Please turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter one. I'm going to read nine verses. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying, Moses my servant is dead now therefore Arise go over this Jordan you and all this people to the land which I am giving to them the children of Israel Every place that the sole of your foot will tread on I have given you as I said to Moses for the wilderness and as far as the great river the river Euphrates all the land of the Hittites See toward the going down of the Sun shall be your territory all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Father God, we thank you for this, your word, and I pray that as I begin to delve into it, that you would guide our hearts and enable us to grow in you, and that you would remove from our lives anything that hinders our own personal growth. May you enable me, Father, to preach your word faithfully, and we pray this blessing in Jesus' name, amen. Well, today I'm beginning a series of sermons on the book of Joshua. And we already gave a broad overview of the book in the Bible survey series. And I'm not going to repeat what I said back then, but I do want to spend about seven minutes or so in giving you kind of a big picture overview of this book and its relationship to the previous ones. And this book is divided into four parts. If you look at your outline, you can see those four major sections on the theme portion. It's the third line of the Joshua chart. I probably should have made the chart a little bit different. The first five chapters deal with the spiritual preparations that were needed before Israel would be able to conquer the land. Second major section is chapter 6, verse 1, through chapter 13, verse 7, and it deals with the conquest of Canaan. Third major section is chapter 13, verse eight through to the end of chapter 21. It deals with settling in the land. And the fourth section is chapters 22 through 24, which shows what's going to be spiritually needed if they're going to be able to retain the land in future generations. And so the whole book can be summarized in four words. It's entering, conquering, settling, and retaining. And just with those four words, there's some applications that we can make for our lives. If we are to take back America, we must go through each of those four steps once again. If the church is a holy ghetto that never interacts with the world, we're never going to be able to conquer. Just as Joshua could not conquer the land of Canaan until he entered the land, obviously, we're not going to take the land of America unless we ourselves are penetrating every facet of society with the law and the gospel. Not on the world's terms, but on God's terms. And the pietistic, two-kingdom, retreatist church has failed to do that. We have failed to be salt. We have abandoned true biblical politics and we tend to do things the world's way. OK, we have failed to apply the Bible to business, economics, education, science and other areas. Instead, what's really happened is that instead of the church entering Canaan with the law and the gospel, it's Canaan that has entered the church in almost every conceivable way. I mean, you can think of so many different areas, you know, when it comes to counseling. We have adopted the wisdom, the psychology of the world, and we've sprinkled in a few verses, but it's still the psychology of the world, the wisdom of man. You look at the educational systems that people go to, not just the government schools, but even Christian and even some homeschooling. It's secular thinking that's being taught by Christians. And on whatever topic you might think of, Canaan has entered the church rather than the church entering Canaan with the law and the gospel. Well, the second part of this book is conquest. If we are to regain America, we must aggressively seek to have every thought taken captive to King Jesus. But Paul said we can only do that is if the church starts putting down the carnal weapons of the world, we begin to pick up the weapons of God, which are mighty in him. In fact, I'm going to read that passage, 2 Corinthians 10, two through six. It's basically an application of part two of the book of Joshua. Paul says, but I beg you, that when I am present, I may not be bold with that confidence by which I intend to be bold against some who think of us as if we walked according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled." That's Joshua part two in a nutshell. What's part three? Well, once all humanism has been identified and exposed and torn down, and we're not even remotely there in America, we're doing some identification and exposing of it, but definitely not being successful in tearing it down. It's once that's happened that we can enter the third stage of this book, which is settling in with the law and the gospel, living out the biblical blueprints in a positive way. So you tear down, that's part two. so that you can rebuild. That's part three. And if you could just imagine the incredible blessings that could come to America if we would be biblical in everything that we do, it'd be tremendous. But the last section of the book warns Israelites over and over again that once you've conquered, you can't sit on your laurels. You've got to keep pressing into God and you need to pass on the blueprints and the vision, the passion that God has instilled into our hearts into the next generation of