Those Who Recognize Authority

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Don Filcek; Romans 13:1-7 Those Who Recognize Authority

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series in the
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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. I'm glad that you're here.
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I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, as Dave said. And I hope you feel welcome this morning and you feel comfortable and welcome to make yourself comfortable.
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There's coffee and there's juice and there's donuts back there. And we start every service with a little introduction to the message.
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It might be a little bit different than what some of you that are visiting here recognize from church. Usually, you kind of start with some songs or something like that.
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But we like to start with an introduction to the message and then reading the text from God's word and hearing what he has to say from us, the very words of God.
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We do this with the hope that our minds will get a chance to shift away from the busyness of the week towards who
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God is. It's my conviction that in the word is where we find the God who is and has revealed himself.
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And then we're able to worship him in truth based on getting our minds again shifted out of that busyness.
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How many of you had a busy week this week? That seems to be pretty standard. Ask somebody, how you doing? What are they going to answer?
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Busy. Usually, they say busy, right? That's a real common thing or fine. Yeah, fine works too.
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But yeah, often when we press a little bit deeper, people are very, very busy. And so a lot of thoughts are on your mind as you gather together this morning.
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And so our goal and my prayer is that the spirit would prepare our hearts through his word to worship him with knowledge this morning.
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He is the almighty God who is sovereign and we see that in this text. His son is our king.
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And as the Old Testament says, God is the one who sets up kings and sets the limits of their rule.
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So how many of you know that we're in for a politically annoying year? Did you already know that?
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Maybe you're already annoyed. And I haven't gotten anything in the mail yet, but I know it's coming.
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We're in for a year where whichever side of the aisle you may be on personally, it's going to be a year of intense campaigning.
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You're going to get robocalls. You're going to get stuff in the mail. You're going to have conversations with family members.
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Let me discourage that as much as possible over Thanksgiving. Just enjoy the turkey, folks. And may
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I suggest to you that I think we're nearing an unprecedented low in our political discourse.
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Not only are people moving apart and the aisle is widening, but people on both sides are decreasing in their trust of the government.
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And I don't talk about politics unless God's word does. If you picked this as your first week to come and check us out, don't think that this is normal.
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But the fact that I'm talking about politics up here is because the text we're going to see here in a moment is imminently about our government.
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But the fact is, everybody seems to want change right now, and nobody seems to agree on what the right change would be for us.
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And therefore, I actually think that the timing of this text couldn't be better in terms of launching out and getting ready to launch out into an election year.
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And the content, I would suggest to you, couldn't be more challenging to our current political climate. Maybe even we'll recognize how much it is challenging to us as individuals here in the church this morning.
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So to really get the force of this text, I think we need to think a little bit like the early church.
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We need to understand their context and where they were coming at this idea of governance from. They didn't know what it meant to follow
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King Jesus in a world full of a variety of human governments. This is an early church here we're talking about.
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So there's individuals who have come to faith in Christ, and churches are forming all across the Roman Empire, and even a little bit outside of that.
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And so as those churches are forming, they're beginning to question the apostles. What is our role?
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What is the role of the government, and how does that interface with the church?
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A real question would be asked by those first century Christians, how are we to respond to the secular governments?
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Whether it was King Herod in Palestine, or the massive imperial power of Rome, or the local magistrates extorting taxes from those that were already on the brink of poverty.
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How should the church respond to those in authority over them in a secular sense? So let's open our
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Bibles and see how the apostle Paul addresses that question in Romans chapter 13, verses one through seven.
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So I'd encourage you to grab the Bible under the seat in front of you, or navigate in your device. If you have an app, you can open that up.
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If you brought your own Bible, great. But I'm going to be rereading out of the ESV, the English Standard Version, just because I like it.
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I like to study out of this one, and I like the way that it flows. But I know you probably have your favorite too. But recast, this is
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God's word to us, and a word that's timely, a word that's important, and actually what he wants to change us with this morning.
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It's radical, it's different, and it's powerful. So let's listen in.
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Romans 13, one through seven. 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.
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For the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them.
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Taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, and honor to whom honor is owed.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word that breaks into our routines, that breaks into our thoughts, that breaks into, often, what are wrong -minded notions, or just cliches of our culture, or thoughts that were passed down to us by our parents, or the way we feel politically, or just so many different things that could be rumbling around in our heads, but Father, your word slices through all of that to bring us the truth of how you have designed it, how you have made your church, what you desire of your church, and how we ought to live.
