Romans 13, Do You Know the Time?, Dr. John Carpenter

Romans 13 and the New Age in Christ

Romans chapter 13, the reading, the entire chapter here, the word of the Lord. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Therefore, whoever resists the authorities, resists what God has appointed and those who resist will incur judgment 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. And if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.

Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this, you also pay taxes for the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing, pay to all what is owed to them.

Taxes to whom taxes are owed. Revenue to whom revenue is owed. Respect to whom respect is owed. Honor to whom honor is owed. Oh, no one anything except to love each other for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law for the commandments.

You shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not covet. And any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor.

Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know, the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone.

The day is at hand. So then let us cast off all the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, do you know the time? Maybe not to the minute without checking your watch, but you probably know what time it is.

It's that time on Sunday morning when I begin the sermon. And so you begin to settle in to listen, hopefully attentively, hopefully considering yourself and how this applies to you and eagerly seeing what the word of God says.

It's that time of the week again. You know what time it is in your life. And when you were a child, it was time for you to learn and to grow. Parents and others would be interested to see what are you reading?

What books do you have or what games you're playing? They may go see you play baseball or basketball, go to recitals, dance and music, all that kind of thing. That's your time in life. And then when you grow up, guess what?

No one cares what you play or read. OK, your mother's not going to come if you're 30 and come watch you play basketball. It's not going to happen anymore. Sorry. Your time to do your part is now time to be watched when play.

Well, that was in the past. Now your time is to support your family, to take care of yourself and others. Sure, you can play some now and then for recreation, but don't expect anyone else to be interested in it when you get old and retire.

Well, then maybe you can go back to playing games and watching. We expect different things out of people depending on what time of life they're in. Do you know what time it is? And the days of the monarchies, kings would declare that it was their time.

It was their dynasty. God had given them the right to rule in Europe called the divine right of kings in China. They had a similar idea, the mandate of heaven, that a dynasty has the right to rule by authority from heaven.

China's history is separated into ages according to which dynasty was in control. They commonly refer to some period in their history as whatever the Han dynasty, the Ming dynasty, that kind of thing.

There's about 13 of them beginning in about the year 2000 B .C. and ending with the Qing dynasty in 1912 when a new dynasty got a mandate from heaven. Well, then you knew times had changed when the founding fathers of the United States designed a seal for the new country in 1782.

They had printed on it in Latin, besides E Pluribus Unum, Novus Ordo Seclorum, meaning new order of the ages. It's on your dollar bill. And that was their way of saying, particularly to the kings of Europe, times have changed.

Now it's the age of democracy. The Marxists, too, declared that a new age had dawned in which the working class, the proletariat would throw off their shackles. Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

The new era had come, which would bring in a worker's paradise. And the 1960s, Bob Dylan saying the times they are a changing and the counterculture declared that a new age had dawned. The age of Aquarius, which I'm not sure what that means, but that's what they said with a sexual revolution in which they could throw off all the chains of prior inhibitions.

And with the help of contraceptives and abortion, we could consume sex as much as we wanted without any consequences. And eventually that counterculture became just the culture. And if you objected to cohabitation and promiscuity and homosexuality or whatever, you were told time to change square.

Now, if you object, you're told time to change bigot. After the fall of communism in Europe, the Berlin Wall comes down and the Soviet Union disappears. And we were told in the 90s that we had reached the end of history and seen the last bloody battle.

Times have changed. Democracy and capitalism had triumphed and no one would ever oppose them ever again. Seems kind of quaint now, doesn't it? Sometimes those claims that time to change are just self-serving, just selfish excuses for self-indulgence.

Sometimes it's just silly and sometimes they're absolutely right. We saw last year in Mark that the Lord Jesus came preaching that the kingdom of God had come with him. First, John the Baptist declared the times are about to change.

Repent. Jesus comes right after him, saying the times are changing. Repent and believe. And then Paul comes after Jesus is raised and says, as he begins to describe the gospel here in Romans, Romans chapter one, verse 18.

The times have changed. The wrath of God is present tense being revealed from heaven. That is from God. But the good news is that in this new order of the ages. There is good news. He's described that good news from chapter one to chapter 11, ending with that, oh, inspired worship of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

And then the urgent appeal in chapter 12, verse one to present our bodies as living sacrifices. Spiritual worship is physical. And in chapter 12, verse two, not to be conformed to the world and the word there for world is actually age.

