Come Down, Lord!

  * I have heard some say that I have changed .  They mean by that that I am not preaching and teaching what I used to, that my emphases have changed, my convictions have changed, my leadership has changed.  In fact, it hasn't .  Anyone can go back and listen to the sermons preached at Faith even 8 years ago, and they will find I was saying the same things then.  Actually, I used to grieve over the fact that people seemed to be hearing without hearing.  I suspect that with the onset of the pandemic and the legal implications of what I was teaching that suddenly congregants who weren't hearing began to hear.  And that is why they have become unhappy under the preaching, because they are hearing now with ears that hear!  And now it isn't just theoretical but profoundly practical. The following is a sermon preached in December of 2013.  I have not updated it except to highlight in bold portions particularly relevant now.       Rom...

I have received lots of private correspondence about Romans 13, so here is a brief answer to some of those concerns. Gavin Beers has said that public worship "is the holy convocation of saints with the peculiar promise of His presence and blessing." He then added that that holy convocation "is issued by a divine call through the Church not the State." So w hat ought to be the State's attitude toward the Church?  They are in the words of Beers to "promote and encourage the fulfillment of that call."    They are as Samuel Slater ( Puritan Sermons, vol. 4 ) explained, to "contribute what in them is to the promoting of the true religion, the power of godliness, and a scriptural reformation, together with a hearty and vigorous suppression of profaneness!"  Note carefully the words of the WCF: "The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of he...