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So Father, I pray for those who belong to you and have a relationship with you that they would be able to take this on as a calling this morning, a calling to change, a calling to submit, a calling to respond.
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And then Father, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you by faith, Father, I pray that today would be a day of recognizing that this is not just merely a political talk, but it's about a life that's been changed by salvation and a forgiveness that can only come through the cross of Jesus Christ, and that it's only from there that we have rules, that we have any kind of commands or any kind of desire to live up to a standard, and it's just because you have first loved us and you have given us forgiveness and you have set our feet on a different road.
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So Father, I pray that from that place of salvation, from that place of recognition of what Christ has done for us and his rightful claim on our lives because he has purchased us with his very blood and forgiven us and washed us and cleansed us, that from that place we would worship you now as we get a chance to sing songs and that these songs would come from hearts overflowing with gratitude and thankfulness for who you are and what you have done for us, in Jesus' name, amen.
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Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated and get comfortable. Keep your Bibles open, please, to Romans chapter 13, verses 1 through 7, and we're gonna try to make that our focus for the remainder of our time.
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But if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donuts, you can head back there, you're not gonna distract me.
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Whatever it takes to keep our focus on God's word, and again, if you need to use the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left -hand side, especially if you're drinking coffee this morning.
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So I need to take advantage of that. This text this morning is a pretty radical text.
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It offers us a, I would say, very radical view of religious zeal. It's calling us into a relationship with our government that is consistent with our relationship with God, and so it's radical, it's different, it's not something that we normally talk about here.
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But more often than not, what you need to understand is that more often than not, in the ancient world, religion was joined with political power and political authority.
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So what the instructions that Paul is giving to the church here really is attacking something that was a common notion and a common thought during that day and age that we don't necessarily have in our day and age per se.
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Now we have other issues and things that this text is speaking to us, but we don't necessarily always think that the religious leader is the government leader, right?
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We have that separated in our minds. How many of you know what I'm talking about? But in those days, the idea was that if somebody rose to some kind of spiritual power, that they ought to also have some political influence and vice versa.
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So that's how you end up getting emperors who began to declare themselves gods and things like that.
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So the leader was considered, in that time, a political leader or a spiritual leader with power and authority was either considered a god by the pagans or at least a spokesman for him, even in Judaism in the
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Old Testament was the idea that the king had some way of relating to God that we saw in the book of 1
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Samuel, for example, in the series there where Saul made some spiritual mistakes that resulted in problems for his culture and ultimately for the people of God.
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So the idea would be that if somebody rose to some kind of spiritual notoriety, that the people would begin to follow him instead of the existing government.
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It was one or the other. So you're either going to follow this guy out into the desert and he's going to lead you away from the Roman government and ultimately to be opposed to them.
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So most all of the religious zealots of this time refused to pay taxes. They established communes to subvert secular rule and understanding that expectation of religious zeal during this era helps us to understand just how radical this text would have been to the church in Rome.
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I mean, they're asking, we're followers of this Jesus guy now. Isn't he our king? What does
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Rome have to do with us? Can you imagine the dissent and the foment of insurrection that might have been, the seeds could have been planted there in this early church where they're saying, well, are we supposed to overthrow
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Rome? What is our next step? What's our political role here? Would have been a logical question.
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And so what he's saying here would have been a radical message to the church, breaks on when it comes to the idea of rebellion against the political authorities around you.
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You see, here's a fundamental thing that we need to grasp as we enter into this text and begin to talk about it verse by verse.
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Fundamentally, we need to understand that God did not send Jesus to set up a government. That's fundamental.
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That's something that we have, maybe you take that for granted, but at the same time, we know that he is indeed a king and he will come one day and set up an eternal kingdom, but he didn't the first time.
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And God uses the governments of this world as one of his established movements on earth.
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He uses the governments to establish his desires on this earth. So submit to the governing authorities that God has instituted over us is the first command, the fundamental command of this text.
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And there's one main point to this text that applied to them and to us, and again, it's found in verse one, then that's the truth that's expounded in detail, that idea of submitting to the government authorities that God has instituted over us.
