WWUTT 1358 Does Romans 13 Mean Close Your Church if the Government Says So (Romans 13:1-7)

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There are evangelical leaders that impose upon Romans 13 something that it does not say.

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They will say that if the government tells you to shut down your church, then you must. But Romans 13 does not exist in a vacuum, when we understand the text.

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This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Thank you for subscribing, and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program. Here once again is

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in Romans chapter 13, and I'm going to start off here today reading what we've read thus far, verses 1 through 7.

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The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome, 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.

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Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

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For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority?

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Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good.

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But 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

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God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid

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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.

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Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes to whom taxes are owed.

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Revenue to whom revenue is owed. Respect to whom respect is owed. Honor to whom honor is owed.

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I said that on Wednesday we would do a little application with this passage, and I want to do that as it relates to going to church in the context of the

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COVID -19 pandemic. It was in March of last year that many churches closed their doors, and they have remained closed.

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There are Christians who have not gone to church in nearly a year. That means they've also not participated in the

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Lord's Supper. Many pastors, teachers, evangelical leaders, theologians, and so on, told

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Christians to stay home. Churches needed to be closed. Christians could attend church by watching streaming services online.

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And we were to do this in the interest of public health and safety, because your government told you to.

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So if the government says, everybody needs to stay safe, shut down your church, then according to Romans 13, we're supposed to obey.

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Is that a proper application of Romans 13? I'm going to tell you, no, it's not.

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And to explain why, I'm going to respond to an article that was written by Jonathan Lehman, who is an editor with Nine Marks.

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He used to be a pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D .C. But now he's an elder at Chevrolet Baptist Church in Maryland.

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He graduated from Southern Seminary and got his PhD in ecclesiology from the University of Wales.

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Ecclesiology means that he is well -versed in a study of the doctrine of the church.

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This article that I'm reading is entitled, When Should Churches Reject Governmental Guidelines on Gathering and Engage in Civil Disobedience?

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It was published on May 2nd. That's at the conclusion of 45 days to slow the spread.

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Do you remember this? So in the middle of March of 2020, the government said, we're going to do 15 days to slow the spread.

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And they were encouraging everybody to self -quarantine, stay home, don't go out, so we can flatten the curve, was the term that you heard, instead of subjecting too many people to catching this virus all at once, and therefore we would overwhelm our hospitals.

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Well, after March, it got stretched out to 45 days to slow the spread, which would put it to the end of April.

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And then I don't know that this ever was officially ended. No one ever came out and said, okay, it's all over.

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Everybody go back to normal life, which is why you have many churches that are still closed down and many evangelical leaders still telling us that we need to self -quarantine, stay home, and just go to church online.

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Dr. Lehman wrote this article right at the conclusion of that 45 days to slow the spread. And he begins with this question.

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If the government continues to say that we cannot meet, when do we as churches engage in civil disobedience by gathering anyway?

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Well, I'm first going to respond to that from Dr. Lehman by saying that the government has never actually passed a law for us to disobey and therefore engage in civil disobedience.

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There have not been legislative bodies that have gathered together and passed laws that have said you cannot go to church or you have to wear a mask or otherwise.

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These are mandates that have been handed down from on high and we're expected to go along with it.

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But there's not a law that exists somewhere that you can point to and say, here's what the law requires and here's what the penalty is going to be if you do not do it.

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So there cannot be a call to civil disobedience where there is not a law to disobey.

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It is astounding to me on a personal level, it's astounding to me how many Christians and churches have just gone along with this.

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What does the scripture tell us in regards to our responsibilities as a church?

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Hebrews chapter 10 verses 23 through 25 says this, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

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This is the passage we often turn to when it comes to finding a direct instruction to attend church.

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And notice where it says in verse 25, not neglecting to meet together as has become the habit of some.

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Right after that, it doesn't therefore say, so go to church. What it says is, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

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Because what's being implied in that is you cannot encourage one another unless you are with one another.

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The word church comes from the Greek word ekklesia, and it means an assembly or a gathering.

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So it is implied in the very name church that we are to be a physical assembly or a gathering of people.

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All throughout the New Testament, all of the instructions that we have given to the church, they are given to a gathered church, a body that is with one another, loving each other, and building one another up.

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Just go back to Romans 12. Just jump back one chapter and read through all of that again and try to figure out how you can follow that without going to church.

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How can you keep those instructions there without physically being with your brothers and sisters in the

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Lord? It is very clear over the whole New Testament that God's desire for us is to be together.

