Church Government

[00:00:02] Okay guys, so we are going to continue talking about the doctrine of the church today. [00:00:08] So you can look at your handouts. [00:00:12] To start, I want to ask a question about authority. That's kind of a big theme for this topic. So what are some examples of authority in your life? Just regular, every day. What's an authority? Yah, Levi. [00:00:30] Teachers over students. That's right, yeah, but they have authority. [00:00:33] That's right, yes. [00:00:36] Parents have authority over whom? [00:00:39] Their kids. Yeah, that's right, yeah. Escher, the police. Yeah, they have an authority. [00:00:45] That's right, yeah, you have one. [00:00:50] The government also does have authority. [00:00:53] Uh huh. [00:00:55] What else? Anyone else? [00:01:03] Rich, you can have my key. [00:01:06] While Rich takes this key. Does anyone else have any examples of authority? Yeah, church authority. Yeah, that's another one. I wasn't going to keep going necessarily until we got that because these are all legitimate kinds. But you might think about it. You think about parents and you think about maybe pastors. You think about teachers and police officers in the government. And the authorities aren't all the same. Right? [00:01:30] You know, a police officer can't march into your house and tell you to clean your room. [00:01:35] That would be weird and wrong. Your parents can. [00:01:40] A teacher cannot handcuff you and take you to prison. [00:01:43] But if you have broken the law or are suspected to do so, a police officer can do that. [00:01:49] There are other examples we can make of authority. I specifically was thinking of teachers in a classroom and it made me think of back in the day when a teacher would leave the classroom. Has anyone ever had that happen? Teachers got to run out. What happens when that happens? [00:02:10] Yeah, chaos. Craziness happens, right? [00:02:15] Boys stand on chairs. [00:02:16] I will not confirm or deny if I have ever done that. [00:02:20] But chaos would ensue and oftentimes it was led by me when I was young. I'm not encouraging that, I'm just reporting the facts of history. [00:02:30] But yeah, so for that reason we need authority. That's a really clear example that you need authority. Without authority there is utter chaos. You're not going to be learning anything helpful, if anything at all, without the authority of a teacher. [00:02:45] In fact, without authority, government wise, this is why we would have something called anarchy, right? [00:02:52] No authority. And it is universally known that that is a terrible thing. [00:02:58] Bad would occur. [00:03:02] But we don't always like authority, right? [00:03:06] We don't always like it. Maybe we disagree with it or we question why maybe someone in our life has so much authority or why we don't have as much authority over our own lives as we want. That's especially True. At your age, you're kind of in between. You're not children and you're not like recognized adults. And so you kind of are in this in between space where it's really difficult to know how do I have authority? How do I have authority over myself? [00:03:32] But even though we don't always like it, we have to know from some of these examples that we need it and God gave it to us. [00:03:41] So that's what we're going to talk about as we talk about church government. [00:03:45] But let's review before we get too far into it. What is theology, Asher? I think I did Krebs last time. [00:03:56] Oh, then you go this time. [00:04:00] The study of God and how to be more like him. Okay. And so what have we been covering? The main topic we've been covering lately. [00:04:08] Doctrine of the church. Yeah. Doctrine of the church. So what aspects of this doctrine have we covered? What lessons have we done? [00:04:17] Been a few now. [00:04:21] Yeah. [00:04:22] Church discipline. [00:04:24] Church. Yeah. The nature and marks of the church. [00:04:29] Unity and purity. [00:04:32] Yeah. Church leaders or church offices. We talked about pastors, elders and deacons. [00:04:38] That's great. Yeah, that's all we've covered. So today we're going to church government. [00:04:43] There's another word for this. The word is polity. [00:04:47] You know, I'm going with church government because I don't think we use the word polity that much, but it's. It's kind of referring to the same thing. Church polity, church government. Here's the summary, the summary sentence, the definition of church government. Church government is the way authority is structured in and among the church offices and the congregation. So it's the way authority is structured in and among the church offices and the congregation. [00:05:15] How different people, the members of the church and then the officers of the church, how they relate to one another in terms of authority. Who's in charge? [00:05:24] Who's in charge of what? What type of authority they have. [00:05:27] Those are questions that the church has to answer. [00:05:31] Now, I hope that you know my fear, maybe, as we cover some of these lessons, is that maybe you find it boring. Church polity doesn't sound like a book you would pick up if you wanted to go have a nice beach read on vacation. [00:05:47] But these are