the Puritans in America did not do that. That's why their experiment was a failure. They were very successful on points one, two, and three, but because they embraced pagan education, classical education, they lost the next two generations of Christians. And the only way to retain the land that has been possessed is if we faithfully pass on a heritage to the next generation. And so the last section of the book gives us what is critical if covenant succession is to happen. So that's the big overview picture. But it's also important to see how Joshua builds on the foundation of the Pentateuch. Without the Pentateuch, they would not have had the tools to be able to do so for success. And I've given another chart of how each of the books of the Pentateuch formed the foundation that Joshua built upon. Genesis shows transcendence, that everything begins with God, who had no beginning. He's the maker of the covenant, He's the Lord of life. We don't start with man's mind, we start with God's mind. And so everything in life has to begin with God. Exodus shows the representatives of God in family, church, and state. Every covenant you see in the Bible has this as a part of the covenant. It's who are the representatives of God. And so whether the representatives are in the family, the church, or the state, we must faithfully represent God. Leviticus, which we saw is the book of holiness, gives ethics for Israel, both ceremonial and moral. And its message was about God's upward call of our lives. Both the law and the gospel were designed to draw us into deeper intimacy with God. And hey, if you've got God's blessing, and if you've got His presence with you, then you can have success in all of your endeavors. Numbers shows God's sanctions are the fourth part of the covenant. These are His punishments for disobedience, His rewards for obedience. And then Deuteronomy gives the blueprints for all of life. It shows what needs to be in place if we're going to have Christianity in the land generation after generation. It'd be great. We've never had a thousand generations of faithfulness, but that is a possible thing, God says. So it's the basis for covenant succession. Well, Joshua takes it one step further into inheritance, and then Judges shows what happens when covenant succession is not taught. People fall away. Maturity is not automatic. It must be systematically trained into the very fiber of our children's lives. And really, so there's a logical order in Genesis through Judges. And today and next week, we're going to look at the first nine verses of this book. I'm going to next week go much more detail, verse by verse, drawing out some of the other lessons, but I want to give an eagle's eye view of some inescapable concepts that are embedded in these verses. These seven words in your outline are precious words for covenant keepers, and they are dirty words to the covenant breaker. But whether you love them or you hate them, these are inescapable concepts. You may try to escape from them, but you will never succeed because God has built these truths right into human existence. The first precious word, or dirty word depending on your perspective, is servanthood. Verse 1 makes clear that both Moses and Joshua were called to service. It says, After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant. There are two Hebrew words for servant here. Moses was an eved servant who was not building his own empire. He was there to represent God alone and to serve God alone. He was a humble man. And he had a servant's heart. And Joshua was a shirat servant, a menial servant. So Moses has a servant's heart. Joshua is a servant's servant. Most of his life he spent serving another person, just like Jesus spent 30 years of his life serving others, right, in that job of carpentry. And next week we'll dig into that a little bit more. But why do I call this an inescapable concept? Aren't there a ton of people out there who are lazy, who refuse to serve God? Yes, that's absolutely true. But God guarantees if we do not submit to serving Him, we will automatically come into bondage to something else. Servanthood or slavery is inescapable. And so the book of Joshua shows the kind of dominion that can be taken when we have servants' hearts, and the book of Judges shows the kind of bondage that people find themselves in when they lose that servant heart. But one way or another, you're going to serve a taskmaster, a good one or a bad one. For example, in Judges, when God's people lost a willingness to serve God, Well, God brought them into various kinds of bondage. Could be bondage to fellow Jews, sometimes it was bondage to Canaanites, sometimes it was bondage within the family, bondage to state tyranny, bondage to Satan, bondage to their own sinful lusts. Judges is such a vivid portrayal of what happens when you refuse to be a servant of God. Automatically, you're going to become a servant to something else that's not in your best interest. It's never a question of whether you will serve or not serve. God has made men to be in a position of service. The moment somebody says they're not going to serve God in a given area, at that very moment, they are serving something else. They are not free men. And I want you to turn with me to Romans chapter 6, and I would like you to see for yourselves this concept, because it's such a foundational concept, and yet it's many times misunderstood. Romans chapter 6, Paul shows how sin and righteousness is always a slavery issue, always. Romans 6, beginning at verse 16. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin to death or of obedience to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So Paul is saying that slavery is an inescapable concept. The moment you free yourself from being a slave to God's commands, you immediately become a slave to serve sin's demands, and those demands keep getting stronger and stronger, and the bondage keeps getting worse and worse, making it more difficult to escape. There is no neutrality when it comes to sin. Either doing righteousness becomes easier and easier, or doing sin. becomes easier and more and more enslaving. And by the way, when he talks about slavery, he's not just talking about addictions, you know, porn or drugs or alcohol addictions. Scripture portrays pride, lying, laziness, insecurity, greed, and other things as being a form of bondage. And the difficult thing is getting people to recognize that they are in bondage. They don't think that they are in bondage, right? For some people, it's serving the praise of others, which they're always longing for. So Christ told the Pharisees that they were in bondage, and their response is fascinating. They absolutely denied it. They said, we are Abraham's descendants, have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say you will be made free? And they failed to recognize that outwardly they had been in bondage to Roman tyranny for a long time. Many times God will use the state, right, to make a disobedient people to be in bondage. Inwardly they were in bondage to sin. Christ told them, most assuredly I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And then he says, you're slaves of Satan. You're of your father, the devil, the desires of your father, you will do. There is no middle ground. This is why we call these things inescapable concepts. OK, don't chafe at being a bond slave of God. Embrace that bond service. It's the only slavery that liberates us. Now, that may seem like a contradiction, but it's not a contradiction at all. One of the illustrations that I use when people kind of look puzzled at that is a railroad track. Okay, God, humans designed trains to stick to the railroad tracks. And as long as they are enslaved to those railroad tracks, the train has liberty and power and speed and usefulness. But the moment it jumps the railroad tracks and wants to be free, It comes into bondage to the dirt, and it loses its speed, power, liberty, and usefulness. So the point is there's a liberating kind of servanthood. There is a servanthood that makes us ineffective, but there is always servanthood. Second inescapable concept that we'll see throughout this book is eschatology. Eschatology is simply the doctrine of future things. What does our future look like? In verses 2 through 5, God gave Joshua some eschatology. He guaranteed Joshua's future was the total inheritance of the land if Israel would believe his promises. Now, here's the thing. Everyone has an eschatology, a doctrine of future things. If you're not preparing for food shortages later this year, you're either too poor to be able to prepare, or you've got a different view of the future than I do. And maybe you're right, maybe I'm wrong, but your view of the future impacts, in a very practical way, what you do right now. Dispensationalists frequently will not make long-term plans for their children, their finances, or anything else because they don't think they're going to be around much longer. And so they have had so many failed predictions of, you know, the war of Russia and the Middle East and all of those different things. Some people have become utterly cynical and they said, I'm not even going to study eschatology anymore. And they facetiously call themselves panmillennialists. It'll all pan out in the end, so who cares? Now, they pretend as if they don't have any view of the future, but they do. Their view of the future is that the future is unimportant and it's irrelevant, right? So they don't care about it. And as a result, what does it do? It makes them just as present oriented in a bad way as the dispensationalists are and as other pessimilenialists are. You always have some view of the future, and that view of the future will impact how you live. consider the former generation of Israelites. In fact why don't you go ahead and turn there with me. Numbers chapter 13, the spies were sent into Canaan to spy out the land. And the information the spies brought back is exactly accurate. It just leaves out as irrelevant God's promises. OK? That's the problem. But let's start reading chapter 13 and start reading at verse 26. Now they departed and came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. They brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Then they told him and said, we went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who dwell in the land are strong. The cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan. Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it. But the men who had gone up with him said, we are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we. And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land, which they had spied out, saying, the land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants. The descendants of Anak came from the giants. And we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight. So the spies were getting their view of the future from reading the newspapers and the Gallup polls and statistical analysis of the odds that were against them. And Caleb's eschatology, in contrast, was gained from God's promises. So if you look at chapter 14, verses 7 through 9, it says, And they spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, the land we pass through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread. Their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. The point is, there were two sources of eschatology, the Bible and the opinions of man. But both impacted behavior. You ignore biblical eschatology to your harm. I think the beautiful eschatology of post-millennialism is one that stirs up faith and confidence and hope. Actually, when I became a post-millennialist, it revolutionized my life, gave me faith, hope, encouragement, and zeal. So all of these points we're going to be seeing hang or fall together. They are fitted together. The third precious word, or dirty word for some, is dominion. There are Christians who absolutely despise this word dominion, even though it occurs 56 times in the Bible. In fact, the Bible starts with it. Genesis 126, dominion mandate. We're called to take dominion of all the earth and everything in it. And in Psalm 8, it predicts Jesus, by His grace, will enable us to take that same dominion. Well, where is the concept of dominion in the passage we just read in Joshua? It's in verse 3, it says, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you as I said to Moses. To put your foot upon something was symbolic of taking dominion over it. And so in the book of Ruth, when there was going to be a property transfer, there was the handing over of a shoe. as a symbol of taking dominion. When somebody was going to conquer a city, sometimes they would throw their shoe over the city, and that's what's meant in Psalm 60, verse 8, and Psalm 108, 9, when the future Messiah is prophesied as saying, over Edom I will cast my shoe. Okay, so that's Christ promising, I'm going to take dominion over Edom. When Romans 16 promises to crush Satan under our feet, God was promising that Satan's dominion would be broken and all of his realm would be placed under our feet, under righteous dominion. Now, as I said, many Christians revolt against the idea of dominion, but we need to ask them, well, what do you prefer, Satan's dominion or Christ's dominion? the dominion of the righteous or the wicked. It's not a matter of dominion or no dominion. Dominion is inescapable. I'll just give you one example to show this. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out And here comes the phrase, trampled underfoot of men. To be trampled underfoot of men means that Christians will experience the cruel dominion of men. And that's exactly what's happened in America. It used to be a Christian nation, but now it's a land that has imposed abortion, sodomy, indoctrination, canceled culture, and other satanic things. So to be under the feet, for Saul to be under the feet of men, that's not a good dominion, not at all. But to be under the feet of Jesus is bliss. We should always rejoice in the dominion of King Jesus because he is the only one that can enable any human dominion to be a blessing rather than a curse. And of course, the dominion mandate in Genesis 1 was intended to be a blessing. But after the fall, it turned into a curse. But Psalm 8 prophesies that Jesus will reverse that and turn it right back into a blessing. But there's always going to be some kind of dominion. Our goal should be to make it a liberating dominion under the gospel and under the law. Another word that is often resisted is antithesis or boundaries. You know, all the way back in Genesis, God set boundaries for Adam, and they immediately stepped over those boundaries. Well, God gives boundaries in verses 4 through 9 of our passage. There are physical boundaries, and then there are ethical boundaries. God set up boundaries for business, marriage, child-rearing, civil government. really every area of life, and there is no gray area for God. Many times there is for us, because we don't have understanding. But for God there's always a right or a wrong, there's black or white, there's a clear antithesis, and it's Christ who makes that division. You know, it's interesting that pictorially Jesus was between the two thieves. He divided between the thief on the left, the thief on the right. And in the Gospels over and over again it talks about Jesus creating a division among the people. Well, There are Christians who don't like that division, they want unity at all costs, and so they try to blur the line of antithesis to make people more comfortable. But without antithesis being clearly articulated, the covenant is destroyed and we become like the Israelites in the book of Judges. There's no area of life where God's boundaries or antithesis should not be seen. But why do I say this is unescapable? If unbelievers are fighting against antithesis, if they're fighting against boundaries, and they hate it, why do I say it's inescapable? Well, it's because God made man to need antithesis, to need lines, boundaries, distinctions. It's just that they're going to be drawn in different places. Ours is a culture that pretends to have no antithesis. It pretends to be pluralistic, to tolerate all viewpoints. But you know