Jan. 21, 2018 The Righteousness of God in Our Life Under Government by PastorJoshSheldon

Romans 13 in the Flow of Romans and the Gospel of God

Well, as Conley just told you, Romans 13, 1 -7, as we continue in this series, started quite some time ago at Romans 1, verse 1. And it seems like it's been a long time in it, but it's gone rather quickly.

So finally, Romans 13, in those seven verses, verses that set a good many a Christian into paroxysms of extremes. Are we taught here to submit ourselves to wicked governments? Where do we finally draw the line and we stop submitting through our taxes to a government that actively promotes and, with my hard-earned tax dollars, pays for murder through abortion, sexual reassignment surgery, and the like?

Where do we draw the line? What is the apostle teaching us here? There's been centuries of confusing teaching here, running the gamut from passive acquiescence to whatever the government would lay upon you to a radical activism that actually borders on rebellion.

Let's understand, as we think about these verses, that our God is not a God of confusion or disorder or any lack of clarity, but He is quite the opposite. His Word was given to us to be understood, to be obeyed, and to be applied in our daily life.

The time and place for each part of Scripture where it was written is very important to our understanding of it, and only by first accounting for its meaning to the people who first received it can we accurately apply it to our times.

God's Word is an eternal Word, no matter the surrounding historical or cultural context of its initial audience. But once we know what it meant to them then, we understand that God's eternal Word has something to say to us here today.

Romans 13, one through seven, can be confusing. And I think confusion is helped on its way if we rip these seven verses out of the flow of the Apostle Paul's thought that started really back in chapter 12, which is why I had Conley begin reading there.

A lot of this controversy, a lot of confusion is avoided if we remember what this book of Romans is even all about. What's Romans about? Is Romans about what we can or cannot do for or against a government that is or is not godly?

Is that what the book of Romans is about? Well, the book of Romans is about the gospel of God accomplished in His Son, Jesus Christ. The book of Romans is about the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel of God.

And this righteousness then imputed to unworthy sinners as we, the children of faith, reflect this nature of God, this righteousness. The whole theme of Romans is wrapped up in the middle of the first chapter some months ago, but we've quoted this several times as we've gone through this book just to keep us on the rails.

For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed for faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

That's what Romans is about. That's what this whole book, this magisterial book has been about from beginning to end. That's the theme of this book that has changed nations, that's changed the whole world if we think of the Reformation and how important this book was to Martin Luther before he nailed the 95 Theses to the church at Wittenberg.

That's what this book is about. And if that's what this book is about, then that's what chapter 13 verses 1 through 7 are about. Our lives must be shaped by this, no less in our daily mundane routines than in the larger issues of the society that we live in.

It is all about the gospel of God and his righteousness revealed in his son Jesus, lived out by his people. Romans is meant to change us. Like any other book of the Bible, the book of Romans is meant to change us.

It has impact. It teaches us how to show forth that our minds have been renewed. Be transformed by the renewal of your mind. We preached that a few weeks back. Romans is about what that means as we live it out in our day-to-day lives, this righteousness of God.

So Romans chapter 13 verses 1 through 7, it's about what we do. It's about what, let me change the emphasis, what we do. We, the children of God by faith in Christ, we the church, it's about what we do.

It's not what the governing authorities do. It is about our responsibility by our transformed thinking to show forth to a world that desperately needs to see this, that God is righteous. And that righteousness is revealed in the gospel.

And if we keep that in mind, then the many extreme points that people take from Romans 13, 1 through 7, I think will collapse in on a more biblical center. Romans, from chapter 1 to chapter 16, is about the righteousness of God and the gospel of his son, Jesus Christ.

Romans 13, 1 through 7, is about that same thing. And as Paul has been going through this practical part of this book of Romans, it's the therefore what do we do? We understand that this is about what we do, not about what the government does.

It's about we, Christ's blood-bought church. So how do we look at this? What do these verses teach us? Well, the Bible has many examples of men who submitted to rulers who were ungodly, even evil, and that happened in exiles.

As the people that Jeremiah read to, Conley read to you from Jeremiah 29, he was writing to exiles who were living in that pagan land, obviously led by an ungodly government. And yet what are they told to do?