actually some of the most practical lessons that we've covered. [00:05:53] They really do affect you, because if you're a believer, then you need to be a member of a church. And if you're a member of a church, then authority and church government directly affects your lives. And I would argue the most important aspect of your lives which is your faith and your relationship to your church. So it really is important and practical. So let's see if we can get anything useful out of this. But we'll start with our affirmations, as always. So the first one is that church government is headed by Christ. Headed by Christ. So he is the head. [00:06:26] Christ is the head of church government. [00:06:29] And to see this, that the church government is headed by Christ, we're going to go to 1 Corinthians 14, First Corinthians 14. [00:06:51] Let you guys get there. We're going to read verse 33. So it's at the end of 1 Corinthians or close to the end. [00:07:00] First Corinthians 14:33 says this. So look along. [00:07:04] For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. [00:07:10] We'll just read that first part. For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. [00:07:16] So according to this, why do we need to have church government? [00:07:26] Yeah, keep everything in order. Are you going to say same thing? Yeah. [00:07:32] And even more importantly than just keeping things in order is that it reflects who God is in his nature is order and peace, not chaos. [00:07:45] God is a God of order. We see this in the world. Things are ordered. Rightly. The world is beautiful. [00:07:52] The movies and the pictures, the paintings, the art that we like, we usually like because there is order to it. There's something beautiful in there. [00:08:01] God is a God of order. It reflects his nature to have order. So why shouldn't his people, when gathered, be ordered when we are not ordered, when we're dysfunctional, disunified and chaotic in the church, which does happen, we're not reflecting his character. So we need church government so we can rightly reflect God to the world. [00:08:22] Go now to Ephesians 1, that's just a little to the right. [00:08:29] Ephesians 1:22. Can someone read Ephesians 1:22? [00:08:42] Do you want to read it? Yeah. [00:08:45] And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church. [00:08:50] He put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church. Who is the him gave him as head over all things to the church. [00:08:58] That's right. Christ Jesus. Head over him so we can read. God put all things under Jesus feet and gave Christ as head over all things to the church. [00:09:08] Another place we can see this, we won't turn there is Colossians 1:18. [00:09:13] So Christ is the head of the church. [00:09:16] This is pretty clear. We see head, he's the leader. He's in charge, the top authority but it's also kind of a metaphor for a person's body. Right. So Christ is the head, the members of the church, the church itself is his body. [00:09:32] So we are the body to his head. What does this mean for the church? Practically? [00:09:53] Yeah, that Christ should be like. Should govern the church. [00:09:58] He should be like the leader. [00:10:01] Yeah, Christ should govern the church. He's the leader. [00:10:05] So is there anything else you guys can think of based on that? [00:10:09] How does this, what does this mean for the church? [00:10:13] Yeah, that we should submit to Christ's authority. Yeah, so he's the leader. We should submit to his authority. We should obey his commands. We should follow him. If your body did not follow your head and your brain, well, that would be problems. You know, your brain, I guess, even tells you to breathe or whatever. I'm not a. I don't know that much about this stuff. But you would probably die without a head, right? [00:10:37] We need the head. [00:10:39] We need Christ to guide us. We need to submit to his authority. [00:10:44] So is Christ a good head of the church? [00:10:49] The answer is yes. [00:10:50] 1 Peter 5:4 calls him the chief shepherd. [00:10:55] Which we did study this not that long ago on Wednesday night, just briefly. He's the chief shepherd. [00:11:00] Why is he called the chief shepherd? [00:11:03] Why do you think he's called the chief shepherd? [00:11:15] What does a shepherd do? [00:11:19] Looks after the flock of sheep. Who would the sheep be in this metaphor? Us Church members. Yeah. So Christ is the chief shepherd, but maybe specifically why the word chief then? So we can understand. Christ is the good shepherd. He's the shepherd over the sheep. But why chief shepherd? Because the pastors are shepherds in a way that they lead the congregation. So Christ would be a over the pastors as well. Exactly right. You may recall that the word pastor is the word for shepherd. [00:11:46] So that nickname given to bishops, elders, overseers, pastors, that nickname, pastors, which we've largely stuck with the most in our tradition, is referring to their function as shepherds. [00:11:59] Sometimes you might hear them called under shepherds. That's a not super common, but still a relatively well known way to refer to pastors. They are under shepherds. [00:12:11] They shepherd under the chief shepherd. They seek to do