what's really the situation? Pluralism becomes intolerant of Christianity, right? Pluralism argues for toleration as long as the pluralists are not in power. The moment they are in power, they engage in a cancel culture, which we've been experiencing big time. They engage in imposing their will with brute force, because that's all they have. They don't have grace, so how do they influence? It's through force, the force of the state. And we've been seeing that under the covid tyranny. To me, it's not surprising to see them recently establishing the Disinformation Governance Board and the Department of Homeland Security, which to me sounds very much like Orwell's 1984 book. Very much. Christians are being increasingly marginalized, persecuted, treated as outside the scope of what can be tolerated in schools, courts, military or any other public area. Why is every view except the biblical one tolerated? Why is pluralism so intolerant of Christianity? I believe it is because antithesis is inescapable. If you think there is no antithesis out there, I would encourage you to, well, maybe it would be dangerous to try the thought experiment, but next time your business has a sensitivity training class on women, just pipe up and say, you know what the Bible says about the role relationships of women? See if they tolerate you. I don't think they will. Next time they have sensitivity training on LGBTQ homosexual issues, tell them what the Bible says, you know, that homosexuality should be a crime. See if you keep your job. Now, there's going to be antithesis. It's inescapable. And I think it has been utterly foolish for Christians of the past generation to have abandoned the antithesis that God has laid down in his word. When God describes a given sin, says these sins are not crimes, but this sin is a crime, he is drawing a line in the sand of antithesis. And when Christians get embarrassed by that because of what the world says about that, they've already chosen a different standard of antithesis. It's the world standard of antithesis, and it's not going to go well for them. There is no neutrality possible. Christians must once again boldly stand for God's antithesis as stated in His law and for no other. And by the way, the book of Joshua is going to show that without antithesis there can be no dominion, because God's not going to bless it. There can be no advancement of His kingdom. This is why I believe the moral majority, maybe some of you weren't around when the moral majority was here, but why it was an utter failure. because they despised the law of God. This is why later on the Christian coalition was an utter failure because they had no antithesis. They despised the law of God. Here's the thing. Unbelievers are very self-conscious about what needs to be their antithesis. You know what Mark Zuckerberg believes by antithesis. You know what Jack Dorsey means by antithesis. We should not be surprised that our YouTube channel got put in YouTube jail. That is no surprise. They're just applying the world's antithesis. And the world's antithesis is much less tolerant and freedom loving than the Bible's antithesis, much less. So again, all of these points, they rise and fall together. I'll just tell you a little story. And I may I think I have told you this story before, but a friend of mine He's a covert humanist. He got a membership, lifetime membership in the American Humanist Association. So he always goes in there, records their strategy meetings. And I got to listen in on one of the meetings, and it was fascinating. The speaker said that most forms of Christianity can be ignored. They're not dangerous at all to their globalist intentions, because most Christians are embarrassed by God's law. And so it's going to be very easy to shut them up. And most Christians have no hope for the future because they think things are going to inevitably get worse and worse. He's dealing with their eschatology. They have no faith for victory. They have no antithesis. He said the only Christian group that is dangerous and that we need to watch out for is the Reformed Christian Reconstructionist group. And this guy was quoting left and right from Rush Dooney, Gary North, Bonson, and others. And he said, these are the most dangerous people in the world. And I'm thinking to myself, we're such a tiny minority. Why can they not just ignore us? And he said, no, we cannot ignore these people. And he identified, believe it or not, most of these seven points that we're going through today that we self-consciously embrace. We cannot be embarrassed. We cannot be sidelined from those. And so in the meeting they were strategizing on how to demonize the Puritan worldview in the media, in the seminaries, and I'm thinking, how do they get into the seminaries? But they had their contacts in the seminaries, in every avenue that they could think of. The point is the church must once again embrace God's antithesis or God will make us suffer under the world's much harsher antithesis. Now, later in this book, we're going to see that God's antithesis is the only basis for maximum liberty, maximum freedom. The world's antithesis eventually suffocates people. Now, the fifth inescapable concept is the presence of some God. Either the true God or some God of our own fashioning who pretends to have God's attributes. God tells Joshua in verse five, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. In verse