Stand true to God's word. Remain God's people, even as you submit to this government. And we'll speak about submission in a bit. There are many examples, though, specific examples of men who lived out the righteousness of God, yet gave themselves over to the God-ordained governing authorities.

So our first task here, our first task in understanding these verses, is to understand what it meant to the Roman church in the first century. And then we're going to look and see examples of the men in the biblical history who lived this out in a way that we can take instruction from.

And with this in hand, we can then move forward to our day and see how it applies to 21st century Christians living in the United States of America, in California in the United States of America, in the Silicon Valley of California of the United States of America here in 2018.

Rome, Nero, and the Meaning of Submission to Governing Authorities

So Paul and that church back then, Paul wrote to a church that was smack in the capital, it was the capital, of the dominant world power. When he wrote this letter to the Roman church, Rome was ruled by who?

By Nero, the infamous emperor who, as legend had it, fiddled while Rome burned. There's some who thought that he set the fires on Rome because he wanted to rebuild it and make more monuments to himself.

Nero, who in order to light up his evening sorreys, used live Christians dipped in tar as torches. Nero, who in that culture was considered divine as all the emperors were, and the senate often would deify an emperor after his death, but Paul lived under Nero, the Nero who insisted that the declaration of his deity, his godhood if you will, be made while he lived.

Paul is speaking here of the government of Rome. Rome, whose emperors had their images cast on coins and the inscription would then call him the savior of the world. The emperor was considered king of kings and lord of lords, a title against which the apostle Paul in the book of Revelation fires many volleys.

Citizens were required to offer sacrifices to their several gods for the welfare of the emperor. Now at the time that this was written, the persecutions were not widespread or official yet, they weren't that organized, but Christians were held very lowly.

They were thought to be a breakaway sect of Judaism. They were derisively called monotheists because to believe in only one god, that meant that you must be somehow superstitious. How can you only believe in one god?

Aren't you smart enough to keep track of at least three or four of them? It was this kind of derision towards the belief in just one god. There's more we could say, but it suffices that the governing authority that was Rome was an ungodly, a brutal, and in many ways very wicked state or government.

One last point I will make for us is to remember that Rome did not invent crucifixion. They inherited it from Persia. But this government, the one that Paul says we need to submit to 2 ,000 years ago, this government is the one that perfected crucifixion to draw out the suffering to incredible lengths, both in terms of the pain and the time that you would have to endure it.

That's the government that existed when Paul wrote Romans 13, 1 through 7. That is what Paul had in mind when he said, let every person be subject to the governing authorities. The word subject, well, before I start that, I need to make one other quick point that at the time Paul wrote this Nero who I described accurately, most historians will tell you, and Greg Bonson is one who would agree with this if you read his books, that Nero hadn't gone off the deep end quite yet.

That at this time he was still a competent and benevolent emperor, administrator, that the works he did in the civic sense were quite good. Don't know how he lost his mind. I don't know physiologically why that happened to him and he went off that deep end.

But we need to acknowledge at the time that Paul wrote this, he hadn't yet. That's just a quick excursus. Go back to this idea of subject. Let everyone be subject, every person, and the word person translates to the word that is usually translated as soul.

So we could say let every soul, which would then make us think that Paul is speaking specifically to the church. Let every person be subject to the governing authority. Subject, this word for subject carries the idea of obedience.

But there's a lot more to it. The same original word is also used for submission. And that's the way it's used in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 21 where Paul tells the church to be submissive, to be submitting to one another.

That carries forward to the next verse where wives are told to submit to their own husbands. And what this word submission means is to recognize that God has placed us in an overarching structure. There's a structure of authority.

There is a structure of authority here in the church according to God's word. There's a structure of authority in marriage, in family, and in government. Now a wife is no more responsible to obey ungodly demands of her husbands than you or I would be to commit murder if the government demanded that from us.

So far, far from meaning to absolutely and without question do whatever you're told, what does this require of us? It requires that we recognize and live under this authority structure ordained by God and maintained by him for our good.

You think of Daniel and his companions, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They did this. They lived under this authority structure that was the government of the king Nebuchadnezzar, but they refused to bow down and worship his golden image when he set it up.

Think of the prophet Micaiah. We can have so many examples of this. The prophet Micaiah, the one who was called by Ahab, he obeyed Ahab. Ahab was the government. Ahab was the authority. He came to him when he was called, and yet what did he give him?