his work on earth, shepherd the flock of God on earth. While Christ is in heaven, the good shepherd is up in heaven. [00:12:22] So I think it should encourage us that Christ is the chief shepherd to our human shepherds and pastors because he is good. [00:12:32] And without him, they could shepherd in an evil way. They could abuse their authority. But if they are to follow the chief shepherd and emulate how he shepherds, then we are taken care of. We'll be protected and guided. We'll be communicated the truths of God. So that is why it is good that Christ is the chief shepherd. [00:12:53] So the government is headed by Christ. That's important because authority doesn't just come up out of nowhere. We can't just create authority. Authority comes from somewhere. It is always derived and given, and ultimately it comes from God. [00:13:10] So all authorities we have, whether it is government, comes from God. [00:13:16] Genesis 9 tells us that. [00:13:19] Romans 13. [00:13:20] Parents, their authority comes from God. We see see that all over Scripture, even in the Ten Commandments, which some of you guys just watched a movie about every authority we can come up with. [00:13:32] We can kind of see how God is the initiator of all authority because he is the authority over all things. [00:13:41] So we need to know that. And so because it all comes from Christ, he is the fountainhabit of authority. We have to have some method and structure of authority in church. [00:13:54] So the second affirmation, this is about other traditions, but is that the church's government is sometimes. [00:14:01] And if you don't know how to spell these words, they are written below Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism. [00:14:08] So I wrote those below so you guys can write the definitions by them, but also know how to spell those words. [00:14:14] So these are. This is not how our church structures authority. These are other Christian ways to structure it. I disagree with them. [00:14:24] But they're not necessarily all false churches because they have this authority structure. They have biblical reasoning. I can't really get into it a ton just for the sake of time. But they don't just make these things up. They do derive them from the Bible. I just think whatever I'm going to present later on, our structure is more biblical. Let's start with Episcopalianism. Does anybody know what that is? [00:14:50] Maybe it's a long shot. Anybody know what that is? [00:15:03] The denomination called the Episcopal Church is kind of hard to find because they've been dying out after they went very far to the theological left, liberalizing in the 20th century, and they've been dying since. But we're actually talking more about the structure called Episcopalianism less than the denomination. So maybe if you know of Episcopal churches, maybe kind of distance that from your mind because they don't all look exactly like that. [00:15:30] So all of these structures, again, believe that Christ is the head of the church. If they're functioning properly, he is the final authority. [00:15:39] So since he's the final authority overall, the way that we're going to kind of Divide up these different ways to structure the church is final earthly authority. So who on earth, because God is in heaven, who on earth has the final authority in the church? Does that make sense? That's how we're going to distinguish these. [00:15:58] So before it gets to Christ, who has the last call for Episcopalianism, this is what it is. The final earthly authority resides in the bishop. [00:16:07] B, I S H O P. [00:16:10] The final earthly authority resides in the bishop. [00:16:14] So in this system, there are kind of three levels of authority. Bishops are on top. [00:16:19] All right. [00:16:20] Presbyters, which are called elders or priests, depending on the denomination, are next. So there's bishops, then elders or priests, and then deacons are third. [00:16:32] Members of the church typically do not have authority. They're just members. [00:16:38] Now, some traditions will give them the ability to control their budget or something like that, but that's kind of a delegated authority from the bishop. The bishop has to give the members that authority. [00:16:50] Bishops also will oversee multiple local churches, kind of like a region. And each of those local churches will be led by a priest or. Or an elder, but he will answer to the bishop that's in authority over him. And here too, deacons serve the priests and the bishops. [00:17:07] Do you guys know what churches follow this form of government? Like different denominations? Any guesses? [00:17:18] You'll recognize some of them maybe besides the Episcopal Church? Because that is one. [00:17:28] Any guesses? [00:17:30] That's okay. You don't necessarily need to know that, but it might be helpful. The Church of England, the Church of England, the state church, also known as Anglicanism. Which Church of England are Anglicans? But there are also Anglicans in other nations. So there's the North American Anglican Communion. They're not Church of England, but they're Anglican. [00:17:51] Which Anglo comes from the English. [00:17:54] Actually, Episcopalians were an offshoot of the Church of England in early