In verse two, the word translated world is age. Eye on us. The time, this present evil age that is brainwashing everyone else to live for money or for pleasure, for ego. That was the old age. The one John the Baptist said was about to be overthrown.

The one Jesus said he has overcome. And the one Paul says is passing away. Don't be conformed to this passing age because there is indeed a novus ordo securum, a new order of the ages. Now, how do we live in this new age with transform minds corporately in the church?

That is with our gifts and then socially still in this present evil age, but living like it's the coming age coming. That means it's going to start coming. The coming is this started to come and we're on the verge of it.

We live in both Christ's new age and the world's evil age at the same time. Here in chapter 13, we continue. Really, this chapter 13 just flows right after chapter 12. So we're continuing from last week.

This sermon is really how do you live? Well, socially, part two, do not be conformed to this age, but transformed in how you live socially in three parts. What's do what fulfills? And finally, what our.

Do you know what to do in this time? Now, some think we belong, Christians belong to another age, an age is not coming at it, it's not even begun yet, but we belong to it and not to this world. And so nothing is due for us in this world.

We're just waiting for a new world. And so we'll what we'll do for now is we'll escape this world. We'll live in our little isolated enclaves and we'll pay no attention to the world. We'll not read its books.

We'll listen to its music. We won't go to its movies or its shows. We won't use its courts. We won't vote in its elections. You just ignore it. That's the escapist, the otherworldly person. His spirituality is like to hold another world.

And in his mind, if you're a spiritual person, you ignore this world. The person like that is a Christian who thinks that since we belong to another age or another world, we won't have anything to do with this one.

The escapist will read those last three verses of chapter 12. Don't avenge yourself. And he'll read it to say, well, then we'll never use Christians. We never use the government. We don't use police or lawyers, courts to get justice.

We leave it all up to God. We leave it all up to another age that's still yet to come. But Paul tells us in chapter 13 to give what is due. Now, I know a pastor whose daughter was almost killed by a hospital that gave her a transfusion with the wrong blood type, obviously negligent.

Some people told him to sue the hospital, but he refused because he thought, well, that's what Christians do. We don't seek vengeance. You just forgive and you go on. You know, you don't punish in this world.

He thought suing would be vengeance. But what if it's justice? What if it's allowing the justice system to decide what is due? I think he was wrong. I think he's an escapist with an otherworldly spirituality that allows people to be negligent without suffering for it, without being punished for it.

What's due now is participation. Let every person in chapter 13, verse one, every person, including you, if you belong to another age, be subject to governing authorities. Even the ones right here in this age obey the government because the reason that you should obey, even if the new age has started and you belong to that new age, there is no authority except from God.

He says the same thing again in another way. Notice when he's when he rephrases the same idea and repeats it. This is otherwise he's emphasizing this. Those that exist have been instituted by God. To pay attention to that, no authority except from God, does it exist?

I've been instituted by God. It's not as though governments are out of God's control. The same Potter who controls human wills, remember him in chapter nine to make some people containers of mercy and others containers of wrath.

Here he makes governments. The Lord Jesus told Pontius Pilate that Pilate couldn't crucify him unless he had been given authority to do so from above. The Chinese were right. Authorities rule by the mandate of heaven.

We participate usually by submission. Now, in our system, we're democratic, more open. We can also participate by voting or speaking up, running for office or suing. Like negligent hospitals. Therefore, the conclusion in verse two, whoever resists the authority in Greek here, it's actually singular authority resists what God has ordained.

Now, for that, they will receive judgment. They'll be punished often by the authority themselves right here. And now it's a perverse feature of our culture that we actually like rebels. We sometimes admire them.

University of Mississippi probably calls itself the rebels. Imagine if they call themselves the reprobate or the adulterer. That would be weird, wouldn't it? But call themselves the rebels like they're proud of it.

The Bible doesn't have any respect for rebels. They're threatened with judgment, either judgment in the future age coming or now. As the new age comes into this age now, some American Christians have concluded from all this in chapter 13 that the American Revolution was wrong because the Americans were rebels.

