Pacifism

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton. And with me are Michael Durham, Chris Giesler, David Kassin. Sadly, Andrew Hudson is not with us tonight because he's got a little bit of a bug.

He's feeling a little bit ill, so we're praying for him and we hope to see him back soon in the seat across from us.

But we're gonna go ahead and get started with a question that we had come in back in May when we were finished recording for season three.

And we're gonna go ahead and read it now. Does Romans 12, nine through 21 teach that Christians have to be pacifists?

What about fighting evil? Don't we also have a responsibility to fight at times? Michael, you wanna start us off?

Sure. So Romans 12, verses nine through 21. So here's what the passage says.

Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love.

In honor, giving preference to one another. Not lagging in diligence. Fervent in spirit.

Serving the Lord. Rejoicing in hope. Patient in tribulation. Continuing steadfastly in prayer. Distributing to the need of the saints.

Given to hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things but associate with the humble.

Do not be wise in your own opinion. Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men.

If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.

Beloved, do not avenge yourselves but rather give place to wrath for it is written, vengeance is mine,

I will repay, says the Lord. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink.

For in so doing, you will keep coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.

So in this passage, in this series of exhortations wherein

Paul is speaking to the saints in Rome about how to live rather than be conformed to the world, live transformed by the renewing of their minds, living in accordance unto

Christ as the body of Christ, there are going to be a lot of things that are not the norm when it comes to the world, the way that other system was working.

And so all of these different virtues and actions and ways of feeling and thinking and speaking and doing are modeled after Christ and they're not modeled after antichrist, that which is against Christ, whatever is in the world, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life.

This is all opposite of that. Included in these exhortations are things that may seem to lend itself towards pacifism where, and let's think about a definition for pacifism.

What do we mean when we say that? What do we think that the questioner means by that, do we think?

Well, it's more than just like non -aggression. I mean, it typically, I mean, even if there is a Webster's Dictionary definition of it, people usually think of the

Amish, think of people who, you, I'm a pacifist, even if you attack me, I am not going to retaliate.

I don't engage in war, conscientious objector, all that stuff, but it's also with even within personal relationships that if you get attacked,

I'm gonna do whatever I can to get out of that because violence in and of itself is wrong, violence begets more violence.

That kind of idea, I think that's the modern usage of the term. Yeah, well, and I hear people claim an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, so let's go by that standard.

If someone does violence to me, if I do violence back, then there's no benefit there, so I'm a pacifist.

Right, so you have the profile of who might be doing evil to Christians, and Paul is addressing that.

There are those who persecute, and so Paul says, bless those who persecute you, who run you down and try to make your life terrible and miserable, and they're trying to put you into a hard place so that you finally give up what you believe, trying to put you out of existence one way or the other, and we have this very short, pithy statement in verse 17, repay no one evil for evil, okay?

And then verse 18, if it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.

You can't keep other people from trying to be hostile to you and attacking you, but much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men, and then verse 19 is very strong, beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath.

So put it all together, it sounds like no Christian, no follower of Jesus should ever act in a hostile, violent way against anyone, even your enemies, even those who want to do you harm.

So it doesn't seem to fit that you would pick up a rifle or pick up a weapon and try to do harm to people trying to harm you based on what you've seen here, but that's not exactly what is being said.

Very particularly, this is not a instruction to affirm evil having its right of way, basically saying evil, you should come straight through and I'm going to lay down, help pave that road, right?

That's not what's being said here. You're going to be interacting with those who are evil, with those who persecute you in particular ways that are going to frustrate them and oppose them, even feeding your hungry enemy and giving a drink to your thirsty enemy is heaping coals of fire on his head.

And verse 21 says, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good. So what you're doing in and of your own capacity in following Christ is you're trying to overcome evil, thwart evil, stop evil, divert evil.

You're not simply going to lay down. It's not a situation in which you're going to do nothing. There's a lot that you are going to be doing and it's not going to be helpful.

Right, when we're looking at the text, we just read through that. In verse 17 through 19, there seems to be a timing element to it.

So in verse 17, it says, repay no one evil for evil. In 19, beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath, for it is written vengeance is mine,

I will repay, says the Lord. So this seems to be talking about people seeking vengeance after the fact, after evil has been done.

What about before evil has been done or evil is being done in the moment, is there room for a godly person to stop that evil, to cease it from happening without it being vengeance?

Well, it's kind of covered in, as much as it depends upon you, be at peace with all men. So you're not making yourself a target.

You're not, be rude. As much as it depends on you, be cool. But if those things do happen to you, that's from what we're seeing right now, you don't take your own personal revenge, which is very prevalent in most ancient cultures.

I spent time in Afghanistan, in Sub -Saharan Africa, in Iraq, in Turkey, and there are blood feuds that go back, not just generations, but go back centuries.

And somebody ran over somebody's goat, and then they got a little bit more heated, and then they got into a fight, and then somebody got killed, and this person got killed.