America. It was distancing themselves from the Church of England, but it had the same structure. [00:18:04] So that's what Episcopalians are, the Methodists, United Methodists. I don't know if they're maintaining this same structure as they've split, but I know the United Methodist Church held that and most popularly the Roman Catholic Church. [00:18:18] They have an Episcopalian government. They have bishops, they have local priests, they have deacons. It's a little more complicated as they have a single bishop who is the top dog. We call him the Pope, but he's the Roman bishop, the Bishop of Rome, but they kind of have this same structure. So Episcopalians and these others will look at Acts 15 if you want to write it down and read it later. You can. We can't read it all. In Acts 15, there's a council of church leaders that come together to decide an issue of doctrine as evidence that there were leaders higher up. [00:18:54] So they use this as evidence that there were leaders higher up than just the members that would come together and make decisions that would be authoritative on the churches. That's their argument. [00:19:05] So they're saying bishops and apostles come together, which they understand bishops as being like the heirs of the apostles. They come together, they make decisions, and then the churches follow it. So that's their reasoning. [00:19:17] Let's go to Presbyterianism. Does anyone know what Presbyterianism is? [00:19:23] You guys have probably heard of Presbyterians, right? [00:19:26] There are lots of Presbyterians nearby. [00:19:30] Does anyone know how their structure works? Probably not. [00:19:34] In fairness, probably a lot of them don't either, but that's not a mark on them. I think a lot of Baptists don't know how their leadership works either. [00:19:41] But for Presbyterians, the final earthly authority resides in the elders. It's not the bishops. They don't have bishops, elders. They would probably say bishops and elders are the same office like we would. [00:19:54] So a group of elders, they come together and they make decisions, not the members. And they actually have two types of elders. So they say bishops and elders are maybe the same, but there's two different kinds of elders. There are teaching elders who preach, teach, administer the sacraments, Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and they lead. And there are ruling elders who are not hired by the church. They're just men in the church who make decisions and they lead with the teaching elder. So the teaching elder and the ruling elder come together and they rule. [00:20:28] Presbyterians have several layers of authority on top of this. This is crazy. I didn't know a lot of this stuff. The elders at each local church are called a session. [00:20:38] But multiple sessions from local churches from a region can come together and they form a presbytery. And multiple presbyteries can come together and they form a synod. And at the national level, they're usually called like a general assembly or something like this. And all of those groups can make decisions for all of the groups below them. [00:20:59] Does that make sense? [00:21:01] You don't have to remember all of those words, but if you were a Presbyterian, you would probably do well to memorize them. [00:21:08] Now, what churches follow this? Well, there's the Presbyterian Church of America, there's the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, there's the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and then there's even the liberal off branches like the Presbyterian Church of The USA and others. [00:21:22] So Presbyterians, they say something similar regarding Acts 15. As the Episcopalians, there's a higher level of leadership that comes together to make decisions. [00:21:31] But they also read 1 Timothy 5:17. [00:21:34] If you want to write that down, you can. 1 Timothy 5:17. It mentions the elders who rule well and also those who labor in preaching and teaching. [00:21:43] Now, I don't think this verse really is convincing to say there are two kinds of elders, but that's the text they use. [00:21:50] Now, finally, final affirmation. This is my view. The church's government should be congregational. [00:21:58] Congregational, that's the form of government we have at Arrow Heights. [00:22:03] So in my view and the historic Baptist view, Congregationalism best fits with what the New Testament shows us. For Congregationalists, the final earthly authority resides where earthly authority, the congregation. That's right, the church members. The local congregation is the final earth earthly authority. [00:22:26] Each local church. So there are elders or pastors who lead. Right? We know this, but it is actually the church that has the final authority. [00:22:36] I mean, we can see this. For example, it's the church that votes to call a pastor or not. So that pastor has no authority unless the church has called him into the role. [00:22:47] You know, like how some bishops and elders in other traditions will delegate some authority downward. I mentioned bishops can give authority to churches. Sometimes. [00:22:56] What we think is that the local congregation does the opposite. We delegate authority up. [00:23:02] We have the