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And it is a taste, it's a small picture of what heaven is going to look like forever when we are gathered around the throne of God and singing his praises for all eternity.

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We're practicing that now as we gather together for church. Many evangelical leaders have become false shepherds, leading the flock astray and telling them they need to listen to their government when the government says, shut down your church.

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Now I'm not saying that we need to be reckless with this or throw caution to the wind because COVID -19 is a serious disease.

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It's like a bad flu season. And we've never taken the precautions that we've taken recently in a bad flu season.

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But it is deadly. You've probably known people that have died of COVID. I have. And so there may be, in wisdom, some things that you need to do to protect one another as you gather for church.

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Or maybe you know that there are people in your body that have compromised immune systems and it's not as easy for them to just up and leave their home and come to church and potentially catch a virus.

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And so you need to be accommodating of those things. You need to handle those issues wisely, not because your government told you to, but just in wisdom and good charity.

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The church should be open. Now maybe somebody wants to push back on that and say, well, the church isn't a building.

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Fine. Go to somebody's home. Gather 50 or 60 of you together and be a church.

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But you need to follow what the Lord has established for the church. There needs to be elders. There need to be ordinances.

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There needs to be songs and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing and making melody in your hearts to God.

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There are certain things that we are to follow as we gather as the church. Jonathan Lehman should know this because he has his

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PhD in ecclesiology. But the church should not be shutting out everybody.

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It should have the doors open to anybody and a person can assess on their own, according to their own conscience, whether or not to attend church that day.

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So this isn't a matter of going to church is not civil disobedience. It's obedience to God.

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It's in the voice of the apostles in Acts chapter 5. We must obey

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God rather than men. Let me continue on with Dr. Lehman's article. He says the following.

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Here's why it's a difficult topic from a biblical perspective. Both the government and our churches have a legitimate biblical claim on the territory of gatherings.

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You might call it jurisdictional overlap. I really don't understand what it is that he's saying here.

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To be honest with you, both the government and our churches have a legitimate biblical claim on the territory of gatherings.

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Point to me in the scripture where it says the government has a legitimate claim on the territory of gatherings.

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That's such an ambiguous statement. I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean. The church has been instructed to gather.

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We don't have any instructions in the Bible on the government regulating public gatherings.

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There's nothing in scripture about that. So where does he say that the government has a biblical claim on the territory of gatherings?

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Now, of course, I'm responding to this as an American citizen. I probably have listeners in Canada and Western Europe and South Africa and Australia, New Zealand, the

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Philippines, just thinking about different places on the map where I've seen we get listeners from. And I'm thankful for all of you.

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I'm responding as an American to this, of course, and our laws are going to be different than probably where you live.

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But in the United States, we have the Constitution and the First Amendment protects the freedom of religion.

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The government cannot regulate our practice of our religion. So if the government wants to say, well, you can't sing and you have to wear masks, those are both instructions that have come from the government.

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I can simply say, based on our own nation's laws, I'm not in disobedience. I'm following our laws and our laws say you have no jurisdiction here.

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You can't tell me how we are together and how we are to worship. So there's really no jurisdictional overlap on this issue.

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As as Jonathan Lehman is saying, I am in obedience to God before I am in obedience to man.

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So he goes on in his article here. Governments possess authority if for no other reason than to preserve human life.

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And then he gives a reference, Genesis 9, verses 5 and 6. Well, let's go to that passage. This is part of the

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Noahic covenant that God gives to Noah after the flood. And he says in Genesis 9, 5 and 6,

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For your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. From every beast, I will require it.

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And from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

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Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image.

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You've surely heard that before, right? I mean, you basically have the death penalty there.

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That if you kill somebody, true justice is that you be put to death. And we have this also in Exodus 21,

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Deuteronomy 19 and some other places. Life for a life. That's just weights and measures.

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Well, nowhere in that passage, nowhere in Genesis 9, 5 and 6, does it say what

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Jonathan Lehman is saying. It does not say that governments possess authority if for no other reason than to preserve human life.

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What have we read is the government's responsibility according to Romans 13 and 1

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Peter 2. They are to promote that which is good, and they are to punish that which is evil.

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It does not say that the government's authority is to preserve human life.

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That's very ambiguous. And the government would be able to justify any action in the interest of preserving human life.

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For example, let's say the government decides to tell you, well, hey, you know, there's global warming going on, climate change.

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And so to protect the environment and save lives, we're going to have to tell you to shut down your church.