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That's the radical command that's going to be teased out throughout this entire text. And I don't think it's accidental that verse one comes right after verse 21 of the previous chapter.
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We can tend to see the chapter breaks and never think that these things connect, but there's a significant connection.
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Paul told the church not to be overcome with evil, but to overcome evil with what?
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With good. Just before he begins to talk about the government.
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We laugh about it, but I think there's an intentionality behind the connection between verse 21 and verse one of chapter 13.
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There's a notion that we need to do good to all as a church, including the government.
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Now I want to head off at the pass on a notion that Paul writes this text with naivety. As a matter of fact, some scholars down through the ages have said, he's naive.
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Some have literally denied that this should be in the Bible, just by content alone. And I'm not talking about, you know, there's always liberal scholars out there who are ready to just cut big chunks out of the
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Bible. I'm talking about reputable people who are just like, I don't like this text. They outright say it. I don't like this.
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And so therefore, I just kind of don't think it's the word of God. And I think it is. And it's well attested that this was in our most ancient documents of the book of Romans.
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It's there. It's something that we have to wrestle with. It's something we have to deal with. And so some people have said, well,
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Paul was just naive. He hadn't experienced any persecution yet, so he was writing naively about the government.
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And then, well, now, later on in his ministry, he would have certainly said, stick it to the government, because they were starting to push back against Christians.
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I don't see that either. Because here's the reality, no matter when Paul's writing, he has already encountered the risen
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Lord. He has already come into the faith. He was fully aware. Hear me carefully, church.
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He was fully aware at the writing of this that the Roman government officials nailed spikes into the hands and feet of his
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Lord and King. He already knew that about the governing authorities. When he wrote this, he already knew who had done that to his
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Lord. He was raised in a context of oppressive imperial power and taxation.
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He writes what he writes in these seven verses with no intention of being naive, but with every intention of being radical.
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Every intention of shocking us with what he says. Because we know the context in which it was written.
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So I believe it is fully written with a shock factor. You're supposed to walk away from this challenged.
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He intends this morning, recast, I'm speaking to every individual in this room, he intends to alter, he intends to alter and change the way that you and I respond to our government and to those who are in authority over us.
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And let me clarify, this is not a message about exceptions. It's not a message about exceptions.
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I can imagine that we could spend our entire time in this message, in a sermon, on a text that tells us to submit to our governing authorities, and we could spend our entire time trying to come up with loopholes, exceptions, and caveats to this text, right?
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As a matter of fact, I read books, I read chapters out of books this week that that's all they did.
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Never once telling us what to do with the text, but telling us what not to do with the text. We can approach
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Scripture that way, can't we? To our detriment, not looking at what God is saying for us to do, but saying, but where are the exceptions?
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Where are the loopholes? I think that that probably speaks to our hearts to some degree, doesn't it?
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You see, we are so prone to look for loopholes to laws and commands that we twist them even all the way to the extreme of being the opposite if we're given enough time.
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We run to the exceptions when what Paul wants us to consider in this text is what does the normal Christian response to the government look like?
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What is the norm for us? How are we supposed to respond to our governing authorities?
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And I would suggest to you that the norm is very challenging to us. The norm is extremely challenging to us.
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A Christian here, here's the reality, church, this is fundamental to this text. A Christian is one who understands and gets authority.
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You are called to be somebody who understands what it means to be under someone else. By the way,
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I suggest to you that that actually is one of the most unique features of the faith in terms of what we have to offer to our society and our culture, a way of showing the world what it looks like to respect and honor authority.
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We should be running out ahead of everybody else on that notion. We know what it means to be under another, don't we?
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We ought to. We understand hierarchy because we are those who take authority for granted now that we have come under the saving protection of our almighty creator.
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We recognize respect, we recognize honor, and we submit to all
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God -given authority. Of all people,
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Christians should be known as those who recognize authority. That's why I titled this message,
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Those Who Recognize Authority. That should be us. We are those who recognize authority. We are those who respect authority.
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We are those who honor authority. We are those who submit to God -given authorities.
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And so with the main point of our text, be subject to governing authorities from the beginning of verse 1, we're going to see three radical realities to our relationship toward governing authorities.
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Three radical realities, that's the outline. The first one, the first radical reality is that all authority comes from God.
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All authority comes from God. Verse 1. In a very forthright way, this text is indicating something that may make us all uncomfortable and probably already is making us uncomfortable.