They were rebelling against the king of England. But not necessarily. You know, the original 13 states voted for independence and they were legitimate governments. So really, you had to choose if you were living in America in 1776, who are you going to rebel against?

There's two governments. There's two claims. So one had to choose which government was right, the states or the king, which one had God ordained to rule here. Well, the one that is right and just. Well, further, another reason we shouldn't be rebels against the authority in verse three, rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.

Notice that he's saying they they should be a terror to bad, but he's saying they're not a terror to the good. He says that if you don't want to fear the authority, then some simple solution.

Don't do bad things. Don't break the law.

If you don't want to be scared of being pulled over every time you come around a corner, go over a hill. Simple, no speed, at least not so much with the police. Take notice. If you don't want them breaking down your door, then don't be a drug dealer.

It's not hard.

Well, now, immediately, Americans will go and we're actually trained to think like this from youth.

We're taught like this in the school.

We're trying to go, you know, whoa, Paul, what? Paul, don't you know? So simple minded authorities can be bad. They are sometimes a terror to good people. And of course, that's sometimes true, but not really often, even in repressive countries, though the police are mainly for stopping crime.

Even the mafia, when it's in control, will keep the petty crime down. You know, the mafia doesn't like the little criminals running around. They don't like the competition. Governments don't like anything that is out of their control and crime, by definition, is out of control.

So first, Paul is speaking generally about how things generally are, but he's also saying how things should be, you know, like a parent might say to a child. We don't do that in this family, even though the kid just did what we don't do as a small kid.

When I repeated the N word, my father sternly interrupted me and said, we do not use that word in this family. Kind of what Paul is doing here, I think, here, governments are not a terror to good conduct.

He's saying what should be as if it were we should have absolute submission to the authority, no matter what they say, no matter what they command us to do. Well, of course not. This is the principle.

What's due? Submission always? No. And the Bible submission to human authorities is never absolute. The book of Daniel is mainly about how God's people are to live in this present evil age, now dispersed in the world with pagan governments.

We participate. We can even work in the government like Daniel and his three friends. But when the authority orders us to bow before the idol, we respectfully say no. And we keep standing when it says we can't bow to the true God, we continue to bow and to pray as usual.

And that chapter five or thirty nine, the apostles are commanded not to preach about Jesus. And they say we must obey God rather than men. We submit as long as we're not commanded to do what God prohibits or prohibited from doing what God commands.

We're commanded to assemble, do not forsake the assembly of yourselves and Hebrews chapter 10, verse twenty five. Now, a little over two years ago, the state prohibited churches from assembling of over 10 people during the original 15 days to slow the spread.

Remember that? I thought, well, that's OK. It's just two services. It's not permanently forsaking the assembling of ourselves. And we could about 10 people could show up. But then when it became indefinite, this is going to go on and on and on.

When it became plainly absurd, you know, when the dollar general about a mile from here had a posted occupancy, which it did in the height of the pandemic of one hundred and eleven people. It has about half our floor space, I guess, and about a quarter of our ceiling space.

They can have one hundred and eleven people in that little building. And we're restricted to 10 only because we're a church. And I know the Constitution, which is the ultimate authority in this country.

And it doesn't allow the governor to prohibit the free exercise of our religion like that. And then I thought, we're not going to cooperate. They want us to be restricted to 10 people. They're going to have to post somebody at our door and count them themselves.

I'm not going to do it for them. Thankfully, two large churches in North Carolina thought like me. They sued the state, which I guess some escapists, other worldly Christians, but they should never sue.

Well, they did, thankfully. And a federal judge also thought like me and lifted the restriction. But in principle, we submit because in verse four, the authority is God's servant. It's the same word, their servant, the same word for deacon.

The authority is God's deacon. He's doing God's work. God wants to judge evildoers now, not all to the final judgment. He's doing some of the judging right now and he wants to reward good doers. And he's appointed governments to do that for him.

They are for our good. Everybody would really, everybody would rather live under a government, even if tyrannical and oppressive. You'd probably rather have a mafia Don in charge of your town than than just chaos with anarchy, just thugs running loose, the mobs rioting.

The government produces peace that allows us to live. But in verse four, if you do wrong, if you're a criminal, if you're a thug, you're a rebel, be afraid, be afraid because he, the authority does not bear the sword in vain.

