times one? Two times two, two, and now they're spouting it off. I learned it. I got it.

And you know what happens? Sometimes they're waiting for you to push them a little bit. They're all disappointed when you don't push a little bit.

God pushed Abraham to the limit.

Now you and I don't get pushed to that limit.

You may, but, you know, that's, that's quite a limit, right? God pushed him to the limit. The issue wasn't God wanting a sacrifice. The issue was God saying, what do I do, have to do to make this my son?

What do I have to do to make this my son? And Abraham had to be thinking, is he cruel? I don't understand.

I mean, the turmoil, the anguish.

And then it's over and he gets it.

He gets it.

Ownership means love.

Ownership doesn't mean God sees us as, you know, just sort of automatic slaves and he can beat whatever he wants.

God isn't looking down on us all the time and saying, I want to punish that person.

I want to punish that person. Okay, so, but you know what?

I'm going to say this because I'm just as frustrated as it is you are. He always doesn't fix everything. Sometimes he pushes us a little bit.

Grow from this child. Grow.

It's not what we want any more than it's what that two-year-old and that five-year-old and that seven-year-old and that 15-year-old. It's no more than what they want from their parents sometimes when you're pushing them. And they have to grow up. They have to do a little better. They have to do something and then they learn it.

They learn it and it will help them when they're 20 years old and 30 years old and 40 years old. They're growing into adulthood. You and I are growing into to become spirit children of God forever. And that is because He owns us.

He owned, He actually owns us.

And He's always moving us forward to a future point.

I remember thinking at one time in my life, man, when I reach about 70, you know what? I'm going to retire and just play with my grandkids and it'll be so easy. Well, now I've found out that that's all that's going to happen.

God has other plans, you know.

I tried to retire at age 70 because it's coming up in a little over a year. I was told, no, you can't retire.

You've got to do this, this, this, this still. And then I thought, oh, boy, the leaders of the United Church of God are mean. And then I thought about it, no, no, that's, I'm not, that's what I'm supposed to do. That's what I'm supposed to be.

So that's what I will become.

I didn't want to be pushed at age 68.

Right? And God says, no, come on. And He pushes a little more. You can do this. You have to grow. You have to do this. You have to help others. You have to, you have, and He pushes them. And for a little bit, I was like a two-year-old again. I don't want to do this.

And then it's like, no, I do want to do it.

Now if He asks me, I want to retire, I say, no.

Why? Well, you get pushed past the point and you realize, no, no, no, there's things I have to do and I want to do because God says to do.

And this is all about ownership.

So the question comes down to, once we understand that God owns us, we have to understand the will of God.

And how do I live by the will of God? Romans 12. Romans 12.

Headed towards the last part of the sermon here.

Romans 12, verse 1. And this was a question that was brought up to me that said, would you do a message or part of a sermon on this?

Verse 1 says, Paul writes, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, and you will be fully acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Every time I read this, I always say, that's an oxymoron. You can't be a living sacrifice. You'll kill a sacrifice. Their opposites are the same thing. And that's what we are. We are dying people learning how to live forever. That's what we are. And the part of us God is actually killing, and it's uncomfortable, in order to make us into something that can live forever. So we are an oxymoron.

We're two opposites happening at the same time.

A living, dying person.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And the question was, how do we know what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God?

By living a life as a sacrifice, there's no other way to do it.

You learn, and we learn, the will of God by struggling and wrestling with God all the time.

We wrestle with God all the time over things. I don't mean every minute of every day. And there's lots of good things in our lives.

Good physical things.

I admit this.

I used to pray for the fruits of God's Spirit, and I'd say, I'd always pray for love, joy, and peace, and I'd always stop.

Because to go on, I had to ask for long suffering, and I just wasn't going to ask for that.

A few decades ago, I realized, I got to keep going on with the list.

I want lots of love, joy, and peace. I just don't want to end this long suffering stuff. So, God's giving us lots of good things.

But there's an end to this, and the end isn't tomorrow. The end isn't 10 years from now.

The end is when Christ comes back.

Between now and then, He's going to push us. He's going to teach us. He's going to always take care of us. He's going to take us to the edge sometimes, as we are prepared for that.

He reveals Himself through the Scriptures. That's why, if we're not in the Bible all the time, and we have to be humble before the Bible, that's a whole other sermon in itself. We have to be humble before the Word of God, and we'll twist it to say whatever we want.

I've done that. Come up with something I thought was genius.

