Book of Romans - God's Governance of Man | Our Relationship to Government, Pt. 1 (12/12/2021)

Good to see all of you. Let's turn in our Bibles to Romans chapter 13. We're in a new chapter today.

Yeah, Ben was laughing with me last night. He said, you know, I forgot exactly whether it was when he first,

I guess it was when Ashton first started coming. Is that it? Or when they were first married, when they first started coming.

When Ashton first came to church here, I was in Romans chapter one. So anyway, so now we're in chapter 13, and I better hurry and finish.

No telling how many babies they'll have before I finish the book of Romans. Wonder what would happen if I preached in Genesis, you know, where it talks about being fruitful and multiplying and all that stuff.

But I like to read, I like to study the Bible slow, slowly, not fast, and apologize for that.

But it's not about, it's not about where we are or how much we cover. It's about what the

Lord teaches and shows us. And he can show us stuff in the jots and the tittles. You know what that is, right?

That's the cross, the T, and the dot of the I, sort of in Hebrew. So everything is inspired, the little bitty words and everything.

So we're going to look at a few of those little bitty words. So let's look at Romans chapter 13, starting with verse one today.

Now this whole topic, if you're with us online today, you get to see the

PowerPoint. You guys wouldn't be able to see it up here with me in front of it, so we don't put it up there anymore.

But the title, the whole idea of Romans chapter 13 to me is how

God governs the actions of men, how

God governs the actions of men. That's what the whole idea of the whole chapter 13.

Now here's the good thing, since I go slow, this is a short chapter. So we'll be done with this well within before, you know, middle of 22 or so.

Now we'll be through this pretty quickly. I doubt if we'll finish it today though, but let's see what the first verse says.

If we can get through the first two verses, we'll learn something. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for your word.

We ask you that your Holy Spirit would be our teacher now, that you would bind and rebuke the enemy.

Remind him he has no place here with you. Send him away somewhere else.

Give us freedom to be taught by the word and spirit. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God.

The powers that be are ordained of God. Now this word powers in the

Greek, exousia is the Greek word, and it means a magistrate, a potentate, if you want to use an old

English word, oh actually British word, an authority or jurisdiction.

So this is not talking about the spiritual powers in heavenly places. This is not talking about the kingdom of Satan.

This is talking about king, human kings, human leaders, and the word of God calls them powers here, but we're talking about the leadership over the different nations, over the states, over the counties and the cities, the people who serve us to keep order in our communities.

So let every soul, every person be subject unto the powers, the higher powers that rule this earth.

That's what it's talking about. So it's talking about humans who are in power because here in this country, because we elected them, makes you wonder how stupid we might be sometimes, but we elected them or in the old days it was a king who didn't get elected, but he served for life.

Doesn't matter how the power got there. The point is God put him there. Now as you study the scripture and you look in the old testament,

I remember so many times through the years as Charlotte likes to be reading through the Bible and she'll be studying the kings and she'll get to one and it's just going great and I'll hear in she'll go, oh my soul,

I'll say what? He started out so well and he ended terribly and it drives her crazy when that happens.

Well, God still put him there, right? That's the point of this verse.

Now when you come into modern times, we'll talk about that in a minute, but here's the point.

The word powers are these human leaders that are in over us and it says God put them there.

All right, now it's interesting this word for powers in the

Greek comes from a little Greek word Exxon, which is what the oil company was named after,

Exxon Oil Company, not that that matters, but the little word just means it is right. Now think about that because we have leaders that we don't think should be there, don't we?

But the very word means it is right and I think that's just another example of the sovereignty of God that the

Greek word that was chosen means whoever's there is right because God put them there for a purpose.

Now see, here's the problem. We don't see God's whole big plan. We just see the little area we're in and we can judge

God and say, Lord, why would you let that happen? We do that in our own lives, but we do it nationally.

We do it a lot. Usually it's our first thought is, Lord, how would you let that happen? And our second thought because our new man comes into play and the second thought is,

Lord, I'm sorry I thought that, but I'm glad that you're in control.

So we have to recognize that no matter what we think or what we think we're observing, that God put them there, not

Satan. Now, can God delegate things to Satan to make his will happen?

Yes, he can. So either way you look at it though, God is the sovereign and that's why the person is there and that's what these words, even the words teach us and you take it further where it says, for there is no power but of God.

The little word of is oppo, which sort of the correct, you know, the most usual meaning of it is off, like something like he jumped off the cliff, he would use this word oppo.