We have the whole, the Hatfields and McCoys, we have that in the US, but these blood feuds, where it says vengeance and vengeance upon vengeance upon vengeance, that is what

Christianity is saying, no, this has to stop. And you saw that in the ancient world.

You can read about it in the Old Testament. But you have at least this Christian principle, and it does quote an

Old Testament verse, but it's a Christian principle that vengeance is not yours to take. You have to leave room for the wrath of God, who will take vengeance, because if you take your own, this cycle of bloodshed continues.

Society itself degrades. You have the state then coming in and taking vengeance, or it's

God taking vengeance, but using the sword of the state to do so, because that ends the cycle.

What do you guys think? I was just thinking to your own household of, you're talking about preventing destruction before it comes, right?

Right, because say you've got an individual that breaks into your house, steals your stuff. What do you, do you go out and get it?

Or say he kills a family member. Do you go out and kill him? No, obviously not. There are pathways. You seek justice through the state.

But someone's breaking into your house and actively trying to do evil. Is there any room to stop that?

Yes, lock the doors, right? Lock your windows. Like these are, and we take these as for granted.

These are basic norms in the Western world that prevent people from doing these evils to you.

This is step one, right? Lock everything up. Bring the valuables into safes or inside.

Be good at target practice. These steps are preventative and not like a punitive thing.

You're not taking out any sort of punishment on somebody who's done anything. You're preventing these things from happening. And we're talking about like law, like bringing it to the government.

The government has also made provision for you in places like the state of Oklahoma to defend your castle, to defend your property and the people within it.

And I think when we're talking about something like this, what would we say to the government's giving you the leeway to defend your family with lethal force?

Does that go against these principles laid out in the scripture? Or is that something that the government has some sort of a permission from the

Lord as his deacon to do so? Is that within the realm of authority for government to actually sanction violence?

Letters of Mark, those kinds of things. Does the government have that authority? So I think the key part of this question is does this passage teach just the universality of pacifism, leave room for the wrath of God?

That person comes into your house, even if the government says you can kill them, is this passage saying don't do that, leave room for the wrath of God?

Is it teaching pacifism? I think we've cleared that you're not supposed to take your own personal revenge.

But does that mean you can't or should not defend your family? Is that what this passage is teaching? I think that's the heart of the question.

Another thing too is at the beginning of the passage, he's talking about loving good things and being productive rather than destructive.

One of the things that we as fathers have produced with our wives is a family and it's a good thing.

And I think he's talking about the things that you should be doing at the beginning of the passage from nine till 16.

And then he starts going to the negatives. Don't do this, don't do this. Do these things at the beginning of this passage. Don't do these things.

And this happens a lot in scripture where it tells you what to do, like the positives of production and then the do nots of don't destroy on the back end of it.

And it's kind of similar to the way that the table, the law comes to us as well as the positives versus the negatives.

And additionally, I think part of this question is trying to make sense of how the Bible fits together. Right, so when you read a passage like Romans 12 verses nine to 22, or you read a passage like Matthew chapter five verses 36 through the end, how are you supposed to square that with a bunch of other passages and how do you square that with how you have received

Christian tradition that it's a good thing for a man to protect his family and home and property and to do so with weapons from within his own home on his own property?

And why do we think that's a good thing? And is the Bible telling us that it's not a good thing? Should we live in houses that are unlocked?

Should we live without front doors? Should we, like when Jesus, think about the way

Jesus talks about the family and talks about domestic things and agricultural things with assumptions in place.

For instance, he talks about not laying up your treasure on earth. Why? Because thieves break in and steal.

Now, Jesus' solution to this is not to leave all your stuff outside, right?

Because by putting things, and actually the Greek word is dig through because of the adobe walls and there's only one door in these houses that they lived in and no thief would go through the front door.

They'd come in through the back wall and they would dig through to get to the storeroom and steal whatever stuff that you had that you didn't want anybody else to have.

So, Jesus' solution to this is not don't have anything in your storeroom.

His solution is not, well, they're breaking in and stealing because obviously you're oppressing them and therefore, what are you doing living in a house?

Fool, right? That's not the solution. When he gives the illustration about if you're gonna go plunder a strongman's possessions, what's the plan?

How does this heist get pulled off? Step one, find the strongman. What is

Jesus assuming there in the illustration? Everybody knows the man's supposed to protect his possessions, protect his house.

That's just assumed. This is also seen in Jesus' illustration of being a good shepherd, that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

The good shepherd defends his sheep, puts himself in the danger. He's even the door between the fold and the outside and everything else.

But what about the hireling? The hireling doesn't care. He runs away. So you see the negative versus the positive.

There are a lot of assumptions that are just built into the biblical worldview. It's a good thing for a man to protect his home, protect his family.

Like a shepherd would protect his flock, so a man should protect his family. These are all basic assumptions that go all the way to the root of what it means for us to be made in the image of God and being stewards of the blessing of being man and woman together in marriage, having children, part of being fruitful, multiplying and filling the earth instead of doing it is having that sanctity of the family and property to bring that about.

