This sermon emphasizes the importance of being part of a spiritual family within the church, highlighting the concept of submission to God and leaders, the need to give God all the glory, and the significance of radical submission and rebuke as expressions of love. It stresses the value of allowing everyone, regardless of age or experience, to have a voice in the church as part of a loving and disciplined family.

Father, I pray that you'd watch over us, Lord Jesus, as a little flock of yours. Help us, Lord Jesus, to always be sensitive towards you, Lord Jesus. We want your Holy Spirit to guide this church, protect this church, prune this church, perfect it, Lord Jesus. You're coming soon. We're going to have to all stand before you, Lord Jesus. Help us to present before you a heart of wisdom. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You know, one of the things that we have as a church is the fact that we can be a family. It's one of the things that has really blessed me, has changed my life about the church, which is it's a family. If you think about the family table, if you think about the family gathering, most of you are people who have committed to this church. This setting is like a family gathering. We're all sitting at a table, and we're all children of God. We're all not only children of God, but we've decided to commit to this particular church, this particular family. It's a very intimate, beautiful setting that our church ought to really embrace. That God is our Father, who welcomed us in, and there are many families, just like you all represent many families. Thanksgiving is an example where you could go to your own family gathering, sometimes with your brothers, sometimes with your own cousins, and could have lunch together, dinner together. In that sense too, other churches all over the area are little families of God. We're not discounting their family. When I meet with my boy, my kids, and my wife, that's my family, but that's not saying anything about your family. I'm not knocking your family in any way when I say, you're not invited. This is my family gathering. This is my family dinner, because we're going to now have an intimate time as a family together. The local church was meant to be like that, I believe, and it was never meant to be exclusive of everybody else, but people could choose what is the family we want to be a part of, and there are many different church families. When we were meeting about seven years ago, six years ago, we came to the point where we realized that those who were meeting here, the majority of them, wanted to be part of a family together. This was their spiritual family. That is how we started looking at the church, and one of the things that was very important to us is that everybody must have a voice. It is a very dysfunctional family if we sit in a family gathering, and I tell my two-year-old and my four-year-old, don't talk. We don't want to hear from you, because you only babble. You make a mess. Half the things you say don't make sense. You completely change the topic. We were having a wonderful conversation. Now, just don't talk. You don't want a son of family. That's an organization. The organization is where they lead, the eloquent, and all speak. You really want to practice what it means to be a family, and to be a family means we should allow, we should have the place where everybody can share. Everybody is a matter of time, but everybody who's a part of the family who said we want to submit to these elders should have the opportunity and the freedom to share, and they should be able to get up in their own stumbling ways, some more eloquent than others. Some are 15 years old in the faith. Some are two years old in the faith, but we should allow the two-year-old to speak. We should allow the 15-year-old to speak, and we allow that atmosphere of love to persist. It's extremely important. Those of you who are members of this church all can't share here. We have a small minority of people who share here. We don't restrict it, but that's how it's worked out. Why? Because now we have a group that meets on Tuesday, a group that meets, two groups that meet on Friday, different times that we've got, a women's group that meets on Sundays, smaller groups where we do encourage people to share. So it's extremely important for us to be able to have that place in the family of God, which is the macro church, which is the universal church, which includes saints from 2,000 years, Paul and Peter and James and John and many other saints from 2,000 years. They're all part of that macro church. But then God has individual churches at particular times, the church in Ephesus, and now you've got many churches in the Bay Area. But God didn't want us to float around, just like he didn't want children to be in foster homes all the time. That was not his intention. Until sin came, God's intention was that everybody should be a family. They should be a family. There should be a father and a mother and children, and that children should grow up in a family. That is our heart with the church. That's why we say for visitors, come, take your time, because it's like an adoption process. You're being adopted into a family. You just don't get adopted into any old family. You've got to check out the parents, see what kind of parents they're going to be. Are they going to treat you right? Are they going to feed you right? Are they going to train you right? That's what, if I had to entrust my children to somebody else to parent them, I'm going to have a very, very strict questionnaire, and I'm going to be very careful. I know families, I've been talking to some who are really researching which school their children should go to. My goodness, the amount of time we spend trying to figure out where to send our children to school. Well, we give our children a million times more attention than we give our church. What church do you go to? Have you researched carefully