But if you picture the word picture here, the power to put that man in place of power and leadership in the world spun off of God out of heaven down to the earth and made it happen here.

So it came off of God or you could say out from God. The point is

God is the power from which this person gained his power and his ability to be in that leadership position.

So even the little bitty words like the word of in English very specifically again and again and again say

God is in absolute control of who's in leadership on this earth. Isn't that something? I mean there's no wiggle room here for well yeah but maybe

Satan did that. Well maybe he delegated it to Satan but it was God who is the manager, who's in control of everything, who brought this about.

Now this word powers, like I said, it's a magistrate and so forth. So when it says but the power of God, I hear myself talking back there, for there is no power of God.

The power that be, the powers that be are ordained of God.

This is interesting, this little phrase that be, the powers that be are ordained of God.

I know that's old English but it's the most accurate from the Greek so we use it but the powers that exist, let's say it that way, the powers that exist are ordained of God.

Now the little phrase that be is meaningful. The powers that be, the little

Greek word on, it means be like they exist but it can also mean the powers that come.

So it takes it a little bit further if you think about it because the powers that are here now and the powers, the men and women in leadership that are coming in the future, all of that is ordained of God too.

So it's not just now but it's all the way up through the end of time, all the way to the end of the age, every human power that comes into existence,

God put them there. Now, what does the word ordained mean?

Because this is something that people struggle with, is that God actually predestinates and ordains things and it's interesting to me because the same people that struggle with it call him

God. You get that? Like they call him

God and they struggle with that he predestinated, ordained everything. Well, if he's

God, then that is what he did. If he's not God, then he didn't. So you can't have both but people do love to invent a

God they want to worship and they seldom want to worship the God of this book here, the true God. They want to invent an idol to worship who's weak and powerless and they can do what they want to do because they then become

God. That's what humans like to do. It's called humanism but the true God of the Bible is sovereign.

It means that he never makes a decision that's influenced. I'm talking about God the

Father, not Jesus. Jesus is the full essence of God in a body. I understand that but I'm specifically talking about God the

Father who is even beyond heaven in my viewpoint. There's only a presence almost like in the old temple where it had the

Shekinah glory. There is a presence of God in what we call heaven but all

God is not there because if he were, you see, there's time in heaven. If he were there, he'd destroy heaven. So the

Father is out beyond everything that's created including heaven. Most of you probably never thought about that but it's the case.

You can look at John's account of how heaven looked and you'll actually see that that's true but God is sovereign over everything and God the

Father does not make decisions based on the influence from anything. That's what sovereign means.

His will is truly a free will. Free means it's sovereign.

It's not influenced by anything other than his own will. Now there is no other entity, no human, no entity, there's no thing that has free will other than God if you take the true genuine definition of the word free.

Now I'm not saying, if you don't know me, I want to make sure you understand that I believe that our decisions and our responsibility is very important.

Our decisions are of ultimate importance. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying they're influenced decisions.

Would you agree with that? Right? So but God is sovereign. So here we have the

God of the universe who has now ordained who the human leadership will be. What is the word ordained me?

In Greek it's taso. It means to arrange in an orderly manner. Think about that.

To arrange in an orderly manner. Have you ever seen a time in history or studied a time in history where you had anarchy?

Well what about Afghanistan right now? Total anarchy because we took our troops out, probably shouldn't have, but we took our troops out and now there's a vacuum because the leadership that was there kind of was a puppet leadership that we put there,

I'm pretty sure, and not necessarily a strong leader and soon as we left he had to leave probably.

I don't know where he is, but he probably had to leave for his life and now the bad guys come in and just take over.

Whoever's strongest on that particular street rules that street or that neighborhood. That's anarchy and that is the opposite of an orderly arrangement, okay?

So God put human leaders in place on purpose because of sin and man has got to have leadership or they're just total anarchy and it's just everyone kills everybody else and that's the worst there is.

Look you say, well I'd hate to live in a communist country. Well you would love to live in that country if that's all you had other than an anarchy.

You would rather have a communist, you'd rather live in communist

China than live in China before there was strong leadership. You see what I'm saying? So God put the leader of China there, the leader of Russia there, every leader that's going to be there the day of Armageddon, God put them all there in place.

He controls them all like chessmen on a chessboard. So the word taso means to arrange in an orderly manner.

It means to assign, to dispose to a certain position or lot in life.

Think about that. Appointed, determined, it's been translated appointed, determined, ordained or set in place and it's no doubt about the fact this is absolute control.