nine, God says, do not be afraid nor be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. So that's the true God. But when a culture abandons the true God, the need for some God's presence does not diminish. Instead, it is almost always replaced by the state. The state tries to relieve every fear and worry. And the citizens clamor for the state to regulate everything that they are worried and fearful about. How many times have you heard people, even Christians, saying there needs to be a law against that? Yeah. They say, in effect, to the state, do not leave me nor forsake me. Make sure you are with me and support me wherever I go. over the course of history, any time that the church or culture has kind of valued and become dependent upon God as God's law says that they should, The state has become a very small and limited state. But when a culture abandons God, automatically the state fills the vacuum. Why? Because trusting something as God is an inescapable concept. Now I'm gonna list seven parallels between God and the modern state, including the United States, just so that you can see this. First, God is omnipresent. That's a beautiful doctrine. Psalm 139 praises God for His omnipresence. He's everywhere. He's in the womb. He's everywhere on the earth. He's under the earth. He's in hell. He's everywhere. And He knows what's going on in the secret. He knows your anguish of heart. It's a comforting doctrine. Well, when God is rejected, the state tries to be omnipresent by inserting itself into every aspect of our lives. Glance through, it would take you weeks to read through, but glance through the comprehensive rules that keep getting written by hundreds of federal agencies that monitor your food, vitamins, public speech, medical history, travel, education, radio waves, phone lines, workplace safety, etc., etc. And you will see that the state is trying to have its presence everywhere. In fact, some people say, yeah, but not in the bedroom. This is the place where people have been really. No, no, no, no. There are people in the Congress and in the Senate right now who are fearful of overpopulation and are trying to get the state to say that you can only have so many babies. They're intruding themselves into the into the bedroom. A bill keeps getting introduced to provide for the federal government monitoring private gardens, food storage, people's diets. They can listen in on your phones. That's why I carry my phone. I want to preach to the government all the time. They can listen in. Many, many countries are seeing the same thing happen. I'll use Chile as one example. A recent analysis of Chile's intrusions into the private sphere was titled The Omnipresent State. It says, It is not only interfered in the provision of goods and services that are more efficiently produced by the private sector, but also pronounces itself as to what we should eat, what we can smoke, the music we want to hear, which days we can drive our cars. Moreover, the government has announced a bill that aims at changing the relationship of the state towards children, considering them as self-sufficient individuals, thereby weakening the role of parents in their upbringing. And as you read through that article and how they document the various ways, you realize that the government has, you know, basically promised to never leave them nor forsake them. We need to realize statism is the biggest idol in modern history. It is a stronghold that needs to be torn down. Second, God is omniscient, which means He knows all things. And as a kind of counterfeit God, the state tries to know all things through spy networks, the intelligence gathering, interference with the Internet, invasion of privacy and banking, commerce, telecommunications, so many other ways. The state as God tries to be omniscient. You try sometime to buy crypto, even with VPN, and do it through other countries. It's almost impossible. The government knows that you've bought it, wants to tax everything. Do a search for articles on the omniscient state, and you will see articles from many countries complaining that their governments are seeking to be the all-knowing overseers of everything that we say and do. They want files on your medical history, your spending habits. Recently, your social scores. Yeah, that's coming to America. They want to monitor people's social scores so that people can be rewarded or punished, just like China does. Your conversations and other things. It is a desire to be like God. When men reject God, they always substitute another God, and often that God is the state. This is why I say it is an inescapable concept. Something will always fill the gap. By the way, if it's not the state initially, it can be something else like science. How many times are we told not to question what the science says about face masks or vaccines or global warming? Global warming, it's been around for a long time. It doesn't matter how many, there could be a majority of scientists who say that's not so. The state says that it's favored scientists, science says, right? Third, God has the final say and the tyrannical God-like state tries to have the final say. Our federal government doesn't even like the Constitution to be above them, and they have successfully ignored its restraints on what they want to do my entire lifetime, most of my parents' lifetime. And it isn't just the Democrats who violate the Constitution. Most