the church you're going to? It's like you're joining a family. I mean, these kind of truths are not being practiced. You hop from church to church, listen to this message, listen to that message. Never committing because the church as a family has not taken root. The commitment that one has to a family, one has spent much more research, one is much more interested in what the school our children go to than the church we're on. It shows a sense of warped priorities, horribly warped priorities that were given into the thinking of this world. And again, I say that most of us don't have children that old, but you have to watch it. As we see our children and the amount of time all of us in this particular part of the world, especially in some of our cultures, how much energy we give towards educating our children and the health of our children and the health of ourselves. Some of us may spend more time thinking about how to be healthy physically than to be healthy spiritually. We may be able to spout out, if somebody would ask you, hey, how do you eat healthy? Well, I tell you what to do with the oils, I tell you what to do with the butters, I tell you what kind of butters are good and bad, what kind of oils are good and bad, what kind of carbs are good and bad, what kind of cholesterol is good and bad. Well, can you tell me how to be healthy spiritually? Well, go listen to a sermon. That's the best I can give you. Oh, why? Because I've researched health, physical health, and all these things, because it's more important. Spiritual health, the new agreement, verses in scripture, listen to a sermon. I'm a humble man. I don't know much. I'm used to falling in the same year. I go talk to somebody else. We don't take our health that way. Our blood pressure goes up a little bit. We're scared. We stay off that sugar real quickly. We have to understand that part of these things will get better if we become part of a church, which is a family, and you've got good leaders who act like good older brothers. God is my witness. I never look at anybody in this church as my child. God says we're shepherds. Bobby, Jeremy, and I are shepherds, but never, never for one second have I looked at any of you as, you know, my children or anything like that. I'm not even old enough to do that, but I do know that I've been given responsibility, along with Bobby, Jeremy, to take care of this family. It's the responsibility that God has given me, just as an older brother has been given the keys. Make sure your younger brothers and sisters eat their food, keep their rooms cleaned, make sure they take a shower or take a bath, make sure they brush their teeth. These are the kind of things that God has given to us as leaders, and we have to make sure that all of you who have been committed to us, that you grow in the faith, that you don't stay stagnant, that you're not going backwards. But it has to be an environment of love. The love of the Father has to become so rich towards us. As we know the love of the Father, then we, as leaders, must also lead with love as we do that. One of the requirements, one of the requirements that we need to have in this church, and it's proclaimed even physically, one of the requirements that we need to have in this church, and to realize it is the most important virtue in the context of a family, is submission. You know what's the one verse given to children? Okay. Submit. You know how many four-year-olds think that they know more than their parents? You know how many 14-year-olds think that they know more than their parents? I was four, and I was 14. I speak from personal experience. What is the verse from God to me as a 14-year-old boy? Submit. Obey. Obey radically. Does my 14-year-old, as I have a 14-year-old, do I know more than my parents? Possibly, in some areas. I could even be right. What is the command from God? Obey. Submit. And the covering of the head that some of us investigated, who were here six years, seven years ago, was a study of what we were trying to understand. God, why did you give me these things? The new agreement is different from the old agreement. Gone is the Sabbath. Gone is eating pork when we shouldn't eat pork. Gone is the principle of tithing. So all these symbols are gone. All these laws are gone. But what about head covering? We had to study it and say, Lord, is this relevant to us? And there are two things that the head covering represents, that for us as a church grabbed ahold of us in a rich way. And the two principles there is part of the reason why I believe that most Christendom has gone in a different way. And I honestly don't care about the physical act of it as much. We want to obey all of the commands, even the least of the commands. And head covering is one of the least of the commands. There's no doubt in my mind about it, the physical act. But we want to obey everything that's in the new agreement. And as far as we can tell, from all the light God's given us, 1 Corinthians 11, which talks about the head covering, is in the new agreement. It's part of the new mind scheme. But as I said, it's the least of the commands. But the two spiritual principles that are so important that the physical head covering is a small indication of is submission and God must get on the door. And there's a reason why I think, personally, at least my opinion, why the Christian church has found a way to excuse that out. But to me, I see that the two spiritual principles have also been squandered by the Christian church. I find that very few churches teach strongly on submission. And teach strongly on God must get all the glory. And we can even find Christian leaders who can speak wonderful sermons. But I can say this with all humility before God, as the Lord has shown me the filthiness of seeking my own glory as I stand on the pulpit, I've been able to notice that. And sometimes wonderfully eloquent people have a desire to grow glory to themselves. And the only reason