When God brought about a new order of things with the first covenant that he made with Noah, what did he address?

He addressed the issue of that widespread violence that in the name of Cain and Lamech was just being done everywhere.

And every man was going around grabbing whatever woman he wanted. It was a Marxist dream, right? Women were common property to all, right?

This was the enlightenment principle. Everybody grab whatever woman you want. Everybody kill each other as long as you're stronger than the next person.

This is the dream of the enlightenment. This is the whole idea. Well, when God changed all of that and judged the earth, judged humanity for all their violent, wicked ways, he very clearly told

Noah, here's how it's going to be. You get to eat the animals, go hog wild. But if an animal sheds a man's blood, that animal dies.

And if a man sheds man's blood, by a man, that man's blood will be shed. And every brother takes up that cause.

And so the brethren of the one slain have to bring about that appropriate end. And again, we have these families that grow larger and larger into -

Nations. Nations. These very large ethnic groups that are nations and they're going to have to punish evildoers.

And so when you get to Romans 12 and you're seeing how to follow Christ and it's repay no one evil for evil, we're also told in the very same passage, leave room for vengeance.

It doesn't say call vengeance a bad thing. It's make space for it. Carve out hope for it.

Have a plan for it. Count on it. Have vengeance against evildoers, those who have done you evil.

Make sure that vengeance against them is a part of your calculations. But let

God do it in his way. What's the plan? The plan is to read Romans 12 and then read

Romans 13. The plan is leave room for wrath, leave room for vengeance, so pay your taxes.

Yeah, because your taxes fund the government. Right, so Romans 13 says pay your taxes and the government will punish evildoers.

That's the whole idea. And of course, in our particular form of government, we are supposed to exercise good citizenship and tell, as Christians, point the finger at the devil or at the magistrates and say, this is what an evildoer looks like and does, and you should be punishing these evildoers, and doers of righteousness should be praised.

Here's some examples that you could praise and inform the magistrate, who is the deacon and the servant of God, what

God has to say about what evil is and what righteousness is so they know who to punish. Now, that doesn't answer the question about self -defense.

Right, well, because particularly in Luke, why is Jesus telling them to go out and buy self -defense weapons?

Well, that's what I want to go to next. When Jesus is giving them instructions, he reminded them in Luke 22, verse 35, he said to them, when

I sent you out without money, bag, knapsack, and sandals, did you lack anything? So they said, nothing. They were going through the land of Israel.

Hey, we're followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Oh, that amazing rabbi who does miracles, he's great. Then he said to them, but now, but now, because everything's about to change, he who has a money bag, let him take it.

And likewise, a knapsack. And he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. Your bedtime knapsack, the thing you're going to use as a pillow, your extra cloak, sell it.

You need a sword. You're going to need a sword. Why? For I say to you that this which is written must still be accomplished in me.

And he was numbered with the transgressors. Right, from Isaiah. For the things concerning me have an end.

So they said, Lord, look, here are two swords. And he said to them, it is enough. But what's his point? His point is,

I'm about to become an outlaw. And all you all are going to be outlaws as well. So the state, the

Sanhedrin, is going to call me enemy number one. And everybody who's with me are going to be on the most wanted list.

And you guys are going to be outlaws. So you are going to need to provide for your own self -defense because the state will no longer cover that.

Right? And we live in a world today, thank God, the state that we have is not so large and penetrating that they're housing soldiers and police officers and sheriffs in our homes.

That's a good thing. We don't want a state that is that domineering. There are areas in our life where the state is just not going to be able to protect us.

And it's in the interest of a righteous state to have a citizenry that will defend themselves against evildoers and that would retard the doings of the wicked.

And we have a slight form of every man, especially in Oklahoma, every man deputized to defend his own home, his own property.

If somebody's in your house, not supposed to be there, you can shoot him and you're done. If someone's on your property, you can brandish a weapon and say, get out of here and make my day and they're supposed to leave.

That is in the interest of the state. And it's very biblical. It's a biblical worldview to say, well, the state needs to punish evildoers.

That's true. But the state can't get to every single place, every single area, and they want to retard the doing of evil.

And so the citizenry is there and they are a part of that. Home invaders better watch out.

They could die very easily in the state of Oklahoma. Other states, go hog wild. Getting onto somebody's property and messing around, not a good idea in the state of Oklahoma.

Other places, they can do all they want. In two different places, you see the rise of all manner of wickedness and crime and murder and violence.

In other places, you don't see as much. Just like before the flood, you see there's a difference between before and after.

God has a way of retarding evil and there's a way of taking vengeance. And he has ordained the state as a magistrate to do that.

That doesn't mean that we don't engage in self -defense, but that this is where we're trying to stop the evil from happening.

Now let's say that we're unsuccessful. We're unsuccessful in keeping evil from happening and we feel terrible about evil happening to our family, to our property, and so on.