God's word. There's a good example there of being subject to the governing authority without compromising the faith. The apostles, Peter and John, they did this when they stood before the Sanhedrin, the governing authority in that sense, but what did they do as they submitted themselves, as they subjected themselves to that authority by appearing before them, by answering their questions because that was the authority, and yet held fast to the gospel.

All these submitted to the governing authority. Not one of them compromised their faith in God or Jesus Christ. In these verses, chapter 13, in the first verse, it says, four, there is no authority. Four, there's an inference there we need to talk about, and it's followed at the beginning of verse two with a therefore, a conclusion.

So we have this inference in the middle of verse one, and it's a conclusion in verse two. So something like this. Why should every person be subject to the governing authorities? Why should you keep yourself under that governing authority?

The answer, because they have been put in place by God. There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Why were there kings in Israel? The answer, because God put them in place.

Why were there kings anywhere? Same answer. God put them in place. Exodus chapter nine, verse 16 tells Pharaoh that he was raised up by God. Why was he there? Because God put him there. Daniel chapter four has Nebuchadnezzar, king of the world ruling Babylon, driven out to live like an animal because he took credit for his reign, and he was returned to his right mind only after he understood this second half of Romans chapter 13, verse one, which is what?

There's no authority except from God. Nebuchadnezzar, why did you have this kingdom? Because God put you in place. There's no authority except for what God has ordained. Why did Rome rule? Same answer.

God put them in place. Even their laws, in so many ways, so far from God's law, even those laws were instituted. Why? Because God said so. Like I said, God is a God of order. And so we need to understand that even a bad government is better than no government at all.

You know, on last Tuesday's news on television, they had a story about this gang of 12 young people in San Jose. And they were doing some dreadful things, violent things and thievery and stuff like that.

And the only purpose seemed to be the thrill of the crime. And one of them was particularly scary, where they would run up to cars at intersections, point an AR -15 rifle at them and carjack the people.

They'd have to get out the car, and the people, they'd take the car and drive off. And I only bring this up to point something out to you. This gang of 12, and they were all caught, for which somebody with multiple sclerosis who probably couldn't get out of the car but would have to fall onto the street.

I'm very grateful they were caught. But I bring this up to point out something to you. This is what they did, even with an overarching threat of capture and punishment. And yet, this is what they, the activity that they imbued for themselves.

2 Thessalonians 2, verse 7 says, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. Now, who is the restrainer? The restrainer there is God, the Holy Spirit.

So we can look and we can ask ourselves, is not the blessing of government the means that he uses to restrain such sin? If this gang of 12 could get together and point rifles at people sitting at intersections and take their car while there are laws and a government to enforce the laws and police to investigate and arrest while all that is happening, and they do that, what would it be like if not God by his Holy Spirit were holding it back?

And I would argue this morning from 13, 1 through 7 of the book of Romans, that this restraining goodness that God gives us is through government. Imagine if he removed his hand. Imagine if men were allowed to give full vent to their wickedness without even having the threat of punishment or capture or anything like that.

Imagine calling 911 and not being put on hold and not being put on hold because they're inefficient or they're overwhelmed, but because there is no 911. Imagine if the police were not slow to respond, but there are no police to respond.

Even the worst governments and no preacher, myself included, can resist using Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union as an example. Even the worst governments are in many ways better than no government.

I would refer all dissent to Romans 13, 1b. There is no authority except from God. Government, even if we could prove beyond all doubt or question that it's an ungodly government, is actually a blessing from God.

Acts 17, verse 26, Paul speaking at the Areopagus to the elite of Athens. He said that God determined our times and dwelling places and the borders in which we would live. And all of this includes the authorities, the government under which we live.

God determined that you would be born the moment you would be born, live to the age that we're going to live within these borders with this particular government over us. It's all from God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer refused, even as a citizen in Nazi Germany, to disobey God.

Now, I don't want to open up the whole controversy about his involvement in the plot against Hitler. And whether that was right or wrong, I just don't want to deal with that. That's too much for this message.

But I bring him out there because most of us have heard of him. And I will make the point that while he stood for the gospel, at least in his conscience, all he did was for the gospel. I know he's a bit of a controversial figure, but even with all of that, he was subject to that governing authority, even to the point of death, which he went bravely, for the sake of Christ, to.