earthly authority. And I mean we as members, and we give that authority to elders and even to deacons in some ways. [00:23:11] Now, biblically speaking, we can look at a couple of texts. Let's go to Matthew 18, we'll just reference it. We won't read this whole part because we've gone over it a few times lately. [00:23:21] If you look at Matthew 18, just to remind you, looking at verses 15 through 20, this is where we talked about this for church discipline, because they were deciding, or Jesus is telling, how do you decide if someone should be removed from the church for not repenting of a sin? And he says, confront them, ask them to repent. Show them Scripture why they should repent. If they don't bring a small group, do the same thing. And if they again don't repent, take it where? [00:23:49] To the church. [00:23:50] And if they refuse to listen even to the church, he says in verse 17, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. So the way that Jesus describes this situation is he puts the final decision, the final authority on earth is with the church. [00:24:09] He says, the church makes this decision. The final appeal is Made to. To the congregation, not to the elders, not to bishops, but to the congregation. Whereas those other governments, it would be the opposite to be removed. It would have to happen from the top. [00:24:26] Go now to Acts chapter six. [00:24:28] This is another passage we've talked about lately. [00:24:33] Even last week, as we were looking at church offices, because this is where we see deacons appointed for the first time. [00:24:39] So looking at Acts 6:1:6, this is again, they're appointing deacons. [00:24:48] So if you look at verse two, we read and the 12. So that's talking about the apostles. [00:24:54] They summoned the full number of the disciples. [00:24:57] Disciples is a way to describe Christians. So these are the Christians. [00:25:02] The full number of the Christians, the disciples, and said, it's not right that we should give up preaching the word to serve tables. [00:25:07] Therefore, verse three. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of spirit and wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. [00:25:15] So who appointed the first deacons? [00:25:19] It wasn't even the apostles, it was the disciples. It was the followers of Christ. In other words, it is the church that appoints deacons. So deacons or members call elders and pastors. They appoint deacons in church discipline. They are the final appeal. It seems clear to me that the congregation does have the final earthly authority. [00:25:40] And in fact, even Acts 15, which I said Presbyterians and Episcopalians use for their own view, in verse 22 of that chapter, we read then, it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church. [00:25:54] So again, the whole church has a say even in that matter. [00:25:59] So all of this is why Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:5 this. So go to 1 Peter 2:5. [00:26:13] You guys there 1 Peter 2 5. [00:26:16] Give you a second to get there. [00:26:24] All right, first Peter 2:5, Peter says, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. [00:26:42] So there's a lot that we can make of this verse, and we talked about it briefly several weeks ago on Wednesday. But what is the significance of the church being called a holy priesthood? [00:26:53] Does anybody know what does he mean by that, A holy priesthood? [00:27:07] Let me ask this. [00:27:10] Who were priests or what did priests do? We're not thinking of modern day priests, we're thinking of priests. In the Bible, in the Old Testament, what did priests do? [00:27:24] Oh, sorry, yeah, that's right. They made sacrifices to seek atonement for sins and they interceded for the people before God. So the priests went before the presence of God, in particular the high priest on the day of atonement would go into the most holy place where God's presence was. [00:27:46] So what is the significance of the church being called a holy priesthood? [00:28:02] Let me help a little bit. So in the Old Testament, it was just the priests that could go into the inner part of the temple. [00:28:11] And even among those priests, there's just the high priest who could go into the presence of God. And he could go but one time a year on the day of atonement, after making sacrifices for his own sin, and they would still tie a rope to his foot in case he dropped dead. [00:28:25] That was how it worked. And that's what God's holiness demands, really. It is even God's grace that one man could come into his presence. [00:28:34] But now this letter written to Christians broadly, not to elders, not just to deacons or bishops or whatever else, but to church members. Peter says, you are a holy priesthood. [00:28:46] You go before the presence of God. [00:28:49] Your sins have been atoned for. You can intercede, you can come to God, you can make your appeal to him. It is the church that is set apart to act as priests. It is not just elders or bishops or an office that some church traditions call priests. Peter is calling the members priests. [00:29:08] That's why I really don't understand churches that have positions called priests. The church is the priesthood. [00:29:16] The church is