What do we do then? That's the Romans 13. The magistrate, the civil government, is

God's servant to punish evil, is given the sword to exact. So we don't go after them.

Like this person did me evil, so I'm gonna go after. So I have a neighbor. We all have a neighbor who lives near our facility and he was in the news a few years back.

And so this is not like a secret or anything. His name is Philo, he's a retired firefighter. And Philo has a large assortment of various weapons from various technology.

He loves weapons and he used to be a knife sharpener. Anyway, he's a very generous man. He loves to walk his dogs. And truck come by one day and he's out there walking his dogs, enjoying his walk.

And somebody leans out the window and says, hey man, we need some money for gas. We're about to run out. And so he reaches in his, he gets his wallet out because he's gonna give them some gas money.

Well, they grab his wallet in his wrist and he's grabbing his wallet, he won't let go. They take off in the truck.

There's three of them in the truck and he starts getting dragged. And they finally drop them and they run over him, run over his knee with the back end of the truck.

Okay, evildoers, stole his property, put him in horrible danger.

Somehow his leg did not disappear. And I saw this fire truck down here.

I come down and check on them, all these kinds of things. And they had taken away to the hospital ambulance. So all this happened, hits the news story.

These people were three days out of jail. Three days out of jail and they were already robbing an old man, evildoers, okay.

So Philo goes and visits them in prison. He's a Gideon, tries to get them the scriptures.

He witnesses to them. And then he goes and spends Thanksgiving with their families, preaches the gospel to them.

All kinds of people start getting saved. So the government did what they were supposed to do, arrest them, put them in prison, all sorts of, you guys are evil and you're bad.

And then Philo was like, well, now I'm free to overcome evil with good, right?

So in some sense, as we think about that kind of scenario, that's exactly the kind of way that we should approach it as Christians.

So you mentioned the Imago Dei earlier and this being something that we're rooting this on.

When we're thinking about that and the government's right role staying in its lane and also wanting individual citizens to take up their duties to defend and prevent these things, the principle of order amoris or rightly ordered loves, sometimes when

I hear a pacifist, like going back to the original question, pacifism, not defending one's property, family, self, whatever,

I'm hearing a misordering of loves or a misordering of duty when I hear some of the pacifist arguments.

It's a natural affection to want to protect one's own life, to protect one's wife's life, son's, daughter's, and property.

How do you view the ordered loves that we should have and have reshaped by the gospel?

How do you find that fitting in here specifically with the text and with the question that we had? So the question is, okay, so does this call for pacifism?

Well, again, this question is, as Chris was identifying, this is talking about what happens after you've been wronged.

How are you to approach this? Given that if our affections are rightly ordered, then we ought to, obviously, our love for God supremely and then we ought to love others rightly even as we steward what

God has entrusted to us in righteousness, we're going to, in our love for God supremely, we are not going to take vengeance as our own because that belongs to God, okay?

But that's a different scenario than trying to stop the evil from happening in the first place, okay?

And here's a way that we can think about it. When John the Baptist was preaching at the

Jordan River and he was calling for fruits of repentance, the fruits of repentance aren't repentance themselves.

Repentance is metanoia, the turning with the mind, but the fruits of repentance are the way in which that John would see that these folks were ready for baptism, okay?

And when he was speaking to the soldiers, these may have been straight up Roman legionnaires or they may have been some of the locals that were often brought in from around the area but they weren't true

Romans, but they would be still hired on for security work and details and so on.

He told these soldiers, he didn't say to them, if you really want to repent and get ready for the kingdom of God, what you need to do is change your career.

No soldier can enter into the kingdom of heaven. He didn't say that. He said, stop taking bribes, stop extorting people, stop, be content with your wages.

So that's how you be a good soldier. Be content with your wages, right? Don't oppress people just because you have a sword and you can force people to do things, right?

Well, in the same sense, when you look at Romans 13, there's nothing there in Romans 13 or any other part of the

New Testament that says that Christians can't be in the service of the magistrate. Just be a good one.

Just be a good one. What is that saying to us? It's not instructions unto pacifism.

It's instructions for righteousness, live in this way. So the soldiers don't have to stop being soldiers.

The magistrate doesn't have to stop being a magistrate in order to be a Christian. They don't have to repent from that. So also, there's no sense in which, and that's rightly ordered that they should be doing that, but a husband does not have to repent from being a husband and a father does not have to repent from being a father to be a good

Christian. He should protect his wife. Christ certainly protects his bride. We don't have to keep from protecting our children.

God promises to protect his children. It is Christlike. It is godly for us to protect our wives and our children.

We don't have to stop doing that in order to be good Christians. Now, some people think that you have to.

They overread this text. They say, okay, because it says don't take vengeance, that means don't engage in any kind of self -defense.

That's not what it's saying. You're reading far more into it than is actually there. So there's a whole cultural context behind this section.

You talked about just the use of the state and you went all the way back to Genesis. Paul references, vengeance is mine,

I will repay, and that's out of Deuteronomy 32. He's referencing the Old Testament law and then you said there's this context, this cultural understanding of private property, love for your neighbor, but also protection of that property, protection of those animals.

