of a paper just to protect me because I was taking children into our own home and I wanted to have some protection. They said, well, you don't need anything. Well, I said, I want it for my own benefit. And so they wrote out a little letter saying that I was doing this work with their blessing and so on. It wasn't very much. But they made up for that in the meantime. I was talking to a young man who is now a superintendent or... director of the home and he said the last time I went over this thing we were making making reports and making them in duplicate or in quadruplet too by the way just sixteen different agencies and three of those were fire departments and they couldn't agree on what they wanted to do to make it safe for the children in the home. There was the local fire department, there was the city, we're outside of the city limits, and then there was a state industrial commission and this controlled fire prevention. We're even under the water pollution board. Don't ask me why, but then I guess in case we happen to walk in some muddy water. You're just, now you have to be subject to all kinds of rules and regulations. But I'll tell you one thing, we always take the top one. If there's a federal law, we say, well, we're going to meet their requirements, and then that'll be sure to meet the state, and if the state we meet the state, then that'll be sure to meet the local one. We go to the top. We take the most strict. Now, you and I ought to be subject to the laws that be here in our country. We ought to be subject to authority. as long as we can be subject to the Lord Himself. But we ought to obey God rather than man. If there's a choice, if we have to make a choice, then we must obey God and go to jail for it. And let me vaccinate you against this, because it just could happen right here, very easily. It could happen right here in the United States. Our nation and many of its authorities are not that... kind and not that willing to help us at all as Christians. But now we are to be subject to the laws that are above all other laws. A citizen of Rome should be subject to Rome, the laws of Rome, the rules and regulations of Rome, and then Philippi secondarily. But then there's another thing we need to think about, not simply the laws, but the customs. You and I are really much more subject to customs than we are to laws. Many of the laws we don't have any choice about. We say, well, it's either that or pay the penalty. But custom is something else. What customs are you subject to? Many Christians feel that we ought to be subject to the customs around us. Somebody said, when you're in Rome, use Roman candles. Well, that isn't exactly a quote, but that's the general idea that people have, that they're supposed to be subject to all these various things that are around you. Oh, no. Let's go back beyond that. Let's go back to the customs of heaven. Now turn the tape over. The rest of this message is on the other side. But custom is something else. What customs are you subject to? Many Christians feel that we ought to be subject to the customs around us. Somebody said when you're in Rome, use Roman candles. Well, that isn't exactly a quote, but that's the general idea that people have, that they're supposed to be subject to all these various things that are around you. Oh, no. Let's go back beyond that. Let's go back to the customs of heaven. You remember the Apostle Paul said, somebody objected to something he said, and he said, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. We are not bound by the customs of this world. We ought to be bound by the customs of heaven. What is it customary to do in heaven, far differently from what is done on earth? And if we're part of that citizenship, We will be willing and glad to obey the customs of heaven, adapt to them, fit in with them, live under them, show by our behavior and our actions that we are citizens of that country. Could people really tell now? Could they tell in your behavior, in your life, could they really tell that you are a citizen of another country? And then we ought to be speaking the language. The Roman soldiers learned the coiny Greek, and they also learned a language which later developed into a kind of Latin language. There were a number of languages spoken in the first century. But Roman citizens had to see to it that they understood whatever language was blessed at that particular time by Rome. Do you speak the language of heaven? I heard a man speak. Don't ask me his name. I wouldn't tell you. But I heard a man speak. And the minute he started out, I knew that he was thoroughly familiar with the culture of our day. I knew that he was familiar with the literature of our day. I knew that he was familiar with the teaching in school, the things that were taught, the disciplines in school. I knew that he was familiar with those. He quoted two verses. in speaking about twenty minutes, and he misquoted both up. I'm not setting a judgment on that man. When I've told you what I've told you, you know exactly what was wrong with that man. That man spoke the language of this world, and he did not speak the language of heaven. He was not familiar with the Scriptures. He was familiar with everything else under the sun. Young people, when you get married, please do something about defining your home as a Christian home. Put some gospel text on your wall. A Christian, forty, fifty years ago, wouldn't have been caught dead in such a place, in a home without any scripture text, without anything to mark them off as being Christian. I realize there are other ways of marking it off. But are you ashamed