(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

There are a lot of laws that are stupid and annoying, right, that we don't like. You know, I look at some of the stupid and annoying laws that we have and the taxes that we pay that are just ridiculous. You know, we pay this huge amount of taxes and we don't like paying it, do we? I mean, I don't like paying, you know, I just paid my taxes and, you know, I just sent thousands and thousands of dollars to Uncle Sam to go use for things that I don't believe in and I'm constantly paying taxes for things that I don't use, like I'm paying for the public school system that I don't use, and then I'm paying for a bunch of foreign wars that I don't believe in, right? I'm paying for a bunch of ungodly things and a bunch of waste and really just lining the pockets of a bunch of congressmen that are multi-millionaires, right? I don't like that stuff. I don't believe in that stuff. I think it's stupid, you know, I wish I didn't have to follow this law and that law and the other law and pay taxes and all these different things. But here's the thing about that, though, is that it's not our calling to be a tax protester and to just fight against the system and, you know, take down the system or something like that. That's not what God wants us to do. God would rather that for the Lord's sake we just submit ourselves to it. He says, submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. So not because the government deserves your hard-earned money, but because of the fact that we want to serve the Lord, we want to just live peacefully in Arizona. That's why for the last 13 years that I've been the pastor here, okay, our church has always complied with all of the laws as far as, you know, financially and legally. We've followed, we've filed all the paperwork and done what we're supposed to do financially. And I personally have filed my taxes every single year and, you know, sent off my taxes to them every single year. You know, I pay, and our church pays taxes, you know, our church every single month sends money to the IRS every single month. And that's what we've always done. We've always followed those rules. Why? Because even Jesus Christ paid taxes. He said, give unto Caesar the things that be Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Now he did tell Peter that he shouldn't have to pay. He said, well, of whom do the kings of the earth take tribute? Of their own children or of strangers? Peter said of strangers, and he says, then are the children free, but nevertheless, lest we offend them, pay it. So he basically said, pay it to keep them off your back. Pay them so that they'll leave you alone. Pay them because our job is not to be here to do a political revolution. Our job is to bring a spiritual revolution. And so that's why he said pay the taxes. Not because the government deserves our money, not because it's right, but because of the fact that God said just do it for the Lord's sake because God wants you to live in Arizona. He wants you to live in the United States or whatever state people live in if you're visiting today. But he wants us to live in our communities, not to go with, well, I can't pay these taxes. Just do it for the Lord's sake. And if there's some stupid rule in your neighborhood, just follow it the best you can. Now look, if the government starts making laws that contradict God's commandments, we ought to obey God rather than men. So I'm not giving the government a carte blanche here, folks. I'm saying that if we can both obey God and the government, it's better just to go along to get along. But if the government starts telling me, hey, you can't preach that, I'm going to tell the government to go jump in a lake, right? And if the government sits there and tells me, hey, you guys have to do this unbiblical thing, I'm going to say, well, no, I'm not interested in that. So I'm going to do what God says no matter what. Also, you have to understand that in our country, there is a system of checks and balances. So in our country, we have a federal government, a state government, a local government, we have the Constitution, we have various laws that are on the books, we have various court decisions. So here's the thing, if some local government makes an unconstitutional law and our government has stated that any law that is repugnant to the Constitution is null and void, I do believe that it is okay to do a civil disobedience because you're actually following the law by doing civil disobedience. I mean, if the Constitution says, hey, we're free from searches and seizures, and somebody wants to do an unconstitutional search and seizure, and you assert your rights and say, no, you're not going to do an unconstitutional search and seizure, you're breaking the law right now because I'm protected by the law from search and seizures, then you know what, that's perfectly fine. Because what are you doing? Number one, you're following the supreme law, the higher power, which is the Constitution, and you're standing up for freedom. Because let me tell you something, if you don't stand up for freedom, if you don't at least push for freedom, strive for liberty, boy, the government's going to take as much power as you give it. Okay, and this is part of why we do a lot of civil disobedience when it comes to soul winning, because both things apply. Number one, we have to obey God rather than men. Number one, when they make laws against soul winning, that conflicts with the word of God, so we need to fight that, number one. But number two, making a law