And if those animals are becoming a nuisance or goring other people, then you're responsible for that.

And there's this whole idea of not just individual rights, but personal property, but you have a responsibility to steward that.

And what's even in the New Testament says, a man who doesn't care for his family is even worse than an unbeliever.

So we have to keep those things in mind that this is not to be read in a vacuum.

I did want to, in keeping with the theme of keeping things in context, the beginning of chapter 12, one through eight, it seems to be talking about Christians interacting with other

Christians. You talk about the gifts of grace starting in verse five. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

He's talking about this is how you kind of live with each other better. We're gifted, the hand doesn't say, hey, why am

I not an eye? The eye isn't better than the foot. Those kinds of things. Do things with cheerfulness.

Let love be genuine. And this is where the section actually starts, the one under question here. Let love be genuine.

Horrible is evil. I'll do one another in showing honor. And then as we start moving through the chapter, towards the end, you get to Romans 13 and you're dealing with a pagan government.

So where does it stop dealing with Christian to Christian and you're dealing with society as a whole?

Verse 14. Bless those who persecute you. Yeah, so verse 14, because verse 13 distributed the need to the saints, given to hospitality, and then verse 14 says, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse.

And then you're gonna interweave to go back to rejoice with those who rejoice, sweep those who weep, be of the same mind toward one another.

And then it kind of talks about your own heart. But then back to 17, repay no one evil for evil.

So all of a sudden you're back into it. There's an interweaving, but there's a turning of the corner towards these things.

And it then comes to the, how are you going to interact with the government, right?

So - Pay your taxes? Yeah, pay your taxes. But again, this was an awful, horrible, wicked, pagan government that at some point, not so long after the letter to the

Romans was written, was in deep alliance with the Sanhedrin to completely wipe out

Christians. Nero for 42 months was just trying to wipe out all the saints, all the

Christians. So at that point, this is not something where it's like, be sure when

Nero's boys come by to pick you up for a torch burning at his garden that you say, well,

I gotta go. We have plenty of examples of Paul escaping through a basket,

Paul escaping at night, Jesus breaking Peter out of jail, and there's plenty of Christian resistance to be had here.

But it does bring up the related question concerning pacifism. If pacifism is right, then you don't really ever protest or join any kind of move against the government.

Which is not the example that the apostles set. So think about, again, for a sense of both wisdom and prophecy, but if you go back and you look at the interactions between Saul and David, and then

David and Absalom, Saul was the anointed. He was installed as king by God.

He was the legitimate king. He was there to punish evil doers and to praise doers of righteousness.

And he did a fairly bad job overall. Might give him a C minus probably. Out of the rest of the kings of Israel, is what you're saying?

Well, now that you talk about them, maybe he was a B plus. Yeah, there we go. We're grading on a curve. If we were looking at David, he's a

C minus for sure. But David comes in, and we have the situation where Samuel goes down to Bethlehem and anoints

David as the new king, while there's another king still reigning. So this is very interesting. Sounds familiar.

Yes, so this helps us typologically to think about the persistence of the old covenant while the new covenant began, the

New Testament era. It helps us typologically to sort through what happens when David is anointed, but Saul's still on the throne.

However, think about it in terms of his wisdom. We see that David refused to illegally strike, unrighteously strike at Saul.

He resisted, but he did not do something illegal. He did not kill Saul. He did not strike, even when he had the chance, he proved he was more righteous than Saul was.

And Saul himself said it. And so finally, God in his own time, in his own way, brought judgment upon Saul.

Saul died, he's out of the way. Then David starts his reign in a more official fashion over the tribe of Judah.

And then through the protracted civil war, seven -year war with Ish -bosheth and Abner and all the rest of them, finally then he becomes fully king over all the tribes of Israel.

But then David becomes lax in his justice, allows all kinds of unrighteousness to happen in his household.

We have Bathsheba, Uriah. We have Ammon raping Tamar, but not being punished.

And so Absalom, Tamar's sister, begins to turn the hearts of the men towards himself, saying, you're not getting justice.

I'm a man, I'm all about justice. And justice needs to be happening. Justice is not happening in the king's house and so on.

So then he takes vengeance into his own hand, kills Ammon without permission from the king, because it should have already been done, right?

Absalom flees. And then when he comes back, even though he's acted in a way that is not legitimate,

David also does nothing to Absalom, thus underscoring justice is not in the house of the king.

Look how bad David is doing with this. He's not exercising justice as part of his job. Absalom's able to convince everybody he shouldn't be king anymore.

So now Absalom rises up and now he is anointed, but not by God, not by God's credence, but now he's an anointed king while David's still on the throne.

And now David has to flee because Absalom's marching on Jerusalem and so on. But in the end,

Absalom is done away with and David remains king. I'm not saying that we have picture perfect solutions here, but what are we?