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You see, what it really is getting at here is something that makes us, if taken to its extreme, we become radical about it and we say, why even vote?
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But that's not the point of the text. It's just that simply understanding this, God will use all kinds of means to get his leader in, whether it's by birth in some countries and the next person ascends to the throne because they were born to this person, or whether it's through a vote or whatever it might be or an appointment.
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God is the vote that counts most in every election. He has never voted for the wrong candidate.
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This is not a comment, by the way, about outcomes as if to say, why vote? Because God's going to have his way. Anyway, certainly he encourages us to be involved and connected and even the submission is in part to take the roles and responsibilities and privileges that we have as a culture seriously.
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It's not merely about outcomes, but it is indeed a comment about his will. He may very well judge us as a people or bless us as a people by the leader he chooses to give us.
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Every leader, every leader, every leader comes with God's appointment.
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We get the leader we need. We get the leader we deserve, even when it isn't the leader that we want or the leader we think will make our lives better.
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Some of you have lived long enough to have seen some ebbs and flows in what you thought was and wasn't a good leader, right?
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Some of us are living in it now, but God doesn't choose our leaders according to what we think will make our lives better.
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He doesn't owe us any economic security and neither, and actually it's the church you need to hear this.
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He doesn't even owe us social ideals that promote our biblical understanding or our biblical sense of morality.
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He doesn't owe us a leader that opposes the things that the church opposes. Do you understand what I'm saying? He doesn't owe us a moral leader.
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That's tough to take on, but in the Old Testament he is said to even raise up Babylon, a wicked and cruel nation to conquer and subsequently humble his own people.
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Is he sovereign? Is he in charge? Is he in control? Can he do that? Yes, and he does.
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The text is clear that he does. As a matter of fact, it's so clear that it uses an extreme word in the understanding of God's relationship to the leaders that are over our nation and over all nations.
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The phrase at the end of verse one is a stark and clear Greek word. Those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.
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He installs governments is what the text is indicating. He has an active role in giving us the leadership we need.
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An angel revealed this, by the way, and actually showed this in a specific context to an arrogant king of Babylon back in the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar.
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How many of you heard the name Nebuchadnezzar? Funny name. Serious guy. Nebuchadnezzar in a night vision.
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This was recorded for us in Daniel chapter four, verse 17. This is what an angel appeared to Nebuchadnezzar, one of the most powerful men of the day and age, and he appeared to him and said this to him.
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He said, the most high rules the kingdoms of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.
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Daniel 4, 17. He came to him in a dream and said that to him just before the
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Lord gave Nebi a season of humility, bringing insanity to his mind for a season and giving his rule to somebody else.
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He said, who's in charge again, Nebi? Who's in charge? I'm in charge, and you think that you deserve this rule?
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You think you deserve this reign? I set up whoever I want. I gave you this for a season, but I can take it from you.
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Here you go. All authority comes from God, and as people who know
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God and understand his authority but also understand his grace and his mercy, that should mean something to us.
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We are those who trust God with our government because we are those who understand God's great love for us.
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Submission doesn't come natural to the heart of any American, but it should come naturally to the heart of any follower of Christ.
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Which are you first? Are you a follower of Christ first, or are you an American first? All of us have to answer that question.
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Where does your loyalty lie first? Have you ever taken time to consider what this means for you at the local, state, and federal level?
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That structure and all of those leaders that are over you are there by the will of God.
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They're there by the will of God. A second radical reality is that God has ordained the government for civil order, for civil order, and that's a major reason why we have a government at all.
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Anarchy is not good for us, despite what some people are saying now on the internet and all over the place.
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Anarchy is a recipe for a lot of violence and danger, because how many of you know that sin needs to be curbed in humanity?
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How many of you are glad that you can lay your head to bed at night knowing that the evil is probably farther away from your house than it might be in some other countries?
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Are you glad for that? Raise your hand if you're glad for that. I'm glad for that. God's grace toward us that ultimately results in civil order.
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That's the government. We see in verse two that the second point flows out of that first one. Now that we have established that God appoints authority over us, to have a heart of resistance then towards that government is to have a heart of resistance toward God.
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Again, this sounds pretty radical, doesn't it? To have a heart of resistance towards the government is to have a heart of resistance toward God.
