I would hold to a view of what's called sphere sovereignty. So God's over everything, right? Christ is Lord over everything. He's Lord over the family, He's Lord over the state, he's Lord over the church, and he's Lord over my individual person. Those basically are seen to be the four realms or spheres of self-government, family, church, state.

Jesus is Lord over all of that, which has massive implications. So let's say I'm a dad, husband, and I'm just trying to be radical by being ordinary, and then the state starts infringing, or we could say it this way, they start getting out of their lane. There is going to be a conviction that says, you know, Acts 5, it's better to obey God than man. And so if the state gets out of its lane in terms of my family, it's better to obey God than man. If the state gets out of its lane for the church, it's better to obey God than man.

And I would argue that the whole COVID episode was a demonstration of the state getting out of its lane. And at the end of the day, the state wants to be God. The state wants to be the sovereign. The state wants to be worshiped. The state wants supreme loyalty.

And that's why we have checks and balances, which aren't actually working altogether that great right now. But here's the thing, is that the minute that the state wants to be Lord, then those that believe in Jesus as Lord cannot comply, which means there are going to be times where we have to resist. And one of the brothers who's here spent 21 days in a Canadian jail because he insisted that Christ was Lord of the Church, not the government. And I think that it is very possible that, you know, by the way, any church that stayed open, in a sense, was doing what Daniel and his friends did. What's interesting about Daniel and his friends is in Daniel 1, they refuse the king's meat and wine, right?

But there's an interesting thing that they do, and that is they go to the guy that's in charge of them and they have this, hey, you know what, we can't do that. That was for conscience sake, right? I believe that that was for conscience sake. So they go to this guy and they go, hey, look, if we'll eat vegetables, check us out in 10 days. And of course God honors that.

But then the ante is upped in chapter 3. And Daniel's three friends, and here's the key, is that they were willing to face the consequences for their civil disobedience, or to put it a different way, they were willing to suffer the consequences for their supreme loyalty to God. Daniel ends up even as an old man in chapter 6. Here's the thing, we're always going to have people that hate us. To me, I think I want to be a good Christian influence in our culture, in our society.

I want to see the church have an impact and all of that, but I'm not under the illusion that somehow all the enemies are going to end up loving us and being influenced by us. We're gonna actually incite even further hostility and opposition. And that's what Daniel does in Daniel 6, really as an old man. And how does he do it? Well, just by doing his ordinary stuff, opening his window and praying.

And so Daniel again takes a stand as an old man against the decree. And so we look at that and I think that it is absolutely vital not only that pastors take a stand when the state gets out of its lane, but also that we're teaching our kids, look, there's going to be a time where you are going to have to make these decisions. And so we instill in them the best that we can by God's grace, faith and courage, because I think for our kids it probably will be worse.