God is absolutely sovereign and he ordains who the leadership is. Now when it says that all these powers are ordained of God, even the word

God here is adds more power to it because the Greek word for God in this particular place is the common use in Greek New Testament.

It's theos which means not just divinity, it means the supreme divinity.

So if you study theology, you understand that's the father. You say well they're all one.

Well they are one in essence but they're not one in performance. How would

I say that Bill? There's a word for that. They're not one in let's just say beauty because if you look at it, the

Holy Spirit always serves the son and he talks to us and teaches us about the son.

The son of God, Jesus always speaks of the father, not himself, but speaks of the father and he says

I don't do anything or say anything that I have not seen the father do. So he's subservient to the father.

So this is talking about the supreme deity which is God the father usually when this word is used and he is the sovereign who put every human leader in place.

For there is no power but of God and the powers that be are ordained of God.

This is absolute. Now when was the idea of government established in the

Bible? Anyone remember? It's even if you look at Scofield study

Bible which is really, we don't agree with everything Scofield believed, but we believe with most of what he said it was fantastic.

Now I'll give you something, jot this down if you want to. If you want to get a really good Bible that has the proper underlying

Greek in the New Testament but it still helps with the archaic English. It's no longer in print because the world doesn't want that, but it's called the new

Scofield study Bible KJV, King James Version. You got to make sure it says King James Version or you'll get the wrong one.

So it's new and it has to have the word new in front of it because you're going to find one called the

Scofield study Bible. That's not the one I'm talking about. It's called the new Scofield study

Bible. It's not new anymore. In fact, it's out of print, but if you can find one and it used. I've had tradeway students paid a hundred bucks out there when they found one just to get it because I've told everyone in the nation to grab one of those while you can still get them because what's nice it's got the correct underlying

Greek but where the English word is archaic or it's totally changed meanings. It puts bars around it where you can see they change it and they just put the modern

English word and then they put the King James word in the margin. So they're not trying to change it and not let you know they changed it but they are not changing the underlying

Greek. They're giving you a modern good English meaning for the underlying Greek and telling you when they do it.

There's no other Bible like that in the world and probably why it's not popular but it's probably the best study

Bible you can get. Well, if you have that in the footnotes you will see that Schofield lists his ideas of what the dispensations are.

Now, what does dispensation do? It's not exactly, the theological meaning is not exactly like a time period but really what it has to do with is how

God deals with man during a time period. But if you want to think about it, just think about it as time periods because we don't have anyone here to grade us on our theological answer today.

We're not taking a test. So think of it as time periods where there is a change in how God deals with humans.

Now, God doesn't change. A lot of people just, they're so simplistic in how they think of all this.

It just, I don't know, sometimes I take a deep breath and say okay but because they'll say well you can't have like the

New Testament can't be different than the Old Testament because God never changes and if you think about that sounds kind of good maybe on the outside but then you read the

Bible you see the New Testament is way different than the Old Testament. Old Testament, especially the part of Moses, is all about law.

The New Testament was brought in by Jesus Christ and it's all about grace. It's different, okay, but did

God change or did God just change the way he dealt with humans because he gave us more revelation.

He taught us more about himself that we didn't used to know and when that happens there's a break in how everything works and those are called dispensational points where everything changes and there are seven of them and they're real.

Now, there's a theological battle that goes on in seminaries and I chuckle at it because if you go to seminary as a 19 year old you might buy into that stuff but if you read about it as a 60 year old,

I just, I'm a little older than that but 60 -ish, you don't buy into it and what you find is you got these two camps.

You got a camp that's called dispensationalist and Schofield was like that and then you got people that want to talk about the covenants and it's called covenant theology and they fight each other like a

Democrat and a Republican. It's ridiculous because the truth is there's truth to both positions.

You will find truth, you know, there are just, there are obviously dispensations. If you don't believe in that, just look that there's an

Old Testament and a New Testament. There's one change, right, but there's actually seven of them and if you want to look at the covenants, they're there.

In fact, God calls them covenants in many places and they coincide pretty closely with these dispensations though not exactly but they're both are true and they're both in the

Bible and they work hand in hand. They're working together. It's almost semantics really.

It's more than that though but you just have to recognize there are both. So, when you talk, when you ask the question, where was the idea of government?

When did it come into history? You're going to look at dispensations to figure that out and oddly enough, you're going to look at a covenant as well and I'll show that to you here.

So, when we think about these two theological concepts, covenant theology and dispensationalism, we have to understand there are truths in both and they go together hand in hand.