But wisdom, when you have vying magisterial authorities within the same nation, whoever is saying the other person is unrighteous,

I think we're gonna know them by their fruits. Who is truly supposed to be the righteous magistrate that you follow?

So in what is called the doctrine of the lesser magistrates, if you have a conflict between magisterial authorities, follow the ones that are doing things legally, righteously, appropriately, and so on.

So we live in a time now that we have magistrates disagreeing with each other all the time.

The feds say one thing, the states say no. The state says one thing and then the sheriff in the county say no.

Who are you gonna follow? Who's in charge, right? That's gonna happen a lot more the farther this mess goes along in our late stage republic.

We're gonna have a lot of magistrates conflicting with each other. California's trying to push through legislation that's going to be sponsored through them towards a federal regulation for all homeschoolers everywhere.

Well, when that drops, all kinds of, if it gets through, let's just say hypothetically if that gets through, all sorts of states are gonna be like, yeah, we'll do whatever the feds say.

And other states are saying, get out of our business. And then some states are gonna be like, well, I guess we have to because we have to have their money and then some sheriffs are gonna be like, no, we're not doing that, right?

So this is gonna happen more and more and more. There's gonna be conflicts between the county level, the state level, the federal level and we're going to have to recognize that there's going to be conflicts of authorities and who are we going to follow.

They're also gonna drive incentives at you as well to lean one way or another. Like you mentioned the money.

I mean, that's a big one. It's not just so, I mean, we use it in wisdom as a right and wrong thing, but there's gonna be a lot more pressure that's not even a legal pressure on you.

There's going to be other incentives involved. Well, I think that comes back to like the pacifism and all that and that leads from chapter 12 into 13.

The magistrate is God's servant. You use the word deaconess, I think it is? Servant. Yeah, deaconess.

Yeah, God's servant. But sometimes servants are ignorant and maybe they're not malicious, but they don't know.

And a Christian has a responsibility to educate the magistrate because like you're saying, we're gonna have a lot of conflicts where some people don't know what to do and they're in positions where they have to make decisions.

So you need to act righteously. So how do you act righteously? Well, as the church, we come in with the word of God and say, this is how you act righteously.

You have authority over these things. This is what you can do. This is how you can support a higher magistrate, but you can also appeal to that higher magistrate from the word of God.

And so you go through those channels that God has put in place because they're his servant. And it goes back to the beginning of the verse that's in question about being constructive in these ways.

Doing good, you're doing good to the civil magistrate by helping him out. If he is ignorant in these areas, you're not being destructive, you're being constructive from the word.

If you live Romans 12, you start off, you are that living sacrifice where you are focused on Christ to start off with.

And then from that center point, from that point of origin, you are doing what you're supposed to be doing as a

Christian within the body of Christ with the first part of 12. And then this next part of 12 is you're not taking your own vengeance.

You are leaving room for the wrath of God. You're setting yourself up to really have a standing before the magistrate in Romans 13.

You have a platform. You have this history of this is who we are. We love Christ, we obey him, this is how we treat each other, and this is how we are good citizens and we live within our proper boundaries.

We are not the ones who are engaging in this violence. We are not the ones who are violating property. We are not the ones that you guys have to worry about.

And Michael, you said it earlier, these are examples to be praised. And you stand before the magistrate and say this is right, this is wrong.

This is what the word of God says. If you've been living as a hypocrite or if you have a history of violence yourself, they're not gonna listen to you.

But if you have been living Romans 12, Romans 13, you have a lot more impact. And it looks like it's kind of a communal command as well.

It's not, I mean, it is two individuals, but with one another, with saints. This looks like a group project. It has more impact as a group project.

Well, I think so. I think when you see groups of Christians going to civil magistrates instead of just individuals, and I know individuals can have major impact, but when you're talking about, they see that, especially in a republic, like we talked about, that's a greater constituency than one individual.

If you have not just one church, but multiple churches and a majority of their church membership showing up and they're living out 12 and they're doing what they can from 12 to help out what's being told to the government in 13, that has a much greater impact doing it as a community of believers as well.

Yeah, so I don't think there's pacifism as a requirement from Romans 12 or Matthew 5 and other passages.

Certainly, Christians are, it's fine for a Christian to be a soldier, be a good one, be a righteous one.

It's fine for a Christian to be a magistrate, be a good one, be a just one. It's good for the Christians to address magistrates and call them to do righteous things like punish evildoers.

This is God's appointed means for one of his appointed means for wrath. We understand that ultimately

God will take care of all those issues on the final day, and these are not passages that are telling us to not take up arms in self -defense to protect our families and that which

God has entrusted to us. These are passages that say don't go pursuing, doing evil things against those who have already done evil to you, which is a prohibition against vengeance, yes.

And I think one of the most popular film types of our day, one of the most popular cultural stories of our day is the vengeance story because people have this deep -rooted confidence that the state is not going to do right.

The state will not, in fact, the state's probably the one doing the wrong. And so movies and books, and it's all about the vengeance story, and people really gravitate towards that, but that's the way of the world.