In other words, he's not armed for nothing. The government has the right to use violence for right purposes. The sword there is not a symbol. It's not as I've got a ceremonial sword he's bearing now. He means that the government literally has weapons to use them.

Swords then like guns now were for killing people, right? They're not decorations. They're a utensil whose purpose is to kill. And he, God has given it to the government to use them because at the end of verse four, he is a servant, a deacon.

Again, the authority is God's deacon is a servant of God. He serves God by being an avenger who carries out God's wrath, God's anger on evildoers. Remember at the end of chapter 12, where he said that it's not for us personally to seek vengeance.

We don't go out and deflecting our punishment on those who have wronged us. But he said to leave it to God's wrath. Remember that that's how chapter 12 ends. Now, the escapist reads that and thinks, well, we leave it to God's wrath by by waiting for another age for a coming heavenly judgment.

Well, not necessarily because immediately into chapter 13, the government can bring God's wrath here and now at this time in this age. In the summer of 2015, Sherry Ann Burford, about 45, and her daughter, Bridget, about 20, visited us right here, along with Sherry's younger son, who's about 14 or 15, I guess.

The boy was autistic. After the service, the boy went around to everyone, everyone, literally everyone shaking their hands. It's kind of unusual. And his mother, Sherry, commented that that was a sign that he felt comfortable here.

He felt this was a safe space. Sherry and Bridget visited us a few more times. They even volunteered once to help at Jim Junior. But for whatever reason, they stopped coming. And then we lost contact with them the next spring, May 7th, 2016, at the home of Courtney Lunsford, Sherry's niece.

Sherry was visiting her niece along with Bridget, who had been Courtney's cousin, not far off the Cherry Grove Road, which is in the southern part of Castle County. A man named Camille Walker, the father of Courtney Lunsford's child, against whom Courtney had a restraining order to keep him away.

Apparently, he had been abusive. And so she went to the court to get a restraining order against him. He came anyway. He came with a gun. He shot Sherry and Bridget, killing them, and then kidnapped Courtney and their child.

Two days later, Walker was arrested in a motel in Burlington. Now, a few days after all this, I was working out in the gym in Yanceyville, listening to two other men talking about all this. And one of them concluded, I hope they fry him.

Referring to Walker getting the electric chair, I thought, what do you think a Christian should think about a situation like this? I thought of Sherry and Bridget right here, even helping with Jim Junior.

Now, I thought of that poor autistic boy, already so fragile. You know, anything disrupts your life like that, particularly autistic, just so traumatizing. I have his mother and older sister stolen from him by an abusive, rejected cousin's boyfriend.

I thought, yeah, kill him. God gives the president, Congress, judges, governors, states, the police, county sheriff, corrections department, the sword. He puts it in their hand. We're not to take selfish revenge for ourselves.

It'll take the law in our own hands. But God has given governments the responsibility to wield that sword for vengeance, to kill people like Camille Walker. Governments have a God-given right to bring God's wrath, his anger down on the heads of evildoers, to declaring war, ordering armies to attack, calling in airstrikes, sending in SEAL Team 6, sentencing people to death.

The purpose of the government now isn't just negative, punitive, vengeful, killing the evil. Notice the end of verse three. It's also to approve of those who do good, to reward them. It can give awards, it can give medals, that kind of thing.

Now, most of the time it rewards them by letting them, letting us live in peace with the life that we've worked for. That's the best reward it can give. Mostly, though, the authority's purpose is indeed negative, punitive, vengeful.

Now, modern Westerners, Americans and Europeans, have lost sight of this, thinking that the government is an anti-state, responsible for our jobs and health care and education and basically everything, cradle to grave.

But look at the emphasis here is what the word of God says here in verse three. Rulers are a terror to evildoers. Otherwise, our leaders are supposed to be terrorists, to criminals, to invaders, to other enemies who would hurt us when considering who to vote for.

Consider who is best at striking fear in evildoers. Not think, well, who would be the best? I have a beer with if I could. That's silly. Who is best is striking fear in people who would harm you. In verse four, there are people to be afraid of.

If you're bad, he bears the sword. He's an avenger who carries out God's wrath. That's what it all says here about rulers. Now, people like Camille Walker should be so afraid of what would happen to them if they violated restraining order, much less killed two women.