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Because the energy that your church is using, we need in these other things to protect lives. So therefore, you cannot gather as a church in the interest of preserving human life.

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See, they can justify any action with that basis. And Jonathan Lehman is basically giving them permission to, permission that the scripture does not give the government.

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If it was the government's authority or responsibility to preserve human life, then they couldn't use the death penalty because the death penalty takes a life.

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But what have we read here in Romans 13? That the governing authority is God's servant for your good.

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He is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.

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If a person does something that is deserving of death, well, according to Jonathan Lehman's definition, you would not be able to put that man to death.

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The governing authority couldn't do that because their first and foremost priority is to preserve human life.

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And practicing the death penalty does not preserve human life. You see what I'm saying? So what

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Jonathan Lehman says in his interpretation of Genesis 9, 5, and 6 is actually the opposite of what

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Genesis 9, 5, and 6 is saying. We continue on with his article. They are obligated by God to do so.

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If temporarily banning all gatherings of a certain size accomplishes that end, preserving human life, then they should.

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But understand, folks, the government has not banned all gatherings.

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That has never been the case over the course of this pandemic. They have never banned all gatherings.

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You've still been able to go to the grocery store. There are sporting events that are still taking place.

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There are some concerts. We've seen the riots. We've seen the public protests and gatherings en masse that the government has not discouraged.

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In fact, they've encouraged more people to get together and protest if it's in the interest of Black Lives Matter.

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They have to do it for a certain reason and a certain cause. But if you go down to an abortion clinic and you protest, yeah, you're probably going to get arrested.

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Anyway, so there has never been the banning of all gatherings.

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It has always been prejudiced. It's always been selective. So Dr.

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Lehman is living in a fantasy world here in this scenario that he is justifying.

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We go on. Let me read this whole next paragraph here. At the same time, churches possess a right to gather, arguably as a property of a natural right to freely assemble, certainly as the religious right to assemble.

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Our vertical obligation to worship God as churches creates that horizontal right with respect to other people and our governments.

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And then he gives this graph or the circle graph that shows two overlapping circles.

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So then he says this. So picture two overlapping circles, one representing the church's jurisdictional obligation and right to gather, the other representing the government's jurisdictional obligation to protect life.

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Well, there's a real problem here with this graph that he's creating. So first of all, one circle says the church's obligation and right to gather.

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Well, we don't have a right to gather. We have an obligation to gather. The Bible doesn't give us the right to gather.

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It commands us to gather. The government recognizes that and provides for us that right to gather.

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But but it's we don't gather as a matter of rights. We gather as a matter of obligation in obedience to God.

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So you can simply say in that circle, the church has an obligation to gather. And then the other circle says the government has an obligation to protect life.

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Well, we've already established that's not what the Bible says the government's obligation is toward. So eliminate that circle.

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There is no overlap. And there in the middle of the two circles overlapping is is where Jonathan Lehman points and says, this is our pandemical moment.

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He goes on and says our pandemical moment places a smack dab in the middle of where these jurisdictions overlap.

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That, as I said, is what makes this moment difficult. No, he's made it difficult. And like I said, this is this is something that many evangelical leaders have imposed upon Christians.

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But it's not what the Bible says. Romans 13 is not some kind of of blanket command that governors and leaders and kings and and presidents, senators, representatives, so on and so forth.

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They do not have some sort of superiority that overrides what God has said in the rest of the

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Bible. Romans 13 does not exist in a vacuum. There there's a context here.

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And remember that I said we have instructions in Romans 12 as to how we are to live as Christians.

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Then we have an instruction about being subject to the governing authorities. And this is in the context of what was just previously said.

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Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. Vengeance is mine.

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I will repay, says the Lord. And then what does the Bible say about the governing authorities? He is an avenger of God, carrying out

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God's wrath on the wrongdoer. So don't don't take matters against your enemies into your own hands.

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God has established governing authorities to take care of those things. What are you supposed to do?

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And then we get to Romans 13, eight. Oh, no one anything except to love each other for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law for the commandments.

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You shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not covet.

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And any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. OK, so there's our context.

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It is not a passage saying if the government tells you to shut down your church, you have to obey that.

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That is being imposed upon this text. It is ISIS. It is not what the scripture says.

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And understand here that Dr. Lehman is defending a decision that has been made by a government that murders the most vulnerable of us.

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The government has legalized and protects the mass murder of unborn children.

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Three thousand babies per day are murdered by abortion, nearly a million each year in the

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United States alone. That is not promoting good and punishing those who do evil.