Christians are not to rejoice in taking their own vengeance. Amen. Well, I think we can go right into recommendations.

Michael, we'll start with you. Okay, my recommendation is the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters five through seven.

So read that. But then also, there's good books also about them, so about those chapters.

And one of those is an older book by D .A. Carson, The Sermon on the Mount. If you can find it, it's an old book, an evangelical exposition of Matthew five through seven.

There's a newer version that takes it all the way from chapter five through chapter 10.

And so he kind of adds that in there. So it's two of his books put together as one. So that's a good option as well.

So this is not going to be a very extended long study. So this is not, what is it, 150 pages long.

So that's a small book compared to some of the other books that are written. If you want something really, really, really detailed, you can read the, you know, however many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages that Martin Lloyd Jones wrote on Sermon on the

Mount, but I don't have that kind of time. Chris? I'd recommend it was a discussion between Doug Wilson and T.

Russell Hunter on smash mouth incrementalism versus abolitionism.

And I thought it was a very helpful discussion and it kind of opened my eyes to some of the things. I like Doug Wilson and their project, a lot of things they do, but that doesn't represent necessarily where I'm coming from theologically.

And you kind of see some of that where they keep pointing to Old Testament things. That's kind of what they gravitate towards.

So it sounded rather pragmatic. And then you hear T. Russell Hunter saying, well, why can't we just be biblical?

Why can't we just be biblical? And so there's some back and forth and I thought the moderator did a really good job with it. And I thought both of them brought up some good points, but I think it's moving the needle in the right direction as far as, because I know that with abolitionism, there have been some very radical strands of it, some violent strands.

And so I think T. Russell Hunter has distance himself from kind of that radical.

And I think he's got it more down where he can talk with others in a way that actually is helpful.

And so I think that that was a very good one. So was the discussion centered around voting in November as an abolitionist?

Not so much. It was about, can you in good conscience sign bills, like heartbeat bills?

He was saying, even the discussion is not about how many babies we save, because he claims that that's the pragmatic approach.

It's saving, we'll save some babies with the goal of abolishing abortion. And he cited some passages from the

Old Testament that said, God says he hates those types of laws. Don't work with the government in any fashion, even if it has a positive outcome, you abandon that and you go for just being righteous.

Citing partiality type of a thing? Right, kind of, yeah. So I thought it was a very good discussion.

He brought points out that I think a lot of people are kind of missing. And then I thought Doug did the same thing.

So yeah, it was interesting. Awesome. Dave? I just finished The Ever -Loving

Truth, Can Faith Survive in a Post -Christian Culture by Vodie Bauckham. This is in 2023 is when he wrote that.

I think I've recommended a couple of books, a couple of things that he has done, just content he has created, sermons he's preached.

I think he coined the term cultural Marxism. At least he is a big explainer of it.

But this particular book is, I thought it was going to be more of an apologetic. It actually became, it morphed into an evangelical, but truly evangelism, why it's important and to speak it.

And of course, when you're dealing with post -modernism, you're dealing with post -Christian culture, there's no absolute, there's no absolute truth.

So you're speaking to a culture that no longer has those moorings that perhaps they had 100 years ago.

So he does help kind of explain the new cultural context in which your evangelism to others and your apologetic, that is your defense of your own faith, will be, you have to conduct yourself in.

So prefers you a little bit, I liked it. I got the Kindle version, so I was able to kind of take it on trips and stuff.

But I hope you read, hope you enjoy it. My recommendation for this week is the music of Brian Sauve, that is

S -A -U -V -E. From time to time, I find myself on very long drives and between books, audio books, podcasts, every now and then it's good to listen to a little bit of music, especially if it's psalms set to something with a fiddle.

And that is right up my alley. He's got a few things that are his personal work and some singles that he's written, but he's also got quite a few psalms set to music as well.

And I really appreciate his style, voice, and the way that he's tried to self -fund his endeavor without getting into the morass of the whole record label issues, whether that be

Christian labels or secular, there's quite a bit that goes into that that you really wanna be a part of.

So that's Brian Sauve, S -A -U -V -E. Go ahead and check out his music on Apple.

Do you have a favorite album of his? I like Even Dragons Still Praise Him, but he has some songs,

I think it's like five songs that he's written for his family and about his family. And you don't see men that are like, or you don't see people in general writing personal songs and able to get them out there in mass.

And I mean, some of it's tear jerking stuff just because you know it's like dad to daughter or husband to wife and I love it, man.

It's really good stuff. He's a member of the King's Hall podcast. Yes. I'm sure he's got his fingers in a couple different pies, but what else he does?

He and his wife do Bright Hearth podcast as well. And he is the head pastor, one of the elders at Refuge Church in Harlem.

Yes, that's what it is, yes. All right, well, we'll move on to, what are we thankful for,

Michael? I'm thankful for hard physical labor. I did that this morning, went out and brush hogged our piece of property and been quite a while since I was out there, but it was good.