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But it might be good for a moment to consider what resistance looks like, because that word and that idea, that understanding could morph into a lot of things in our minds.
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Is impeaching a sitting president resisting in a sinful way? Is refusing to perform a same -sex marriage in a government where they tell me
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I have to, is that sinful? We need to be careful to avoid forming our opinions about things too quickly against this text of scripture.
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But equally, we need to recognize that our political process is quite different than it was in the time of Paul.
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Do you recognize that? Representative democracy is a little bit different than an authoritarian empire.
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There's differences there. So we need to recognize that it's different.
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But we could all agree that any form of legal resistance, any form that is legal within the bounds of our government is fair game for a follower of Christ.
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Do you agree with that? And it's absolutely true. Anything that the government says is an okay protest is up for grabs for us.
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Peaceful protest, disagreeing with your congressional representative, or writing to them and disagreeing with them, pestering them, all of that's fair.
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But to submit to our authorities is to use the proper channels of disagreement.
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We are privileged with free speech, which by the way, the very fact that we just have that one right afforded to us places us in the position of more power than the majority of humans who have ever walked this planet.
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Do you realize that? The fact that we have free speech, that you don't get arrested for the things that you say yet, that puts us in a pretty significant place.
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That also places us, I would suggest, in a position of having the most difficult time with this very pointed and radical calling in this text to submit to our governing authorities.
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God is gracious to give us here then three primary reasons that we ought to submit in this second point.
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Three reasons. First is the one that we kind of have already stated. God has appointed authorities, you see that early in verse two.
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God has appointed those authorities, that's a reason to submit to them. Second, resistance results in judgment.
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Paul most likely had in mind the regular punishments that could be meted out by the government for bad behavior, not an ultimate final judgment before him.
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He's not talking that to the church, but he's saying, hey church, you rebel, you're gonna get put down. Know that, okay?
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You have insurrection on your heart, you want to rebel against the Roman power structures and authorities, they carry swords.
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It's gonna go down for you. He mentions things in the text here like fear, terror, being afraid, and the sword.
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He says that to the church in regard to the secular governments and to recognize that they have legitimate physical authority over us.
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There's no question that Paul intends for Christians to be thoughtful about the results of any civil disobedience that we would embark on.
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Any unacceptable resistance to the authorities over us will result in judgment, he says.
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That judgment further goes all the way up to the death penalty. There's no question in this text that Paul acknowledges a serious cause for fear for anyone who would disobey authorities, especially in Roman times, but even so now.
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If you want to live in a way of peace with authority, then submit and do good, he says. This again ties back into the notion of not responding to evil with evil, but overcoming evil with good.
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Even in Roman times, those who did good to society and served the civil good were honored, even sometimes by the emperor himself.
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He would have events and activities where he would call forward people who were beneficiaries who had, benefactors rather, and had given tons of money for projects in aqueducts and things like that.
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He would mention that. We have documents where the emperors would recognize people who had done good for their society, good for their community.
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Paul's obviously stating a general truism that has been basically true throughout the majority of human history.
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Most rulers reward good conduct, and most rulers punish evil conduct.
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How many of you think that that's basically true? Is that basically true? Some of us are unsure.
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That's what the Bible says. By the end of verse four, it's clear that the government serves
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God as it carries out justice on evil. The government, according to this text, is the original avenger.
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There's nothing more biblical than to have Captain America as your favorite avenger. According to this text,
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God calls America a servant of God's cause of justice for you.
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America serves as your avenger. He is an avenger who carries out
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God's wrath on the evildoer. Therefore, he is shown to be an emissary of God in the cause of justice.
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This makes it so that we sleep better at night, don't we, knowing that there are men and women in blue who are not sleeping so that we can, making the deeds of evil less likely to make their way into our houses.
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We can see the second reason to submit in this case is that judgment comes to those who do not submit.
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How many of you are glad for that sense of justice afforded to us? The last reason given as to why we submit in this ...
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We're still in the second point, but we've given three reasons we should submit, and this is the third. The reason we should submit to authorities, it's found at the end of verse five.
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We place ourselves in subjection to authorities for the sake of conscience, it says. That's the third point, for the sake of conscience.
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You see, wrath and consequences and judgment are not the end all of our reasons to submit to our authorities.