of the Word of God? Don't you want scripture texts on your walls? Don't you want to think about the language of heaven? There was a dear old man passed away. I had the privilege of preaching his funeral out in Colorado. C.W. Wilson. He was a Kansan. Grew up at Concordia, Kansas. I got acquainted with him before I was married, and that's forty-five years ago. And that man, though he was nearly blind, he had never had real eyesight, even though that man was nearly blind, he had read the Scriptures and memorized the Scriptures. until when he prayed it was just almost a stringing together of scriptures. He could express almost anything to the Lord in the words of scripture. He didn't need much of anything else. And I felt it was a real honor to speak at that man's funeral. And I hope that I use a number of scriptures that made people think of him because he was constantly constantly reverting to the Scriptures. Do you speak the language of heaven? There are a lot of Christians today that are guilty of what has been called mixed or minced oaths. They wouldn't swear. They wouldn't curse and damn things, but they would use the word darn, which is just a cheap way. of saying damn. They wouldn't use the name for that awful place of punishment, hell, but they would use the word heck. They start to say the word and then they chop it off and put something else to it. And their minstos indicate that they would like to swear, but they don't dare. Do you have your language strung full of that kind of thing? I know these are practical things, but let's get down to business. We live here as representatives of heaven. How well do we represent heaven? Not very well. We represent this world, and not the Lord. Someone was a Roman citizen, and he learned the songs of Rome. We're citizens of heaven. What are your songs? I don't say that they all have to be the same tunes. Many years ago it was considered really very awful, very unspiritual to sing a hymn to waltz time, two, three times. Now half of our hymns nearly in our hymn books are in two, three times. It's gained respectability. Some who are older just can't take some of the modern music that the young people are singing. That doesn't bother me in the least. It's the words that bother me. I don't care what you sing it to. Maybe it's because I'm not very musically minded. I don't care what tune you sing it to, but for goodness sake, sing the truth. And don't sing a hypocritical lie. Don't sing something that isn't real. Don't sing something that has no real meaning to it. When you sing, sing the songs of heaven. Exalt the Lord Jesus. Give him first place. Sing about heaven. Sing about home. Sing about the coming of the Lord. Is the coming of the Lord real to you? Do you really expect him to come? I said this a night or two ago at Tulsa. Brothers and sisters, do you really expect the Lord Jesus to come? Well, I can tell if you expect the Lord to come. I can tell if I expect the Lord to come. If I really expect the Lord to come, I'm going to let loose of many of the things here on this earth. I'm going to take a different view of things than if I was trying to accumulate everything in the world I can and get it all around myself so that I can live here for the next hundred years. You really expect the Lord to come? Sing about it. It's a great theme for Christians. We ought to be singing the songs of heaven. You know, Solomon wrote many songs, only one of which got into prayer. That'd be very discouraging, wasn't it? If you wrote all the hymns, all the songs, and only one of them got published, you'd say, well, I'm not very successful as a hymn writer. But I think Solomon was, aren't you? Because the one hymn, the one song that got published, was the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. It's a song about the Lord Jesus and his people. And that's true music. And then, if we really are citizens of a new country, Really citizens of heaven, then we're going to honor and own the King of heaven and the Lord of heaven. Now, the Lord Jesus is not our King. I know some of our hymns say that. He's not our King. Many years ago, the daughter of the King of England, who was getting into her early teens, said to her parents that she would like to see her father go through the streets of London in the state coach. She had always been in the coach. She never got to see it, and she wanted to really see the parade. And so her nanny, her teacher, took her down and got a good location at one of the corners. And then they saw all of the excitement, you know, of the king coming down in the state coach. And she was so overcome with excitement that she broke away from the old lady who was looking after her and ran out to the coach. She got almost to the coach in which her father and mother were riding. A soldier stepped up with a spear and stopped her, and he said, little girl, you can't go there. That's your king. And she looked at him and she said, maybe it's your king, but it's my father. Now, the Lord is not our king. He is our lover and friend, our bridegroom. He is our Lord, and worship thou him. He ought to have the place of lordship, but not kingship. We're going to sit on the throne with him, not be subjects of him. That's not hair splitting. We ought to get things straight. We ought to know that this is exactly what's ahead in the coming days, regardless of all the hymns about the king. You and I are not looking for the king to come back. We are looking for the king to come back, but not for us. Not to reign over us. We are looking for the Lord. The coming of the Lord draws near. Is he your Lord? Is he your Lord? Does