They should be so afraid of what they would know would come upon them that they'd never think of doing it. John Martin wasn't afraid because he had been taught from young, taught by example. The punishments are never really severe.

It's mostly all talk, never serious, nothing much to worry about. He was an Englishman born in England in nineteen fifty nine and was first a juvenile delinquent there and then a repeat offender, always leniently punished.

One crime when he was a young man, he stole something. He was fined ten pounds by fifteen dollars.

Big deal.

Probably got his mother to pay it. So always taught punishments don't matter. His law breaking has no consequences. Always leniently punished several times, escaping on home leave because the silly British prison system kept sending him on home leave.

I mean, the first time he escapes on home leave, why do you why do you send him on home leave the second time? And he eventually became a serial killer, traveling the world, looking for Caucasian people away from home in Asia to befriend them.

And then when their guard was down, he would kill them, take their money and dismember their bodies and then move on because they were away from home. It would take days or weeks for the people who would normally miss them to report them to the police.

He did that in Singapore in nineteen ninety five to a South African businessman, cutting his body up and dumping it in the Singapore River. He then went to Thailand and did the same to two Canadians there before returning to Singapore.

Big mistake. He was arrested at the Singapore airport, even though he was traveling under a different passport. He was put on trial, was found guilty, sentenced to death and hung the entire case from that first murder in Singapore to the murderer's execution took less than one year.

That's why Singapore has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. The murderers are terrorized and so they never commit murder. Please ask these. Chapter eight, verse 11 says, because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.

Therefore, because God has designated rulers to be a servant to punish evil, to bring his wrath into this age, one must be in subjection. In verse five, be in subjection not only, he says, to avoid God's wrath, particularly avoid God's wrath from the governments who are dispensing it.

But also because of conscience, because of the Holy Spirit who is telling you to be in subjection. That's why in verse six we pay taxes. The authorities are for the third time. This time using a different word, though, God's ministers.

I've seen some professed Christians repeat the political slogan that taxation is theft. No, it's not. The people saying that are worldly. What's due of us in verse seven, our responsibility is to pay taxes, pay our bills, give respect, honor the honorable.

Now, the worldly will protest.

No way.

I'm free and I'm not submitting to anybody. But Martin Luther said it best. The Christian man is the most free Lord of all and subject to none. A Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to everyone.

The conformed Christian who has picked up his attitude from the world thinks he can pour out scorn and suspicion, insults at our political leaders. It's our constitutional right. Well, maybe so. But you are to be transformed.

In this age of both the old evil age fading away and the kingdom of God, what is due? Honor, what time is it, it's time for what fulfills, oh, no one, anything he says in verse eight. Now, I don't think he means to pray, but taking any loans.

Obviously, there are people and corporations that want you to take loans from them. You're not taking advantage of them. I think he means, you know, if you have to take a loan for a mortgage or a student loan, if you do have to take out a loan, we'll pay it back on schedule.

I don't be in arrears except to love each other.

You do a love.

You have a love debt. You are in arrears to pay back love and you'll never pay up, but you should be trying making your payments regularly. If you do that, if you're guided by love, you will keep the law without having to have a law telling you what to do all the time for every little decision you make.

Remember in chapter 12, verse two, if you have a transformed mind, you'll be able to discern, think clearly what is the will of God about all kinds of things. And so you will know then what is good, what's acceptable to God, what he accepts, what's perfect.

If your mind is changed from being the consumer who consumes everything, consumes every relationship, even your marriage, your church, you consume it into something for your pursuit of happiness. And if it doesn't do that, if it's not, if it's like your cable TV provider, if it's just costing too much and it's not giving you the shows you want, well, you'll dump it.

You'll get a divorce.

You'll change churches.

You'll break your vows.

You'll forget any promise because the world has taught you that all those constraints, your promises, your vows, whatever it is, all that hinders your happiness.

And you'll consume.

But if your mind is changed to being a lover, not a consumer, you'll do what fulfills the law. You won't commit adultery because that would hurt your spouse and would hurt the one you commit adultery with and their spouse and so on.

You're not just consuming them for your pleasure. You obviously won't murder anyone. You won't take what belongs to someone else because you love the owner of the things more than you like their things or their money.