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It's fine and dandy if we submit out of fear. That's given to us in the text as a potential motivator.
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For the follower of Christ, Paul appeals to a deeper motivation for us. It's not enough to just obey out of fear.
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For the follower of Christ, just simply knowing that God requires, what he requires and wills for us, should be enough conscience for us to obey.
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His wrath is not necessary motivation for us any longer as followers of Jesus Christ. Knowing that he desires us to be submissive to our local, state, and federal authorities should be enough for us to take this seriously.
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In other words, that's what he's talking about when he's talking about conscience. Fear of punishment might help in times of temptation, but our fundamental motivation to submit to authorities is a conscience within that desires to please
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God, that loves God and desires to do his will. When you understand this text rightly, then it should alter and change the way that you act towards the government authorities over you.
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And that leads us into the third radical reality, and that is that at the end of this text we see fundamentally that we owe a debt, we owe a debt to our government.
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Oh, we don't think that way though, do we? How many of you walked in these doors feeling like you owed a debt to your government?
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I don't see a single hand. That's not our way, that's not the way we talk about paying our taxes, is it?
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We'd like to have roads, we'd like to have better roads, but we'd like to have roads, but man, somebody else ought to pay for those, right?
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We like the infrastructure, we like the notion that I can go take some medicine and it's been regulated by someone so that there's some sense of assurance that there's some kind of standards here.
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Some of you here work in the medical industry and you'd like less regulation, but that's Neither here nor there, but in a world full of $500 shovels and tax dollars paying for things that we find as a church reprehensible and even immoral, we probably squirm a little bit at verses six and seven, don't we?
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How many of you know what I'm talking about? How many of you ever paid your taxes and thought, where is this money going again? What are they going to do with this?
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We could even find this a good time to do some extra research to figure out why this passage is merely cultural for Paul.
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Maybe we could find out some convenient way to get past paying taxes here. Paul certainly didn't know what he was talking about then.
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He certainly wouldn't want us paying for some of the things our government pays for, right? I'd encourage you to go ahead and do your study to try to compare
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Paul's cultural context to ours. You will find the same, no, you'll find more corruption in the governing authorities of Roman times.
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Paul once again follows Jesus here, Jesus, our Lord, the one that we have allegiance to, the one who has saved us, the one who has rescued us, the one who will be our
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King for eternity, who said, regarding taxes, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God.
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He said, go ahead and pay your taxes, go ahead and do that. Do you think that every dime given to Caesar was used for wholesome, good, beneficial programs?
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Jesus said, pay it, let's just do it. Paul goes over the top here in verse 6 by calling the authorities, are you ready for it?
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It's just piling on shock after shock. Your governmental authorities are ministers of God.
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Ministers of God? I can think of some specific names that come to my mind that I'm having a hard time picturing them being ministers of God, but Paul was drawing the early church far, far, far away from rebellion, far, far, far away from sedition.
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God didn't send Jesus to set up a new government, as I said before. God uses the government as one of his established movements here on this earth.
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We pay taxes and we work within the system of government. This is why beautiful things have happened within the structures of government that we might not even be aware of because we can be ignorant of history and different things, but slavery fell from within governmental changes in England and eventually the
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United States. That was government that did that. Different people had roles to play and the church had some roles to play, but at the end of the day, it was government that pushed out slavery.
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God indeed does use the government. When we pay taxes, we are to consider this as a part of just the cost of living, as part of what we do.
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We are to consider it obedience to God. When you roll around and tax season is coming up, when you roll around, can you see that as your service to God?
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Does that change the way that you approach that activity? Does that change the way that you think about it? It ought to.
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This text should change your heart's attitude towards that activity of paying your taxes.
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Consider it as obedience to God. Verse seven concludes this radical text with the words, pay to all what is owed to them.
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In that, we find that there's something else going on at a deeper level. We give taxes. We give direct taxes.
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The word taxes there is a technical word in Greek for the direct taxes, and we give those to whom they're owed.
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The word revenue is again a technical tax word in Greek. It means indirect taxes, like sales taxes, import taxes, that kind of stuff.
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We give those to whom those are owed, so he's basically covering the whole gamut of different types of taxes that the government might leverage against us, and we pay those.
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But at a deeper level, the last two phrases in the entire text demonstrates that we're talking about something different, church.