against soul winning is unconstitutional. And so we have to stand up and say, no, we have the right to practice our religion, we have the right to preach the gospel, we have the right to share the gospel, but see, people who go overboard on this submitting to the law thing will say, oh, you just need to follow that law and knock a different door. Yeah, it's easy for you to say, because you knocked less than 1% of the doors in the city. Look, we actually are knocking the whole thing. So if we're actually knocking the whole thing, we don't want to run out of doors. And we would have already run out of doors a long time ago if we obeyed the rule not to go knocking in apartment complexes and HOAs. So we're going to keep on knocking in apartment complexes and HOAs, because number one, God's the higher power, and number two, the Constitution's the higher power. Okay, so I'm not against jury nullification. I think jury nullification is an important safeguard of our freedom. But here's the thing, jury nullification is legal. Resisting an unlawful search and seizure is legal. Okay, so people try to say, oh, Pastor Erickson, you broke the law, you know, when you didn't let him search you that one time 11 years ago or 10 years ago. And I say, you know what, really, I broke the law, that's funny, because I went to court and I was found not guilty on all charges. I did not break the law. I was standing up for freedom and constitutional rights, trying to educate people about our rights, because we shouldn't just give up all our rights and let Alexandria, whatever her name is, turn us into a Soviet-styled republic. Right? I mean, somebody's got to stand up and preach liberty and preach freedom. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to spend my life fighting a political battle. I'm going to spend my life fighting a spiritual battle. You know, so, hey, I went to court in that situation, I was declared not guilty on all charges because I didn't do anything illegal. Okay. And the jury felt that way. And then not only that, I sued them for violating my rights and I was ruled against because guess what, I had no jury. And it's very rare to get any justice without a jury because the judges work for them. Okay. So, of course, the judge just threw out my lawsuit and then I could have appealed it. But guess what, I don't want to spend the rest of my life appealing and appealing and fighting and going to court because, you know, I'd rather be out preaching the Bible, soul winning. I'm not just going to spend the rest of my life talking about an incident that happened in 2009 when it's 2019. You know, you got to move on, folks. Okay. But there are Christians who, guess what, they actually get distracted by these things. And they spend their whole life working with the Republican Party, you know, trying to find a political solution or they spend their whole life campaigning for this candidate or they spend their whole life fighting the tax code or fighting against this rule and that rule. You know what, folks, I believe that the spiritual battle is paramount. I'm for standing for our rights, I'm for the truth movement, I'm for the freedom movement, the liberty movement. And I do my part to preach, you know, against the unconstitutional wars. I, you know, I preach the whole sermon last Sunday morning called War is a Racquet. And I do my part to stand up for freedom and I serve my rights when I get a chance to do so. But at the end of the day, though, most of the laws that are coming at us, we need to just obey because it's not our place to just try to fight that battle all the time. Okay. So if, you know, if there's a dumb law or taxes or whatever, just, you know, typically you're just going to go along with it because of the fact that God says, just do it for the Lord's sake, send him the money. Because look, if let's say I hadn't paid my taxes for the last 13 years or let's say our church had not been in compliance, then that just gives the government an excuse to come in and throw me in prison and shut down our ministry. And, you know, is that and look, I'm willing to go to jail for preaching the gospel. I'm not willing to go to jail for not paying taxes when Christ specifically said to pay taxes because people have literally attacked us and criticized us for paying taxes, you know, like, like we're bad because we're paying that. Well, really? Cause that's what Christ told us to do. Okay. So I'm trying to give you this morning, a balanced view of this and saying, look, yeah, I understand that there are abuses of power and we should stand up to tyranny and stand up to the government when they get out of control. And we should fight to keep the commie liberals from taking over our country. I get that, but at the end of the day, I'm not going to spend my life on that. I'm going to spend my life on the things of God. That's a side issue for me. Okay. That's not the main thing for me. And in many cases, I end up paying taxes, going along with dumb rules, following dumb laws for the Lord's sake, because that's just part of the cost you pay to live in Arizona. Everybody understand? I mean, look, I have to have a driver's license. I have to have insurance on my car. I have to do it. You say, well, you know, you should, you should protest all that stuff. But, but here's the thing. I want to drive places and go soul winning and preach. And so I'm, I'm not trying to be Amish here, so I got to fit in. Right. Be peculiar amongst the world, not peculiar because I'm out in some compound in Guyana, you know, 400 miles from civilization.