I'm able to pick it up is because God has shown me the great filthiness of it. And the reason God showed me the great filthiness, one of the milestones in that was because of the principle of head covering that we had to study. So I want to make sure that all of us in our church understand the trivialness of the physical act of head covering. It's really trivial, even though it's in God's Word. It's a small commandment. It's the least of the commands that's out there. I'm comfortable saying that. But the spiritual principle behind it is massive. And as I look at young people, as I look at myself, when I look at the spirit of submission, it is one of the primary characteristics that I want to look at myself and say, what is the quality of my spiritual life? It is a radical desire to submit. And who must get all the glory in my life? I must be radically desiring that God must get all the glory. As we've heard, Lord, when I've come to present my heart of wisdom on that final day, did it convict you like it convicted me? Lord, I want you to be proud of me. And you see this heart of wisdom? That was in my heart when I was convicted, as I heard today. And it's still about me. It is still a little bit about me that I want you to be proud of me. Lord, you are proud of me. I will wait past that. But I really want to major in giving you all the glory. I am an ant. I'm a worm. I'm a piece of dust. You must get all the glory. But as we immerse ourselves in these truths of submission, and God, you must get all the glory, then we make progress. And dear brothers and sisters, this is one of the things that we in this church will underline and triple underline and quadruple underline. Please don't miss this. People who are coming to this church, who are committed to this church, you're going to be sitting at this dining table. We're going to tell you, you can have the mic. You can speak. You're a two-year-old. You're a two-month-old. You can battle. You're a 22-year-old. You're an 82-year-old in the faith. It doesn't make a difference. Everybody gets the mic. It's a family. We love you. I want to give everybody an opportunity to have a voice. But let's not lose the most important thing that the Lord has entrusted to us as the leaders in this church. Don't miss out on submission. Don't miss out on giving God all the glory. If we miss out on these things, it's useless, all the Bible knowledge we get, all the expertise we have in communicating the new covenant church, if we don't eradicate desire to give God all the glory. If we don't eradicate and say, Lord, I want to be thoroughly a man under submission. Let me show you that verse in Matthew chapter 8, where it talks about the centurion. We know the centurion story in Matthew chapter 8, where the centurion comes and says, look, my servant is suffering, paralyzed at home, verse 6. And Jesus says in verse 7 in Matthew chapter 8, verse 7, I will come and heal him. But the centurion says, look, Lord, I'm not worthy because, but you can see the word and you can get, because, here's the reason, Lord, I know you can see the word. You don't need to come to my home. Verse 9, because I too, I also, I am a centurion and I too am a man under authority. He as a centurion noticed that Jesus was a man under authority. And because of that, he also had authority. God needs to see of every single person here in New Government Christian Foundation, that you are men and women under authority. And we're not telling you to be under our authority in a vacuum. You know this. We too, as elders, are men under authority. And we practice it. You don't see it, but we practice it. We seek to practice it. To not do as we think we should at New Government Christian Foundation. Not because we don't know that the scriptures we're studying, we study the scriptures. We have points of view that we study. But we are so gripped to be people under authority that we'd rather do the thing that we're uncomfortable with if the authority tells us to do it. This is how Jesus lived. And Jesus had such unrestricted access to the Father, that you know the voice of the Father is so crystal clear. We are not, we've been so clouded with sin that God, in the family of God, gives us other people. He says, here's a person, submit to this person. You don't like what they believe. You don't think that's right. There's another godly man. There's another person here and there. Seek with all of your heart to submit to somebody. Move. Leave town. Go to another town. If you find a godly man in Colorado, if you find a godly man in Seattle, I highly encourage you to submit to this person. Not because we're trying to build a cult or anything. But it is because of our protection. And your brothers and sisters, it's a lost virtue. Show me, show me a man who stands in the pulpit. And you can tell, if I point this man out to you, this man gives God all the glory. He doesn't seek the opinions of man at all. I struggle to find people. People send me YouTube videos all over the place, all over the world. I struggle. I look at myself and I judge myself. I look at some of the things I've spoken years ago and I say, I hope nobody ever listens to it. Because I can see I'm seeking the honor of man here and there. Maybe you don't spot it. I can. And I'm disgusted by it. I want to tear it up. I want to burn it up. I want to somehow undelete that YouTube link. I wish nobody would listen to it because it smells bad to me. My own sermons. And I thank God that he's giving me a greater distaste for it. To seek any of human's glory. It's the idols that come up in our lives. And God is my witness. I long to submit. I have no desire to have anybody under submission to me. I long to submit. What a happy place to be it is. It is such a beautiful, peaceful place to be under radical submission to somebody. Who do you radically submit to? You're a member of this church. What you're saying is, we ask you this when you're joining the church. Are you