Republicans do, too. There is nothing above the state in their opinion. Well, that's a godlike attribute. Fourth, God is all-powerful, and the state tries to be more and more powerful through centralization. Ludwig von Mises wrote a very insightful book called Omnipotent Government. But while libertarians recognize the godlike characteristic of omnipotence that characterizes the modern state, their attempts to defang the modern state are not going to be successful as long as they are rejecting the true God. God will ensure that it will not work because he's disciplining the country for unfaithfulness. On December 10 of last year, The Libertarian Party of Georgia wrote an article deprogramming the cult of the omnipotent state. Now, it had a lot of good points in it. I actually like the article showing how the state now has almost all the features of a suffocating cult. But it started by saying this. We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state to defend the rights of the individual. This is the first sentence of the official Statement of Principles for the Libertarian Party, a document first adopted in 1974. While some find the language of this statement to be rather extreme, an in-depth examination reveals that there is truth in the comparison of radical, big government devotion and collectivism to cult-like behavior. Stephen Hassan, a mental health counselor specializing in mind control and cults, developed a tool for assessing organizations against this type of authoritarian control. Using research and theory developed by a number of experts, he put together the BITE, B-I-T-E, model to characterize specific methods that institutions use to exercise undue influence over human beings. An acronym for behavior, information, thought, and emotional control, this model describes how each of these areas are used to manipulate individuals in order to impose authority. A close look at these methods reveals undeniable parallels to government entities, corporate interest groups, and the media that support them. While they have been in place for decades, these practices have rapidly escalated over the past couple of years. But have libertarians been able to defang the state? No. Scripture presents a tyrannical state as one of God's tools to discipline a country and to discipline God's people. And until the church wakes up and joyfully embraces these inescapable concepts, God's going to continue to push our noses into the poop, so to speak. You know, the training of the cat to go outside until we until we learn better. If you fail to submit to the true God, God will force you to feel the oppression of your false god, the state. Next comparison. God is Savior, and the state tries to be Savior. A great book that was written a long time ago showing this is by R.J. Rushdooney. It's called The Messianic Character of American Education. So if you have doubts that the state is trying to be Savior, I think that will evaporate your doubts. And both Joshua and the book of Judges exemplify all of these points I'm talking about today. Next, God is lawgiver, and the state tries to take over that function. Next, God is in providential control of all things, sustaining and keeping them. And the state inevitably tries to control every sector and sustain every sector. By the way, this is not new. This goes all the way back to ancient Egypt and Rome. You know, they were involved in housing developments and food distribution and welfare and all of that kind of stuff. It's just gotten more sophisticated. On every level there is the impulse of the state to take the place of God, and this book shows what needs to be in place before statism will be defanged. It'll only happen through repentance, especially repentance over the church's picking up of the carnal tools of the world and a refusal to pick up the powerful tools that God has given to us. As long as we prefer the state's presence and the security of slavery, statism, will stick around. God will ensure it sticks around. By the way, it doesn't have to inevitably. People say, we'll never get our country restored. The moment the church repents and embraces his law, his blueprints, God can overnight overturn statism. It's not a difficult thing for him to do. Now I'll skip over covenantal inheritance except to say that you can't avoid passing something on to the next generation, whether good or bad. And we need to think keenly about what we need to pass on to our kids and our grandkids if we're gonna be effective in dominion. But because Joshua deals with that a lot more later, I won't deal with it right here. Dominion is something that takes many generations, and without putting planning and forethought into inheritance, we are doomed to failure. So Proverbs says that the godly lays up a heritage and passes on a heritage to their children's children. Inheritance is not just money. It involves values, character, habits, perspective, and other things that, by the way, can only be passed on through continual contact within the home. That's why I'm an advocate of homeschooling. We must think about inheritance. Lastly, infallibility or authority is inescapable. And because R.J. Rushdie wrote an entire book on infallibility as an inescapable concept, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on it. It's a brilliant book, great book. Verses seven through eight make the law of God the authority from which no one can