Call it, you know, minister friend of mine, or just let it sit for a while, and go back to it like six months later, that's the stupidest thing I ever wrote down. I'm sure I hope I didn't, I'm glad I didn't give a sermon on.

It doesn't work biblically. You know, these things pop. We have to be very honest before the Scripture, but it's here where we find the will of God, and then the will of God is developed in us through the Spirit of God.

We cannot have the faith, the power, or even the humility without going to God and asking for it, and then submitting to it. And that's what this is. It's submitting to what God is doing.

It is submitting to what God is doing in our lives.

And as we learn God's will, then comes the wrestling with God that happens all the time.

Someone asked me this morning, hey, I have another sermon idea for you.

I would like you to give a sermon on addictions.

He said, you know, we just have all these addictions. He says, I realize I'm addicted to sugar.

He says, I mean, we have physical addictions, spiritual addictions. I said, all sin is addictive. I don't care what it is. Some people are addicted to pride. Some are addicted to covetousness. It doesn't matter. All sin is addictive because it becomes part of your identity. And you just, it's who you are.

So it doesn't matter. The smallest sin, you know, gossip, which is condemned to the Bible, is addictive.

I mean, you just like gossiping or whatever it is.

We all, all sin is addictive.

So every time we discover the will of God, we have to be willing to wrestle with God.

Over fulfilling His will.

We have to wrestle with Him. In other words, nobody just says, oh, I found out God's will here.

God's will is, I don't work on the Sabbath. So I'll lose my job. Oh, well, I'll just keep my job until three more years because in three more years, I can get my pension. And then I'll keep the Sabbath. I've had people tell me that.

Do you think the will of God is to keep the Sabbath? Yes. Do you think working on the Sabbath, you know, at your job is not right? I believe that's not right. Do you think it's a sin? Yes. But I'm only going to be sinning for three more years.

But is it the will of God? God will understand. Is it the will of God that you do that?

Jesus Christ went through experiences just for us. You know, as the word, the eternal word with the Father, He never had difficulty submitting to the Father.

They always agreed on everything. I mean, they were just nothing between them. The Father and I are one. He doesn't mean the same person. They're one. They think the same. They act the same. Everything that their nature is the same.

So He never said to the Father, Nah, I don't want to do that. You know, they disagree. They discuss. They did. I mean, I don't know what happens in that relationship, but it's amazing the love and a submission of the Son to the Father.

On that night He was betrayed. He knew what was going to happen in detail. He knew everything was going to happen in detail.

And He's praying about it. And He says, if there's another way to do this, knowing there isn't, but having a human experience, which is there's got to be another way.

There's got to be another way. And then what's He saying? Not my will be done, but yours.

He showed us. He came and wrestled with God to show us how to wrestle with God. And so that we know when we pray, when you get under your knees before God, Jesus Christ is there. And He says, yep, I know what you're going through. I've been there.

That's ownership.

Jesus Christ owns us.

His price for owning us is He had to be tortured and die for us.

Yeah, He owns us.

Go argue that ownership. Argue, no, God, you don't own me. Own me. You just created me and you made me and gave me life, but you don't own me. Jesus Christ, yes, you died for my eternity, but yeah, you don't own me. Try to argue that and keep your sanity.

Of course we're owned. It's one of the great joys of life when you figure out what that means. We're owned by the Almighty God.

God didn't want us to be automatons. He gave us free will and consciousness. And boy, have we made a mess of it.

Of course, Satan contributed, but that's who he is.

He contributed the chaos and the insanity that he is.

He wants us to recognize his authority because he is the Creator and he is the Potter and he is the Father and Jesus Christ is the Brother. He wants us to see all that and then say, yes, take control of my life so that I can be what you want me to be.

That you can forgive me for my sins and I can overcome my sins.

Overcoming sins is a power he works in us.

And it's wrestling with him while we overcome sins, isn't it?

It's wrestling with him. And then we can have faith, but he's going to sometimes push us to the edge to get us to grow.

He'll never push us beyond what we can do, but he'll take us right up to the edge.

Not because he hates us, not because he's mean, but because he loves us and he actually has a purpose for us in the future.

So now we see the simple premise that God's authority is based on his ownership.

But what about other authority?

How are Christians to act with their employer?

I mean, the Bible talks about there's an authority given to employers or the government.

What's that mean? How can a government that's not following God have some authority somehow from God? And what's the limitations to that?

Well, that's what we'll start to cover next time. Some pretty hard questions.

But it's all based on, remember, God's authority is on his ownership. All other delegated authority has responsibilities, but it also has limitations.