happy to, are you happy, joyfully to submit to the three of us? We have not much to look at. We don't have any Bible school degrees, all that stuff. Please, there are plenty of other much more credentialed people in the Bay Area. Do you really want to submit to us? If you're trying to make it as plain as possible, if you don't want to compromise, please don't come here and don't submit to us. Go to another church, but submit to them. When people are saying, we're leaving this area, we're leaving the church, we want to go somewhere else. We say, fine, go. But please don't go sit at home. Don't go and just sit and become a pube and go and radically submit to somebody. We hope that the spirit of submission and the spirit of giving God glory will really be some of the trophies that we carry. I hope it'll be something that all of us will be able to demonstrate. And I want to say something personally, I mean, very specifically. We have instructed folks who speak here to take full minutes. That's an email we send every week. And we instruct people, this is what it means to prophesy. Pay attention to it. We don't ask you to submit to many things. But it's for our good that we're asked to submit. We ask the women to put a cloth on their heads if they're a member of this church, if they want to come up and speak. Cover their heads. Submit. When we ask you to do certain things, submit. We don't ask big things, you know that. We don't ask you for your money. Have you ever asked, have I ever asked you to come and do something in my house and I haven't paid you for it? I come, I invite you to my house to eat my food. I say, bring some food. Any of your elders asked you to do anything? Maybe you want to compensate people. The things we ask you to submit is in small areas. But God is looking at these things, dear brothers. I'm speaking specifically because I care for what the Lord thinks of NCCA. And we cannot get flabby in the long areas. It'll ruin us. We can get very, very good at understanding God's word. We can become experts in many things. But if we don't become a church that radically submits, we're in trouble. And people are watching this live stream. People are watching this on YouTube. There are hundreds of hits that we get every week. What are they going to see? Are they going to see NCCF becoming a church that's increasing in knowledge? I hope they'll see these people are people under the bar. These children, what do you want from my, what do I want from my children? I want my children to be like, these people are children under authority. I'm working on it. You know that. I definitely love my wife and I. They're not trying to run the company. They're not trying to run the house. My children are not allowed to run the house. Children must know that they must submit. And the family of God, all of us, including me, including the elders, must demonstrate as we stand here and speak through the videos, we are men under authority. We are women under authority. Ask the Lord to open your eyes. Let us ask the Lord to open our eyes to this. And let us also ask the Lord to say, Lord, there are two things I want to demonstrate. I want to demonstrate that you get all the glory. I was going to speak about the love of God as a father. Um, but that's why I took a few minutes to pray before I pray. Because I said, Lord, Jesus, what should I speak on? I always want to follow the Lord's leading. One of the things I was going to speak about the father's love is the father's love is he welcomes you, creeps over you, sings over you with songs of joy. But the other thing he also does is he rebukes whom the father loves. And this is one of the unique things about our church. We will be a church that loves like the father loves. So we will love like the father loves and sing over you and embrace what you've got to say and allow anybody to come and share. But we also want to be a church like the father. We've encouraged many people, everybody for years to seek to prophesy. It's been years of still staying silent, who's hurting, you or us? Hiding behind fears of what other pieces of dust think of you. I'm afraid to get up and say a few words about what the Lord is going to do. Let's learn, dear brothers and sisters, we're going to stand for the judgment seat of Christ. We're going to have to stand for the judgment seat of Christ. We're going to have to present a heart of wisdom. I'll end with this. I have many friends who I've known over the years of Christendom. I was following a very different path in my early years as a Christian. There were people who came from non-Christian families, Hindu families, atheistic families here in America, who had such a love and a devotion for the Lord. They had such a fire for the Lord compared to me. I grew up in a Christian family, so all of this was old news. But God in his mercy has me here. And some of my friends, I say this without any pride, but with sadness, they've fallen by the wayside. Their zeal is gone. And I know what saved me. It was I had a loving father, not only God, but I had a physical father and loving elders who would rebuke. They loved me. They always loved me. But what they also did was they faithfully rebuked me. And I would have been gone by the wayside if I wasn't rebuked. Dear brothers and sisters, when was the last time you got a rebuke from a man of God? Embrace it. I'm not pointing fingers at anybody. But I do desire that this church will grow from string to string, will become a disciplined church, will shine as people all over the world who are watching these videos will see this is a church that takes the God, Lord God, seriously. And man, your church are disciplined and submitted people. God, let me call you a few years to go somewhere else. You want to drive the spirit of submission into us, want to drive the spirit of God, you must get God, all the glory into us. Let's bow our heads and ask the Lord to speak to us. Bobby, you can pray for us as we close.