They are not, they shouldn't be theological enemies like they are in the seminaries and sometimes the books you read.

So, let us look at this. There's a place, turn with me if you would to Genesis 8 18 in your phone or your

Bible. Genesis 8 18. I like the phone because I can look up words and stuff which makes it where I'm no longer listening to Brother Bill.

So, there's a negative that goes to it but the positive is you can look up words, you can even take notes in your notes on your phone which you cannot do in this but then there's strengths of having this too because you know, if you're like me, can you see that?

Like, it's not like about what I marked, it's what's not marked and you know, almost everything's marked.

So, you say, why mark it? Well, I don't know but so, there's something to having this out when the preaching is going on where you can look and see the thoughts you had 20 years ago on that same passage.

Charlotte does that back there. So, I don't, can't tell you which one to do. Maybe both, like you get a

Bible here in your phone. That would be awesome. We need free hands. So, now you're there.

I just gave you time to find the book of Genesis. That's a hard one to find sometimes. Genesis 8 18.

It says, and Noah went forth and his sons and his wife and his son's wives with him.

So, what time period is this? It's right after the flood.

Every beast, every creeping thing and every foul and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth after their kinds went forth out of the

I should have read at least that far to give you a hint, right? It's right after the flood. And Noah built an altar unto the

Lord and took of every clean beast and every clean foul and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

So, that was the first offering after the annihilation.

It's interesting to study about why God brought the flood but we won't do that today.

Look at verse 21. And the Lord smelled a sweet savor. Now, do you think that a pure spirit invisible being like the

Father can smell a sweet smelling savor or do you think that's Jesus? Jesus is

God with us in time and space. There's a hint. Now, but to answer the other question, do you think

God the Father could smell a sweet smelling savor? I would have to answer yes because he could do anything, right?

All right. But it leads me to believe it is God the Son. And the

Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground anymore for man's sake.

And as you think about this, I'll never forget brother Otis teaching one day. If you're visiting today, he was an older gentleman who joined our church and he'd been teaching the

Bible 50 years. And I used to have coffee with him to learn stuff from him. All of us learn stuff from him.

But I'll never forget in one of his home Bible studies, he asked the question, does

God think? And Kenner was in there and she, I don't know, she's probably about six years old, six or seven years old at the time.

And she says, and brother Otis loved to have children in his class. He liked to teach classes with adults and kids in it.

And he could do handle both. I'm not good at that, but he could handle both. But so he looks at Kenner and he says,

Kenner, what do you think? Does God think? No, sir, brother Otis.

And he says, why? Because God doesn't have a brain. Is that funny or what?

Nobody's laughing. You guys are sleepy today. I'm kind of tired too. We'll get through this.

Don't worry. So God doesn't have a brain. When you think about the father, he does not have a brain and he does not think because he knows.

He's omniscient. He knows everything from the beginning to the ending. He's not bound by time.

Did you know you have to have time to think? Would that be right, Mr. Physics over here? You'd have to have time to think because thinking is linear.

So the father doesn't think he just knows. So I think this is Jesus because this is

God, the son, because look what he says. He says, you know, I'm thinking about this.

He said, I've decided I will no longer curse the ground anymore for man's sake.

All right. The Lord said in his heart. So this is like, this is God, the son thinking. And he says, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Neither will I again smite anymore everything living as I have done.

Now there's God telling you that the depravity of man is not something David Mitchell thought up.

Now, if you go back 150, 200 years ago, you'd probably hear a sermon on it about once a month. You know, they preached about depravity of man all the time.

And what that means is we're born into this world sinners. We're part of a sinful race and we're not good.

And we don't have to teach our kids to be bad. They're naturally, we'll do bad. You got to teach them to be good. You've got to corral them.

You've got to discipline them and train them. And if you can't do that, the Bible says you cannot be a pastor or a deacon.

Isn't that interesting? That's interesting, I think. What do you think? Kind of interesting.

So, God says right here, look, man is evil from his youth.

So, this is how we know salvation is a grace. And I love, Bill, what you're saying in your

Sunday school class today. You know, God didn't look down at me and see I was perfect or Mr.

Wonderful. He looked down at me and said, I'm going to say Bill because he's Bill. Isn't that right?

That's true of all of us. And this is what God, if God looks at us and wants to talk about what's fair or who we are, he says, well, you've all been evil from your youth.

So, salvation is by grace. Even Noah, people get this wrong, even Noah was saved because it says, and he found grace in the eyes of God.

Grace means undeserved favor. That tells you right there, Noah was as bad as all the other people God killed in the flood. So, were his sons.