the priesthood. [00:29:18] So here's what congregationalism, Congregationalism is and why it matters. [00:29:24] First, church authority tells us who and what on earth. So I think I have a list for this. Church authority tells us who and what on earth represent King Jesus and his kingdom. [00:29:37] So without authority, who's to say who is and isn't a Christian? Who's to say what is and isn't the gospel? Who's to say what we need to believe and what is maybe less essential to believe? [00:29:50] Well, it's the church. And without authority to make those declarations, then the church is not a distinct group in the world. It just becomes mixed with the world and loses its distinctiveness, loses its appeal. [00:30:06] So we need church authority. Number two, church authority creates the local church. [00:30:13] I don't think the local church exists without church authority because we need to come together. We need a church to say you are now a member. And if someone is unrepentant of sin, maybe you are no longer a member. [00:30:27] The church, by coming together under a covenant, baptizing people who come to faith, serving the Lord's supper only to those believers who have been baptized into the church, are making borders around the church. [00:30:41] Now, it's not that we never cross those borders. We go out into the world every single week. But we draw these borders to say, this is the church, it is distinct. This is the holy priesthood. [00:30:51] The gospel call is to everyone to come and enter, but we are different. [00:30:57] So without authority to say who is in and out and do these other things, then there are no borders and there's no more church. [00:31:05] Finally, church authority is essential for Christian assurance and growth. A lot of people struggle with assurance and thoughts of doubt. [00:31:14] Maybe you have thought, especially if you have been baptized young, you might look back and think, what did I truly believe before I was baptized? [00:31:24] Maybe I'm more mature now. Why didn't I grow very quickly at first? Maybe now I'm growing more. [00:31:30] All of these questions can cause us to lose assurance and to doubt. I hear this all the time, not just from people your age, but from people your age and older. [00:31:40] But church authority, when a whole group of people baptizes you, which I know, there's just one guy up there dipping them, but it's a whole church act, everyone in that church that's a member is saying, we believe that you're a believer, you have died to your sin and have been raised to new life. When you have a whole group of people saying that about you, that's a lot more assurance than if it's just an internal feeling that you're trying to attain. You're trying to think, do I feel like I believe? No. The whole church agrees. They see the fruit in your life, which without church authority to tell you who's in and out, to say that you are one of us, to give you the team jersey, then it makes sense why you wouldn't have as much assurance. [00:32:22] But as it is, church authority gives assurance, and then it helps us grow as we are together as members. [00:32:29] So those are the affirmations running out of time. Just do quickly the errors. [00:32:35] The first one I wrote, of course, is reject the papacy of Rome. [00:32:39] That is not biblical. We don't see an example of a pope having such authority. [00:32:45] And then secondly, don't be an anarchist in the church or politically, but in the church specifically. [00:32:53] Some people want to reject all forms of church government. They want to come and go as they please. They don't like the idea of church discipline or the church saying, hey, only believers who have been baptized should take the Lord's Supper. People don't like that. [00:33:05] They don't like churches that have doctrinal statements that say, we believe this, we don't believe this, we cannot be like that. We cannot reject all church authority because we need it. It creates the church. It gives assurance and growth, and it's how we represent King Jesus on earth. [00:33:22] Okay, how can we apply this? Well, we can submit. So enacting the doctrine, submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ, the head of the church, seek to obey all that he commands. [00:33:34] We can support the church's leaders. We can do this by praying for them, seeing how we can help them, going to them for discipleship. [00:33:43] And then finally, we can be members of the church, be a member of the church and be active in it. So if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you've been baptized, you are a member of the church. So you should, you know, if you are confident that you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then talk to me or somebody else about baptism, what membership looks like, and even in the future, if that occurs in your life, join a church. [00:34:07] All right, let's pray briefly, and then we'll run over for the worship service. Father, thank you for your word and for our church government. [00:34:14] Lord, we pray that this would be fruitful in our lives and that we would see how your authority is really a good thing, because we are under the authority of the good Shepherd. Pray this all in Christ's name, Amen.