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This is the seared conscience of our American government. And this is the government that Jonathan Lehman is saying is telling us to stay home from church in the interest of public safety.

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No, my friends, no. We must obey

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God rather than men. And God has said to gather.

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So we should gather and we should not fear what men are going to say about us or do to us when we gather in this way.

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We know the world is going to hate us. Now, I haven't even gotten to the part yet where where Jonathan Lehman mentions

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Roman Romans 13. So let me read that part. And then I want to conclude with an example here.

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So. So in his next paragraph, he says, if the government has a reasonable argument to ban every kind of gathering in order to protect life.

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And once again, the government has not done that. Then churches should act the part of dutiful citizens and obey the government.

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They shouldn't just go along with the government by our own free will. As a friend of mine put it, they should positively submit.

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Submitting to it is submitting to God. And then he gives a reference to Romans 13, one and two.

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So what Dr. Lehman is saying here is not just that we need to go along with what the government says when they tell us to close down our churches.

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We should even do it cheerfully. Really? No, what I'm going to do is go to church cheerfully.

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I'm going to rejoice to be with a body of believers celebrating

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God, rejoicing in his goodness, praising him for his kindness to us in Jesus Christ, our

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Lord, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave that we might have everlasting life.

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And I am preparing the people in my care, the flock that I have been entrusted to lead.

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I'm preparing them for that glory when we will be with God forever in heaven above, not to fear things that are on this earth because there are any manner.

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There are any number of things on this earth that can kill us at any moment. We are all going to die.

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So I am working to prepare souls for that day when they will appear before God.

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And that is most accomplished when we gather together as the church, as God has instructed us to do.

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Let me read to you here something from Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Covenant Church in China.

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You probably remember hearing about this in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. The Chinese government cracked down on a number of Christians and churches.

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And and Pastor Yi was one of those pastors, along with about a hundred of his congregants.

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They were arrested. They were harassed and much worse. Well, Pastor Yi prepared written documents in advance of the persecution that he saw coming, and he wanted to make sure that his church was going to be properly instructed about how to think about this persecution and how to react to it.

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If he was no longer going to be around to teach them, because by this point he was expected to have been arrested and incarcerated.

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And so what he did is he wrote an article called Fourteen Decisions in the

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Face of Persecution. What will I do? And the very first decision on this list is this.

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Do not stop gathering together. Under no circumstances will we stop or give up on gathering publicly, especially the corporate worship of believers on Sunday.

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God's sovereignty is higher than any secular authority, and the church's mission and the

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Bible's teaching on not neglecting to gather together is higher than secular law.

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Regardless of whether the Religious Affairs Bureau and the police take administrative and forceful measures towards Sunday worship, whether or not their enforcement follows due process,

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I will resist by peaceful means. I will not cooperate with the police banning, shutting down, dissolving, or sealing up the church and its gathering.

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I will not stop convening, hosting, and participating in the church's public worship until the police seizes my personal freedom by force.

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My friends, there are Christians around the world that are facing this kind of persecution, and meanwhile

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Christians in the United States of America are voluntarily giving up their rights when the government says to them, shut down your church.

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No, my friends, no. And shame on those teachers who have twisted

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Romans 13 to impose that on their fellow believers. Our spiritual condition is much more important than our physical condition.

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Our physical condition is wasting away anyway. Maybe a virus will speed that up, but we are all dying.

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How is your heart prepared? How is your soul prepared to stand before the Lord on that day when we pass from this life into the next?

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It is appointed for a man once to die, and after that comes judgment. We sanctify one another.

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We make each other holy, growing one another up in love, holding fast to the head who is

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Christ. We do this together as the church when we meet, when the scriptures are taught to us, when we're singing praises together, when we discipline one another, when we weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, when we are an encouragement and a fellowship to one another, and we cannot do these things unless we are gathering.

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Many Christians are suffering and struggling in their spirits right now because they have not been attending church.

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Open the doors of the church. Welcome them in. Go to church and worship

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God. Amen. Let us conclude with prayer. Heavenly Father, forgive us of our sins, forgive us of our selfish tendencies, and may even the words that I have said here be in the interest of your church and are honoring and worshipful of you.

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Help us to be obedient to God, submissive to your word before we are submissive to the authority of man, for it is by your authority that they have been granted their authority.

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Everyone is going to have to answer before God, and may we be in obedience to God even in a moment such as this.

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Guide our church leaders according to your word. In Jesus' name we pray.

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Amen. For more about our ministry, visit us online at www .utt .com.