And we know that by reading the next story that happens right here after this passage. And they were just as evil.

It was grace that saved them. Why? Because God wanted to. God, the son, looked back in the registry of God, the father's mind, if he has one, and he saw that God loved and chose

Noah to be his own child. So, Jesus saved him on the ark. And the sad thing is, to us from a human viewpoint, is that he looked at that entire registry and couldn't find anybody except eight people.

So, he saved those eight people. You know why? Because Jesus never does or says anything he has not seen the father do.

So, he saved exactly who the father said, these are my sheep, the rest are goats. And they've destroyed the world once, and I'm destroying them.

We're going to start over. And that's what God said. Jesus got in behind him and did it, right? Jesus brought it to pass.

And wow. So, here you see this. God, after it happens, he said,

I'll promise this, I won't do it again by water. Notice that, I want you to notice the legal language here.

He did not say, I won't do it again. He said, I promise I'll never destroy the earth by water.

Well, Noah should have taken note of that legal document, because it has a keyword in there.

It's very important to look at that adjective phrase, but he won't do it by water.

Now, what's interesting, verse 22 says, while the earth remained seed time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease.

What does it say? While the earth remaineth. That's interesting. He promised he wouldn't destroy it again by water, but he said, while it remains.

So, something's going to happen to it someday, right? But you know what? Even that's comforting to me, because I'm reading this in the concept of a sovereign

God who's in complete control of his entire universe. And we watch these movies sometimes, catastrophe movies.

I like to watch those. Hollywood puts them out. They're always totally wrong, but they're entertaining because there's lots of action, right?

But they're totally wrong. And now the popular thing is, let's do a global warming catastrophe movie.

Everything is going to be destroyed because of the global warming. Well, you can blame that on the

Democrats. They invented it. So, anyway. Or what about aliens?

I mean, if global warming doesn't get it, the aliens are going to get us. Or maybe they made us. Maybe they put us here.

If you want to create something where there's no God, you say, well, the aliens put us here. But then you got to ask the question, who put the aliens there, right?

So, like, do aliens think? Do they have a brain? I don't know. God doesn't. He doesn't have to.

He's always existed. He's always known everything. So, we don't have to worry.

It's important to teach our children that when they see things or hear things that seem really scary, like the world's going to go away because of just bad things happening.

It's not. God's in control of it. We know how it's going to go away. You can go on the

Old Testament, Daniel, Zechariah, different places like that. Most of the prophets speak of the end times and how it ends.

And you go in the book of Revelation, it gets detailed on exactly how it ends. So, that means we know how it doesn't end.

And it doesn't end like Hollywood says it will. So, there you go. Now, let's look at chapter 9, verse 1. And God blessed

Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.

Now, I have a hard time understanding how you can obey that if you're a homosexual. All right.

That's a rabbit trail, I guess. But it's right there. It just stands out in my

Bible as I see this. The first commandment, listen to me, after they were kicked out of the

Garden of Eden, even before they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, the first commandment to Adam and Eve was be fruitful and multiply.

The first commandment to all of the earth, all of the animal kingdom and Adam and Eve, sorry,

Noah and his wife and his sons and their wives was be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.

So, you got to disobey God to be a homosexual. You can't say, well, he made me this way because God's not contradictory.

He won't tell you not to do something and then make you that way. You made you that way. I mean, we all have sinful habits that we need to not do habitually.

And the Holy Spirit and the Bible are the two things that will cleanse us and change our minds and change our actions and make us be able to be more and more like Christ.

But we can't sit back and say, well, mine is not a sin. Mine's just because I'm this way. That does not excuse it.

Did you stop and think the first sin that thrust the entire world into the fall was eating a piece of fruit.

Does that sound so evil to you? Fruit? Yeah. But God said, don't eat that fruit.

That's what made it evil. When God says don't do it and you do it, that's a sin. So, if you, and you can look at sins of omission, right?

So, what about the homosexual and this idea of being fruitful and multiply in the sins of omission?

So, they're not doing that. They're not multiplying, right? So, at least not by procreation.

So, that's sin. Arrest my case. Now, I didn't bring that up just to pick on them.

I brought it up because verse 1 of Genesis 9 says be fruitful and multiply. And there's one group of people

I can think of on this earth who don't even intend to do that. So, verse 2, and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, upon every fowl of the air, everything that moves, and all the fishes.

And I put all those into your hand. They are delivered. Guess what that's called?