It was all overgrown and needed to be tended to. So I finally got my machinery repaired, got it all prepped up for last

Monday and then it poured down rain all Sunday and Monday. So it was perfect timing. So, but it was good to get out there and work the land and just really enjoy

God's good creation. How are the sinuses? They're fine. I've been praying hard against poison ivy.

Poison ivy in the sinuses, that sounds horrible. Yeah, no, hopefully not that combination particularly.

But when I said poison ivy, I saw someone over in the corner of my eye immediately scratch his arm, which I think is probably PTSD from a recent bout.

Yeah, it's right, yeah. So, but anyway, hoping I'll get that, but it was good hard work and I enjoyed it.

Awesome, Chris? I'm thankful for the congregation here at Sunnyside, the love that they have for each other, particularly

I had an encounter this past Saturday. One of the gentlemen here invited me out. I'd been talking about some frustrations with myself, some personal failings and asked for prayer and he was following up and asking some more probing questions, but in a very gentle and loving way.

I could tell he's wanting to come alongside and like help me, see if there's any way that he could help me.

And that, I think that went a long way. I knew that he was thinking about my struggle. He was praying for me and then he wanted to see if there's anything that he could help with.

And I just, I love that, you know, that's what we're doing. We're building the kingdom, but we do that hand in hand.

I mean that Romans 12, love for one another, doing good to each other. And I'm very grateful for that.

Amen, David? I spent the last couple of days on a trip all over the country.

I spent a lot of time on the East Coast and I got to do something I had never done before. I got to see Niagara Falls, which was just amazing.

It was an interesting part of the trip. And I shot some pictures to the guys here, but I was able to spend a couple of days with a captain, his name is, first name

Tico. And we were just kind of feeling each other out. You have to be careful.

I think he and I have different political leanings, but as we just kind of kept talking back and forth,

I had mentioned something about, oh yeah, Lucy, here's the curvature of the earth.

And he had said, oh yeah, do you ever have people come up and talk to you at 30 ,000 feet and ask if the world is flat or it's curved?

And he's like, oh yeah, we kind of can go back and forth on that. And then he said, oh yeah, as far as the East is from the

West, right? And you kind of keep it going. And I kind of keyed in on that. And I was like, yeah, that's what the

Psalms say. As far as the East is from the West, it'll separate your sin from you. Just throwing that one out there.

And then he was like, yeah, yeah. And this is, so we had already spent a couple of days with each other.

Did you actually draw the fish in the dust in the cockpit floor? It was basically, it was just, yeah.

I mean, yeah, we just kind of threw that out there, but I could tell him he's a very experienced guy.

So he wanted to kind of feel me out a little bit because he's got to protect his career as do

I. But yeah, that's kind of what we did. Figuratively speaking, kind of drew that fish and see what bites.

And the third day was just, we felt so much more comfortable with each other. We talked about everything.

I was just really thankful that he sort of mentioned that. And then I, a little bit more, a little bit more.

And then we just went off on it. He and his wife had been married over 40 years. Wow. He's a new grandfather.

He's in his late 50s, excuse me. He's in his early 60s. And he and his wife had been together for a long time, high school sweethearts.

And it was just a beautiful story that he had shared with me. And I appreciated it and appreciated his friendship.

And even though we may disagree on some political issues, we had a wonderful time of fellowship and I'm very thankful because it was refreshing because I spent a lot of time by yourself.

He spent a lot of time alone and to have that kind of fellowship that third day, it was just, it was just heartening.

It truly was. So I'm thankful for that, for Tico. Well, I guess the lesson there is if you give

Dave a thread, he's gonna keep pulling on it till the whole garment comes undone. Is that how that's gonna work? No, that's a great anecdote there.

We love to hear that, especially in a workplace situation. You don't get that very often. I am thankful to the

Lord for the, I was thinking about this earlier, with the Brown family specifically. James has been doing loads of work at our house per commission on quite a few things, either structural or the outside doors, that sort of thing.

Doors that prevent destruction, prevent intruders. James does a really good job at installing those types of things.

I'm really thankful for his labor, his hard work. He gets stuff done and he allows my boys to walk around him as he does it and he somehow managed to do it without injuring them, which

I can't seem to do myself. I usually step on somebody in the process, but he, nobody was injured.

But no, James and Jana and their girls, I'm very thankful for the

Brown family. I was thinking about all that they do around here, things unseen and things seen.

Oh yeah. How much work they put into the grounds, meals, singing.

I mean, it's a new Brown girl up there every day doing something on stage, playing piano, yeah.

And how well the younger girls play with my kids, the way that they play with the other kids.

It's just a real enjoyable time and a very encouraging thing to see a family that as a unit works well within the congregation and wants to love on each other and wants to love on everybody else around them.

I'm so thankful for the Browns and all that they do around here. And we're thankful for everybody here at Sunnyside, but I just wanted to single out the

Browns with this episode. And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Happy Knot Red.