He was hanged one month before Germany surrendered. My point is this, that you can submit to the government, even at the hazard of our lives, without compromising the gospel. And there's no conflict here between the gospel and submission to the government in Romans 13, one through seven.

God's Servant, the Sword, and Civic Good

The conclusion I referred to is in verse two, to resist God, the God-instituted governing authority is to resist God himself. Why? Because he instituted that authority. Paul makes it clear. Did you ever notice that Israel, while Egypt was being judged through the plagues, or no time before that, or even after that, really, they never rose up against their masters?

Israel, when the kingdom was established, they broke into north and south as a result of a rebellion, a civil war led by a man named Jeroboam, who rebelled against the king's son, Solomon's son, Rehoboam.

And why did God do this? He did this to judge Solomon's sin of idolatry. And while it was all under the Lord's overarching will, the rebellion, that splitting of the kingdom, led to sin and more sin, as the northern kingdom continued to refuse the God-ordained rule of David's descendants, who held the southern kingdom.

That's kind of a mouthful. That's a little confusing. The idea is that even the rebellion was under God's sovereign will and authority. At the end of verse two, it says that those who do so, those who resist the government, those who rebel will be judged.

And this ought not to surprise us to be told that God will judge those who resist who? Him. Because to resist the authority that God put in place is to resist God. And so it makes sense that God would judge.

Pharaoh was judged for his insolence. He was warned that it was God who gave him the throne. We are likewise warned. The last administration, we spoke about this many times, it is God whose will was that Barack Obama would, for those eight years, be our president.

Just as much as it is God who placed us in a land where we even know what voting is. It is God who ordained that Donald Trump would confound the experts and defeat Hillary Clinton. That's why we have this particular government in the phase that it's in at this time.

This government that is over us to which we are subject. But it's a fair warning that we have here. God will judge the rebel. And what did Samuel tell Saul? He says, it's not rebellion like the sin of witchcraft.

God will judge the rebel. Whether this is going to be in this life or the next is kind of unclear. Either way would fit Paul's thought. If we move on to verses three and four, let me read these to you again because these are particularly tough.

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good.

But if you do wrong, be afraid for he does not bear the sword in vain for he is a servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. We could reemphasize that, who carries out God's wrath on the evildoer.

Now we can all think of governments that were just the opposite of what Paul describes like the Nazis, like Stalin's Soviet Union, militaristic Japan in the 1930s and 40s. And part of our answer here lies in the context of Paul's day.

As I said before, Rome was at that time an efficient government under Nero. He rebuilt a lot of Rome's infrastructure. He had programs to care for the needy, what we today might call welfare. His courts were fair at this time.

They were fair and Roman law, such as it was, was administered even handedly. Now later he went quite mad. He punished good men for doing good things. He went after Christians with a vengeance. So he, like so many other leaders in history, called good evil and evil good.

And so the one was rewarded and the other was punished, or at least not commended. What does all this mean to us today? This whole idea of because we are God's children by faith in his son, Jesus Christ, what does this mean to us now?

This submitting to these authorities as it flows from the idea at the beginning of chapter 12, right before this, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Where Conley started the reading, chapter 12, verse 9, abhor what is evil.

Love, cling, hold fast to what is good. Where does this leave us? Well, the context helps us a lot here. The context always helps us. What Paul has in mind here is citizenship in the civic sense. Our citizenship in the civic sense.

We're citizens of the United States of America. Some of you are visiting from other nations. You're citizen of that land. Be good citizens is really kind of what Paul says in the simplest way. We've already spoken about the biblical heroes who obey God all the while submitting to the authority of ungodly leaders.

But he speaks here of this sword. This sword that is in the hands of authority, these leaders, and that's by God's design and it's for a purpose. The purpose of the sword is to punish. The sword might stand for their authority in general.

The governing authority has responsibility to punish lawbreakers and it's the sword that maintains that ability. They have weapons and manpower to bring lawbreakers to justice and impose upon them whatever punishment, whatever is determined.

So there's prison, confiscation, even death. That's what the sword is. The sword is the ability of the authority to carry out its will upon the people. But if we take these two verses this way, good citizenship in the purely civic sense, then we make good sense out of the whole section.