That's called dominion. You remember that in the garden Adam and Eve, God said,

I give you dominion over everything I've made. Now, everything's destroyed except the seeds and then the little animals that God protected on the ark and then these eight people.

And God's starting over and he's re -establishing the same dominion of man over all of creation.

You know that the liberal politicians today do not understand the Bible. Most of the conservatives don't either.

Most of the Republicans don't either. But, I mean, most people don't really understand the Bible. All they got to do is pick it up and read it, but they won't do it.

They do need to be saved because it won't make sense if they're not. But the point is, you know, when you want to be a tree hugger, you want to protect the tree, you want to protect the water, you want to protect the air, and you want to shut down all the factories and stop making cars and all this to protect it, then all of a sudden the fish and the trees and the air has dominion over you.

Do you see what I'm saying? It's backwards. Well, everything unbelievers do is backwards. It's called sin.

It's called transgression. It's called listening to what God says and doing the opposite on purpose. You ever seen a little kid do that?

Like they, like they, uh, see if I find an object. I like this. Let's use this.

All right. That's brother Paul's hat. And the kid's playing with it.

You don't want to tear it up because you've used it for every year since you've been here, I guess. You don't want it torn up. And some little, like, three -year -old, four -year -old comes in and he's got this thing and he picks it up and you say, put that back.

Don't pick it up again. And he looks at you and he goes, what's that called?

That's called rebellion. Yes. All right. So that's what humans do with God.

And that's called sin. So here we see when God says you have dominion over all of this and man says, no, that has dominion over you.

You got to stop being comfortable. You can't have the same coolant in your air conditioner. The one that works really efficiently no longer exists.

You can't buy it anywhere because the Democrats said now it's too, like, it's too hard on the ozone layer.

Well, before long, they're going to go out and make you kill all your cows because every time a cow toots, it hurts the ozone layer.

So those will be gone. Jet airplanes will be gone. Army tanks will be gone. Cars will be gone. We'll be right back plunged into be just like living in Africa back a thousand years ago or India or anywhere in the world.

And that's where they want to take us because they're removing the dominion that God gave us. Now, that doesn't mean that I think we should destroy our environment, but that's what they would say.

It means that I think, wouldn't it? So I'm a hater and I want to destroy the environment. Listen, we've been protected.

You can protect the environment and still have dominion, but not if you're a Democrat. But anyway, so man's dominion over the plant animal kingdom, which was given

Adam and Eve in the garden is now reestablished after the flood. Now let's keep reading up here.

Genesis is 9 .3. It says, every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb have

I given you all things. So from the garden of Eden all the way up until they got off the ark, man had never eaten meat.

Did you know that? He never ate meat until right now and God gave him permission.

The reason they needed meat now is because the vapor canopy that collapsed to create the flood is no longer protecting anything from the rays of the sun, the harmful rays of the sun.

Our lives got shorter and shorter after the flood and you needed more strength because there's not as much oxygen.

You had a whole lot more barometric pressure and more oxygen forcing it into the pores of your skin even to keep you healthy and vibrant and strong.

And you don't have any of that now after the flood, so you need meat to keep up your strength. I have a little problem with people that think that being a vegetarian is healthier because if you look at the societies that had no meat but just because they were so poor they couldn't get it, they're not healthy and they're not big and strong either.

And if you want to go to battle, go to battle against them. You can just backhand them, you know what I mean? But you can't do that to a meat eater.

Okay, so I rest my case. I'm right about it. You should eat meat. Now if you don't, you can't be a member of this church, right?

We have rules. I mean, we got rules here. Okay, so apparently, you know, people that have these humanistic thoughts and they get it from a book they read, right?

Would you agree with that? I mean, they just think it up. They got it from someone else that thought it up. Just thought it up out of nowhere and now it has authority.

Don't let people put you under such unbiblical authority. And so there you have it.

I could go on about foods we can eat that people say we can't, but I won't. I promise it's not going to happen.

But this is where in history men began to be able to eat meat. Isn't that interesting? But really what

I'm getting to is where the government began. So look at verse 4. But the flesh of the life thereof, which is in the blood, you shall not eat.

Now, if you ever wondered why a Jew has a particular, you don't have to eat kosher food, and part of that's the animals they eat.

It has to be done by a Jewish butcher who hangs the animal up by the legs with the head down and bleeds that animal, cuts its throat, bleeds that animal for a certain amount of time so that all of the blood drains out of that animal before they cook a steak.

Because they're not allowed to eat steak that has blood in it. And it comes from this scripture. And we shouldn't either, really.