Augustine wrote, love and do whatever you will. You got that love and do whatever you will. Well, now that you love what you will is what is pleasing to God and what's good for your neighbor. Love is the fulfilling of the law.

In verse 10, if you love your neighbor, the one God has put beside you, you won't hurt them. And so you'll fulfill the law. We live in the age of love, not law. What time is it? In verse 11, you should know the time.

The reason we should be living sacrifices, living in this age, but different with transform minds is because we know the times have changed, that we are in a new age, a novus ordo seclurum. It is the hour.

I would say 11 literally says, well, the hour has already come. It literally the hour is already simple. The hour is already. It's not something you're waiting on still in this age, hoping for a soon coming age.

No, the time to change the new age has dawned. Now is the hour for this world of darkness to fade away, to be overcome with the light. So salvation that is final, complete glorification, resurrection is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

So if when you first believed. Then when you first leave, then you knew that this world was not worth investing your whole life in. That everything it offers is fading away and it will be vastly outshone.

It'll be outshone like the dim lights of the stars is outshone by the by the sun at dawn. If you believe that at first, don't you understand that you are even closer to that full light of day now? So even now, even when it still seems dark and people all around you are, they're still living as if the night will go on forever, as if they don't belong to anyone but themselves, you in verse 13, you behave as if it was bright day already walk properly as in the daytime, as if it were noon already and everything is exposed.

Everything out is out in the open. Just last night, I lost a gas cap in my driveway. I don't know how it fell out and I couldn't find the gas because it was dark. Got a flashlight on my phone. I'm looking everywhere several times, different angles.

I couldn't find the gas cap. I get up this morning. First thing I got there, it is as obvious as the full light of day.

You can see it.

That's our lives right now. There are all kinds of things going on in the world that they think they can hide. They're disgusting.

They're immoral.

They think they're not exposed, that they won't be judged for them. But when the light that is now already dawning, when it's fully exposed, it'll be obvious what they were. This world is fading away.

That will be obvious when the light has come to walk properly as if the light were already here. The sun, the rays of the sun are just now coming over the horizon, but live as if it were noon. Still in this hour walk that is not a waste of your life and partying or drunkenness or addiction, sexual immorality.

Indulgence watching porn or the constant drama fighting that you see on some of the daytime talk shows or whatever. The way some people like to live their lives, always some kind of conflict, some kind of drama that I was going to be churning up.

Don't live like that. We are living in between what God has done for us, his many mercies. Remember in chapter 12, verse one, give your life as a living sacrifice in light of the mercies of God and living between that and the light of his full coming.

In between, in this early morning hour. We're to present ourselves as living sacrifices because of the past and walk in the light because of the coming dawn. Augustine was born to a Christian mother, Monica, I believe 345 and what today is Algeria.

Monica raised him to be a Christian, but when he was old enough to leave home, he left his childhood faith. He threw himself both into sexual immorality and joined what we would call now a cult. Eventually left the cult, but he couldn't get the immorality to leave him.

He was conformed to the world. He was having concubines, what we would now call just living girlfriends. But he knew that he was still living in darkness. Finally, at age 31, living in Milan, Italy, he was overcome with grief for his sins.

He wrote, quote, I threw myself down somehow under a fig tree and let my tears flow freely. Rivers stream from my eyes, a sacrifice acceptable to God. And I repeatedly said, how long, oh, Lord, how long, Lord, will you be angry to the uttermost?

Do not be mindful of our old iniquities, for I felt my past to have a grip on me. And then in his anguish, he heard a child from a nearby house chanting some song in Latin. Tolo Lege, take up and read.

He just happened to have a copy of Paul's letter to the Romans nearby. And so he picked it up and he read the first words that he saw put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh. The sinful nature to gratify his desires here in verse 14, with that, he said, it was a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart.

All the shadows of doubt were dispelled. The light dawned in his life and he decided to walk in it. He came into a new age. Well, how do you put on the Lord Jesus Christ? How do you cast off works of darkness and put on the armor of light by giving your body as a living sacrifice, transforming your mind so you think differently than this age?

So you're not just a consumer or a rebel or an arrogant smart aleck scoffing at the authorities. And you're not just a cold legalist keeping the rules and not someone who claims to be saved, but lives just as self-indulgently, sensually, angrily, selfishly, like all the other people from that old age that is passing away.