We ease the problem of applying it to our everyday life because we all know that rulers can be a terror to what is good. We all can because we're all sinners saved by grace. But rulers can be against what is right and good.

The Sanhedrin, the Jewish authority to whom Paul submitted, they tried as hard as it could to stamp out Christianity. Obviously not a good thing. In fact, they had used Paul while he was still known as Saul, while he was still a Pharisee, to accomplish that very thing, the demise of the church.

Pilate, in that sense, was a terror to Jesus' good conduct. Yet the Lord, with the armies of heaven at his beck and call, remained subject to him. Pilate could have no power over him except what was given to him from above.

That's John 19, verse 10. Jesus said it plainly. You don't have what you think you have because this is all under God's will. And if he had not willed this, you would not be standing here this moment.

I'm reading in a bit, but that's pretty much what he said. You have no power over me except what was given to you from above. And that's perfectly in keeping with these verses from Romans. All authority is a derived authority.

It is granted to people by God and it's for his purposes. Pilate was like a stream of water in God's hand being turned wherever he, not Pilate, but where God wanted it to go. So how do we behave? What does this mean to us in day-to-day, mundane, regular activities?

What are we to do as good citizens of this nation, but more importantly, citizens of the kingdom of heaven? What do we do? Well, a quick answer would be do good works that benefit society. Remember, Romans 13, 1 -7 is a civic context.

And it's not detached from the rest of Romans as I've tried to point out. Romans 1 -16 and 17, that's the theme of the whole book, the righteousness of God and the gospel of his son. Paul is still speaking about how transformed thinking leads to transformed lives.

So what do we do? Do good works that benefit society civically, in the civic sense. Christians had built hospitals where there had been none. They built orphanages where the alternative was starvation and those kinds of things.

Most of us satisfy this God-given civic duty by voting, by obeying laws, by serving on juries and the like. And those are not small things. Those are not small things to quietly and peaceably follow the rules and at that level even participate in the civic duties of citizens.

That's no small thing. These aren't distinctly Christian things. Anyone can do and should do them. But only a Christian can do them in the certainty that by being subject to the rulers on earth, we're obeying our King who is in heaven.

By being subject to these rulers, only the Christian knows he's obeying our King who's in heaven. Only a Christian can claim a conscience that's captive to God. So Paul said, do these things for the sake of your conscience.

A conscience captive and given over to God. So verse five gives us a dual motivation to be dutiful, law-abiding, hard-working, submissive students. And the first of those is to avoid God's wrath. And the second is for the sake of your now awakened conscience.

For the sake of your conscience, do this. To avoid God's wrath, do this. Does the idea of wrath, does that say that God's going to smite anyone who's rebellious and not subject to the governing authority?

Well, yes, that is what it says. If you are a Christian, then disobeying God, once his will has been made known and understood, that has to tear at the conscience. And there may be punishment, but the worst of it, the part that your conscience plays, is a sorrow that we must feel for having dishonored or displeased our Lord.

The whole context here is the here and now. So I would think that God's wrath, when he says, because God will execute his wrath upon the rebel, God's wrath is something to expect in this life. Now, how will we bring it?

We can't say with certainty. The secret things belong to God. But it seems most clear to say that his wrath will be meted out upon the wrongdoer by his servant, the governing authority. He bears the sword for a reason.

And whether he knows it or not, when he punishes wrongdoers, he's acting for God. I have a very dear friend who four or five years ago finally paid off a large debt with penalties to the Internal Revenue Service.

He'd gotten caught up in one of those quasi-Christian sort of militant organizations that said that income taxes were unconstitutional and that Christians were subject to God, not man, so you shouldn't have to pay your taxes, right?

Have you heard of these kind of groups? My friend got very caught up in it. And so for a time, he didn't pay his taxes in disobedience to Romans chapter 13, verses 1 through 7, for which he had many answers, but it was disobedient to chapter 13, verses 1 through 7.

Well, God's wrath was poured out on my dear Christian friend. And for many years, he suffered that punishment as he paid back all those taxes with penalties and with interest. And he finally got it done when he understood what Romans 13, 1 through 7 was and was not about.

He did faithfully pay it back and he's doing quite well now. But God did punish it. The IRS carried that sword and all the power to persuade and force obedience that God had vested in that sword was brought to bear against him.