We shouldn't either. Because it's symbolic. The life is in the blood, God says. And so don't eat that.

So that's interesting. So it tells you how the meat should be butchered even for us today, really, if you got down to it.

So then he goes on and he says this. He says right after that in verse 5, and I'm back in Genesis 9, and surely your blood of your life will

I require at the hand of every beast, like if an animal kills you, that animal should be like kill someone in your family, you should kill the animal.

Bracket Bill, I mean we do that with like a dog that bites one of our kids. We should put him down. And certainly if an ox killed someone in my family,

I'm putting him down. And the Bible says you do that. So even the beast. But then it goes on and says at the hand of man, at the hand of every man's brother will

I require the life of man. Who so sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man.

That is where human government began and capital punishment. It's the first time in history that that existed.

And so this is where it happens. In fact, Schofield calls this the third dispensation.

And he calls it human government. And so that's where it started. Somewhere in my notes I've got the exact year.

Yeah, I do. It's like 2348 BC. I had to study for like two months to get it that accurate.

And so that's 4 ,000, roughly 4 ,350 years ago is when government began on the earth.

Isn't that something? Before that you just had the the fathers of each family rule over the family. This is where government was started.

If you want to think about the dispensations, get you one of those Schofield Bibles. It'll be in the footnotes. But I'll just quickly list them.

The first one is called the dispensation of innocency. It's found in Genesis 128. That's man in the garden.

Then when man was kicked out of the garden, that's the end of a certain way God dealt with people. And he had to deal with them differently because now they're sinners.

Would you agree that that's a different dispensation and sense of difference in how God deals with man?

And that starts, it's called the dispensation of conscience, started in Genesis 323.

When man sinned and all of a sudden he knows good and evil, not just good, it sort of awakened his conscience where now his conscience knows what's bad.

I mean not only does he know bad, but he knows what is bad. And so it's been given that name, the dispensation of conscience.

It begins somewhere around Genesis 323. And then human government was this one in Genesis 9 -5.

And then the next one is the dispensation of promise, which you can relate that roughly to Abraham, Genesis 12 -1.

It corresponds to the Abrahamic covenant. And by the way, this dispensation where God promised not to destroy by water, that's known as the

Noahic covenant. So covenant theology matches right there with dispensation.

So why fight? I mean they pretty well match. And then the fifth one right after promise is law.

That starts in Exodus 19 -8, and that's the law of Moses when that was given to the nation of Israel.

And then the next one is grace, and that's roughly the New Testament. It's Jesus Christ brought grace.

And then the seventh is called the fullness of times, and that relates to after the church age, so the

Millennial Kingdom and so forth. So those are the seven dispensations. But the third one is where government started.

Now in verse 7, the Noahic covenant is given right here in Genesis 9, where we are.

And he just says again, he reiterates, I will never destroy the world by water again.

And then down at verse 12, it says, and God said, this is a token of the covenant which

I make between me and you and every living creature, not just God and man, but God and his entire creation, for all perpetual generations.

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of covenant between me and you.

So the rainbow was established as a token of the Noahic covenant. Isn't that interesting?

And so there we have right at that same time though, law began. Now back to Romans chapter 13, verse 1, let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God.

The powers that be are ordained of God. That started 4 ,350 years ago, and the

Apostle Paul has explained to us more how it happened. Now let's see, we're about out of time, so let me just end with a question or two for you, because I can see you're vibrant and your brains are really working.

So here's the first question. If you had been a

German citizen prior to World War II, or especially if you'd have been a

British citizen during World War II, would you have thought it was God's will for Hitler to rise to leadership, yes or no?

No. You would not have thought so, but what does Romans chapter 13, verse 1 say?

Yes. It says yes. So that's interesting, don't you think?

So you got to really put some thought in that now. Is the PowerPoint working? Yeah, so he's got a good picture.

Okay, this is going to get better, Dave. You're going to have fun with this if you can keep up with me here. So everybody kind of said

I wouldn't have thought it was God's will, but when I'm informed by the scripture, I know it was, right?

Okay, so well, what would you think now looking back on it, though?

Same question. You're looking back at Hitler. He killed eight million Jews just because they were

Jews, and he would have killed any Blacks that were around too if they'd been around, because he didn't like that race at all.

And so what would you think looking back at that? Was that God's will for him to be the leader over Hitler?

I mean, over Germany? Well, we already know the answer. The answer is yes, but it doesn't feel right, does it?