deviate to the right hand or to the left. Well, if you can't deviate from it, it's infallible, right? But we find out very quickly in Judges what happens when the Bible's infallibility is rejected. Immediately, alternative authorities are trusted. Now, it could be the authority of a religious figure, or scientific authority, or your own mind, or a politician who's going to make America great again. We've got no end of politicians who want to do that. And if you disagree with their favored politician because of infallibility, they're going to get mad at you. No, this is the one that we've got to be supporting in all that they do. But there's always going to be a trust in some authority of the creature if the authority of the creator is rejected. Just another example, right now the CDC has become an infallible authority for many people in the area of medicine. And it doesn't do any good to show the CDC has changed its opinion numerous times And even demonstrating it's a political tool. No, people will ferociously insist we must trust it. And by the way, that's what Facebook has been doing to me numerous times. They tell me, no, you need to trust the CDC's opinion on the subject. Now, I debated whether to even preach on these seven inescapable. This is not as exegetical of a sermon as most of the sermons in this book are going to be. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized if the church does not, once again, embrace these concepts which undergird not just this chapter, but are repeated over and over in this book, we're not going to be successful in taking on the land. These seven concepts must be loved. They must be seen as inescapable. We've got to be convinced they're inescapable, because we're going to be tempted to abandon them. And we've got to say, no, no, no, it's inescapable. I can't abandon them, so I might as well embrace them properly. So to repeat these points, it's not a question of servanthood versus no servanthood, but whom do you serve? As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. It's not a question of eschatology versus no eschatology, but are you willing to have your view of the future framed by the Bible alone and not by man and not by circumstances? As for me and my house, we're going to imitate Joshua and Caleb. Third, it's not a question of dominion versus no dominion. The choice is satanic dominion or the dominion of Jesus. Are you willing to allow pagans to continue to control your lives, or will you welcome the limited government that true Christians should value? As for me and my house, we embrace God's call for a biblical theocracy. which limits church authority and limits state authority and gives maximum liberty for everyone. You can see why Satan has tried to demonize that word theocracy. A true biblical theocracy is the most liberating, blessed thing that you can have. We have a theocracy right now. It's a pagan theocracy and it's suffocating, suffocating. Fourth, it is not a question of antithesis or no antithesis, but who defines the antithesis, God or man? As for me and my house, we refuse to be intimidated by the antithesis of the world, and we gladly and unapologetically embrace the antithesis of the Bible, cancel culture or no cancel culture. Fifth, it is not a question of God's presence being depended upon. All men depend upon some God. The question is, are the attributes of God being blasphemously stolen by the state or not? All men need to somehow trust these attributes of God or they would not be able to function. But sadly, they tend to attribute these attributes to the state. As for me and my house, we're going to let God be God and not allow any creature to assume God's attributes. Sixth, it is not a question of inheritance or no inheritance. Okay? It is guaranteed you will pass on an inheritance to your children. But is it going to be money or debt? Is it going to be godly inheritance or a sinful one? Is it going to be a biblical worldview or a pagan one? As for me and my house, we'll do everything in our power to pass on a godly heritage to our children's children. Seventh, it is not a matter of infallibility or no infallibility. All men trust something implicitly. The issue is how reliable is your authority? If it's your puny mind, you're going to be in trouble. If it's somebody else who appeared not too long ago is going to disappear off the stage of world history, you are going to be in trouble. Only the infallibility of the Bible is 100% trustworthy. As for me and my house, we will affirm only one infallible standard, the Bible. All else we will treat as subject to error. So help us God. Amen. Father, we thank You for Your Word, and I pray that we would lay hold of it. We would lay hold of all of these points that Your Word repeatedly calls us to and that the church has been so tempted to abandon. Please, Father, bring revival, bring reformation, bring a restoration of trust in the sufficiency of your Word for all of life. And, First Peter, you have said that your Scriptures provide for us everything that we need for life and godliness. 1 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, we affirm a belief in that promise there that your Scriptures are sufficient to make the man of God thoroughly equipped for every good work. Father, may we continue to have a confidence that this is indeed true. Bless this, your people, Father, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.