We can ask ourselves, does Romans 13, 1 through 7 then forbid activism? Am I to never go in the street and carry a sign or protest against in any way against such ills as, let's say, abortion? Am I not allowed to within the laws of this land where God, Acts 17, verse 26, where God ordained we should be and according to this ruling government to whom we're subject, we have the right?

Are you saying then, pastor, I cannot be activist in any sense? Absolutely not. That is not at all what we're saying. We're not saying that because Romans 13, 1 through 7 doesn't say that. We live in a land where speech and assembly are protected rights.

We can engage causes within the scope of the law. Listen, we need activists. The church needs activists. We need Christian activists. We need them in front of abortion mills with signs that call it what it is, not choice but murder and then proclaim the gospel that drives them to the street.

We need them. We need Christians who will be activists for the environment whose cause is driven by scripture which says that God gave us stewardship and that he created the world good and that it is beautiful and worth protecting.

We need activists who will stand because of the gospel, against abortion, or for the environment and any other cause that you might be thinking of right now. We need them. We need Christians who will stand up for the undocumented alien, the illegal immigrant as they're called, who do so because God's special attention is on the weak and the voiceless and the helpless.

And we need Christian activists who will work for reform in the laws so that the law is fair and godly and obeyed. We need activists who protest when public libraries make exposure to indecent material for our children all too possible and put those young and tender ones at risk of seeing things that can never again be unseen.

We need you to do those things. And Romans 13, 1 through 7 does not prohibit it. Nor would it say you're in any way not being subject to the governing authorities. There are laws, there are rules, there are regulations.

And I would argue they don't stop us from doing any of these things. All within that scope, all with a godly, gospel-driven heart. We need all of that. Activists need to be in churches where the native passions are tempered by the Word of God.

We need the less active Christian to support them, to help them on their way, to be there when they're exhausted and they need a soft bed and a warm meal to come back to. We need both. We need you who are going to go out on the streets and stand for those things.

And we need these quieter souls who do nothing more than maintain the church to which you come back once you're exhausted in the streets and need to be refreshed. Nothing more. Nothing more than come together as a body and worship the Lord Jesus Christ.

Nothing more than support your church and provide comfort and support to those others. The Scripture doesn't hold one above the other. Both are necessary. We need them both. The activist has no cause to deride his quieter brethren, nor do we quieter souls need to feel inadequate.

You need only read in Acts and 1 Corinthians and see how Paul was as thankful to the churches who did no more than take up the collection than he was to the men, the activists, if you will, who helped them to deliver the gift to the church in Jerusalem.

We need both. And Romans 13, one through seven does not elevate the one above the other. Nor, for those of you who have these causes that are so important, that are burning in your soul, and you say, but am I disobeying?

Am I being a rebel? Am I violating the Word of God? The answer is, no, you are not. Because in God's providence, we live in a land where you can do that. It is a protected right. Because God, who is the overarching, sovereign Lord of all the universe, ordained that we should be here now and live under these particular rules.

And so we subject ourselves to them. We follow them. Does that stop you from standing for the gospel? Not in this land. This is a unique thing we live in. Throughout history, most of history, this hasn't been true.

In much of the world right now, this isn't true for most Christians. For us, today, in this context here in 2018, you're virtually unrestricted. Your mind, your conscience, your actions are all held captive to the scripture, to the righteousness of God and the gospel of his Son.

Yes, that's most important. I would argue that doesn't stop us from doing very much. God would never tell his people to choose man's law over his law. At the hazard of our lives, if we're compelled to malign our Lord, let us go willingly with Daniel and his friends to the lions or to the fiery furnace.

His companions, the three I spoke of earlier, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they got it just right when they were consigned to be burned alive. The crime, of course, was to refuse to worship the king's golden image.

Then in total submission to the authority set in place by God, which was Nebuchadnezzar, whose law demanded that they bow down and worship him, whose military and courts maintained order, he kept the trains on schedule, as we might say, what did they say to him?

Oh, Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.

But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. That's a blessed clarity for us. It's not always that clear cut in our context.

Our tax dollars are used for many ungodly purposes, but we've never been compelled to stop worshiping our Lord Jesus. It might happen, but it hasn't yet. Paul is specific when he tells us to pay our taxes and give respect and honor and so forth to those to whom it's due, all within the context of our relationship to and attitude towards the civic authorities.