So let's think about this a minute. How many of you have ever studied the history of the creation of the modern

Jewish state in Israel? Raise your hand if you studied that a little bit. Okay, a few of us.

Did you know that the only reason that the nations of the world, they don't just allow a new nation to pop up because that's competition, and they may make taxes that they don't get their hands on.

Like, you can't just go out and buy an island and start a new nation. Did you know that? You have to have the permission of the existing nations.

Do you know why they allowed Israel to become a nation? Because eight million Jews had been killed when they felt sorry for them, period.

It never, humanly speaking, could have happened without Hitler. So do you think, if I ask it this way, do you think it was

God's will for Israel to be a nation moving into the end times so that we can have

Armageddon like God said in the book of Revelation is going to happen when all the nations of the world come against Israel?

We wouldn't be there without Hitler. What's your answer now? So this guy, you see, God sees a bigger picture than we see, all right?

Now, so there's, you know, there's a good question. Now, can you name anyone, can you name anyone in history who came to power outside of God's poor ordination that ever happened?

Can you name any leader that ever came into power without God ordaining it? Well, now you can't, right?

So he ordained it. The question is, if he did ordain it, does that mean it's his will? Now, that's a different question.

Think about that one a minute. We know he ordained it, right? But if he ordained it, does that mean it's his will?

Trick question, so be careful. Yes, it means it's his will, but it doesn't feel like it does it.

Because we, you know what? Preachers have taught us incorrectly most of our life about God's will. They say, well, make sure you stay in God's will.

How many of you've heard that before? Like, work at it. Did you know you can't not be in God's will? That's bad grammar,

Mr. Preacher. I love to say that, because I heard a wise old preacher say that once, Ben. I've been saying it ever since.

But listen, if it happens, it's God's will, because God's God, and God doesn't do stuff that's not his will.

It's just that his picture of everything is bigger than our picture, and he knows every detail. Everything has a purpose, and he only has one plan because he can't make a mistake.

So this is God's plan. You're living in it, and it's perfect. Not that there aren't bad things that happen, but guess who brought that in the world?

Satan said to Eve, hey, all you know is good. Wouldn't you like to know good and bad? What'd she choose? What'd she choose?

Bad and good. So now you get the bad with the good. You don't just get good, and that's not God's fault. People ask me all the time, why would a good

God let bad things happen? Good God let Eve happen, and Eve brought that on to us, and Adam, but it really was

Eve, so it couldn't have been brought to us if Adam hadn't taken a bite too.

So it's both of them, and there you have it. If you want to talk about humanism, that's the cause of all bad that's in the world.

But yeah, wouldn't you have to agree God is still sovereign, and God in his plan planned for Adam and Eve to eat that fruit.

You know why? Because without it, he could have never put himself on that cross and shown us his love. With no sin, you have no cross, and with no cross, you don't understand

God's love. All of it was ordained, and there's another great example of how sometimes it seems like things happen that are not

God's will, but they are God's will. All right, now let me ask you this, and I'll make sure you hit the button on this one.

Is God's will sometimes mysterious to us? Hit the button,

I'm watching, Dave. Boom! Too bad we don't have this working, because it's a big picture of our current president.

So the question is, is God's will sometimes mysterious to us? Yes, the answer to that one is yes.

And the last question I had is God fair? You don't have time to answer that, because it's lunchtime, right?

You don't have time, you don't have time to answer that one. So that was a little bit of a rabbit trail, but we're out of time.

So what did we do? Finish one verse? Yeah, I think we got chapter 13, verse 1 done, just about.

And so next time, we'll pick up on verse 2, and it starts with the rabbit trail, but only one, and after that, it's all

Romans. All right, let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, thank you for your word.

Thank you for how you instruct our hearts and minds with information that, to us, we never could have known with our humanistic brain.

With just thinking it up, we never would have thought it up. We never would have understood how you exist as one

God, subsisting in three distinct persons. We never could have thought up your plan of salvation.

We never could have understood that we are evil from our birth. We might have understood that one,

Lord, but we understand it better when we're informed by your word, and we certainly wouldn't have understood that we need to look at every leader that you put over us and all across the world as being there because they're supposed to be there right now, and we need to learn from that and ask ourselves, what are we supposed to learn from this?

What are we supposed to do? And so, Lord, help us to continue to understand this passage better and better as we study through it, and go with us into our time of fellowship.

Bless the meal we're about to have, and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, you're dismissed.

If you're visiting, we'll let you know we always have lunch here right now, and you're invited to stay. The only requirement is next time you come, bring a dessert for me.