real lordship belong to him? And do you accord that to him? Do you give it to him? Do you put him in that place? You say, Lord Jesus, I want thy will in my life. This is what it means to really live as a citizen of heaven. It doesn't mean that we're oddities. It doesn't mean that we're interested, disinterested in other people. It doesn't mean that we're proud of this. I can't look down upon any of the other people here in Wichita and say, I belong to heaven. You don't. I can't do that. But it does mean that my heart is attached there. And when everything else is laid aside, I can go back and thought to heaven. I can close my eyes and be it in the quicker than you could say it, because that's home. That's where my wife is. I'd like for her to have been with me, but she couldn't. That's home. And I can just close my eyes and be there. And when my eyes are closed, that's usually where I do go in thought. I want to be there. I'll be glad that Monday afternoon I can take a plane and arrive there. Is this the way you feel about the Lord Jesus? Do you really want to go to heaven? See, loving His appearing, according to Second Timothy chapter four, is more than just saying, I believe the Lord is coming back. To love His appearing means that we want nothing else more. We want nothing else more than for the Lord to come. What do you really want? Well, you say, I'd like to make a success. Well, put that in quotes, because nobody knows really what success is anyway. You'd like to be a success, would you? Well, you say, I'd like to be happy. Put that in quotes, too, because happiness is something that's connected with happenings. What do you really want? Do you really want him? Do you want to see him? Do you want to be with him? That's what's really worthwhile. Now just let me add a little practical note to this. You know, in the book of Judges, you have sixteen chapters that have to do with the kingdom, the nation. And it was one awful conglomeration. The nation of Israel was in terrible shape. The history of the Judges was just a history of failure and difficulties and problems. But after sixteen chapters of telling you what it's like in the nation, then God takes the lid off of it and he said, Now I want to show you in the last five chapters what it's like inside of the family. Because the state of the nation is the result of the state of the family. The local church The local assembly of believers is exactly what is composed of all families, all homes, all groups within that assembly. How do you live in your own home? Parents, let me talk to you first of all. I can't brag about my parenthood. I feel very badly about some that I've had responsibility for. Have you really tried to bring up your family in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Have you really tried to bring Christ before them? Have you really tried to live Christ before them? And if you have, is there some response? Is there some desire on their part that the home, your home, should be a little colony of heaven? Because if the home is not what it ought to be, then the assembly will not be what it ought to be. And the whole community will not be what it ought to be. You and I need to live in such a way, with our families. Let me say a word to the young people. Young people, you have a tremendous responsibility. Dad and mother can't do it all. What are you doing to make your home to be a little colony of heaven? And all of you who are members of a local assembly of believers, all of you who are in fellowship with other Christians in a certain community, what about you? What are you doing? to make your company of believers, the assembly with which you're associated, to be a little colony of heaven. I hope that I've stirred up some real difficulties in your mind. I hope that I have made you to be a little uneasy. I hope that I have made you to feel it's no wonder the conditions are in the local assembly what they are, when the conditions are what they are in my own family. It's no wonder that my children have ambitions to go out into the world and to accumulate things when I have spent so much time like this. A man said to me not long ago, he said, I just don't understand my children. I just can't figure it out. He said, I've tried to teach them that these things are not worthwhile, that it's wrong for them to to reach out and to try to get a whole lot of things here on this earth. And I was cursed with a Dutch nature, and I just simply don't hold things in very well. I said to him, why would you expect them to believe you? Why would you expect them to believe you? You have spent your whole lifetime accumulating. You live in a hundred thousand dollar home. You have three of the biggest cars sitting in your driveway, and there's only two people in your family. You've got three cars in case one gets pinned in. They've got another one with the curb to use it, I guess. I don't know why else. Three of the biggest cars that you can get. Why is it that you want your young people to pay no attention to these things and just live for spiritual things? You've already made it. You've already got it. And now they've got a chance to get it. They're coming along in the same business behind Dad, and they want it to. Brothers and sisters, we ought not to be hypocritical. We ought to say that we are not looking for the Lord from heaven, if we're not. We ought to say that we're not citizens of a little colony of heaven, if we're not. But if we are, then let's live it. Let's show to those around us that we really belong to another world. and that we are here only as ambassadors for the Lord Jesus Christ.