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This is not just about paying taxes. This is not just simply about the way you act towards the government.
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We are talking about hierarchy here. We are talking about what kind of people we are. We are talking about the type of people who understand hierarchy, who understand authority, who knows what it is to be under someone else and can be okay with that.
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We are to be a people who pay respect to those to whom we owe respect, and we pay honor to those who we ought to honor.
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In a radically independent culture, this text wars against our sensibilities, doesn't it?
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I wonder if you've ever had a hard time, I wonder if even now, and I kind of see it on your faces. I think you've had a hard time listening to me this morning.
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You've had a hard time listening to me expound this text without acknowledging all of the exceptions and exclusions and loopholes and caveats that have been running through your minds.
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I can almost hear your faces saying as I look out at you right now, what about Hitler?
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What about abortion? What about taxation without representation? What about the
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American Revolution? What about the deep state? What about Trump? It's no wonder that I personally had a super hard time wrestling with this text this week.
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I was born and raised in the best nation in the world, the best nation that the world has ever known, and I'm not ashamed to say that.
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I believe that that's true. We've been afforded freedoms and so much opportunity. Do you guys agree with me?
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This nation was born out of a bloody revolution against oppressive, anybody know what it was?
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Oppressive taxation, oppressive taxation, financial gain.
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I'm oversimplifying to some degree, but that's the fundamental thing, money.
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We went to blood over money. So, we want to interpret this text through the lens of exceptions, extremes, and caveats because America, but the shape of this text, hear me church, this is where, this is the point, if you've been nodding off, this is the point where God wants to change us.
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The shape of this text is an honorable, respectful submission to government whenever possible, church.
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That's a tough calling, but that's what he's saying. The general rule in our lives should be civil obedience for the cause of Christ, and let me encourage you that if you're struggling with this, wander back over the text, maybe you're able to listen and look at it yourself, or maybe you need to do that later this afternoon, but let your eyes go back to the text, read it, and note all of the exceptions and caveats and loopholes that Paul gives to us in this text.
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All the ways that he says, accept, submit to the government unless it's a
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Roman emperor. Submit to the governing authorities unless they're taxing you too much.
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Submit to the governing authorities unless they promote abortion, unless they do these things.
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Do you see them in the text? Did you read all of them as I was reading it earlier? Of course, I'm being sarcastic, there aren't any.
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He's not offering us exceptions, he's offering us a text of our heart, a text that is to address our heart attitude of submission towards those who are over us.
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The absence of exceptions is the reason that I haven't been emphasizing any of them. They're just not there.
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Paul didn't write a single caveat to this, but it is worth saying that there are indeed, and we know it, we know that there's exceptions to this, and so that's where we want to focus there, but I think it's worth at least mentioning that Paul hints at one exception in the text, and it is simply in his word choice.
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It's obscure, he doesn't want us to run with it, but he puts it there. It is that Paul chooses the word submit to governing authorities versus the word obey governing authorities.
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He says we are to submit to them, but he does not call you to an abject, complete, and utter obedience to your governing authorities.
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I've been careful throughout this message to when I talk about the church's relationship to the government, it is to be one of submission, but not one of obedience.
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There is an easily accessible Greek word for obey that Paul uses frequently, but not here. He chooses a more generic word, submit, which may sound stronger to our ears, but is actually a much more broad and overarching principle kind of word.
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Consider yourself as under an authority is the idea of submit. It really is an attitude of the heart, a specific stance, a way that you see yourself in light of another thing, to submit, honoring, paying taxes, doing what is good.
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We are those who don't overcome evil with evil, but we overcome evil with good.
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This distinction between submission and obedience, I believe, is key. It's fundamental in this text. Just like the calling the scripture places on a wife to submit to her own husband, this is not a call to obey everything that a husband might ever command a wife to do.
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God forbid that that would be the mindset or the attitude towards any husband or any wife here in this room. An attitude is called for, but not a mindless obedience.
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In this sense, there is only one we are ever called to obey.
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There's only one that you are to obey. That obedience is sometimes mediated through parents.
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God will use others to bring his truth into a life, and so that obedience is mediated through parents.
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It can be mediated through the government or even through the church. Sometimes it's mediated through a friend who might be pleading with us, speaking truth into our lives and calling us to change or to reform or give up the alcohol and come back, whatever it might be.
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But even our obedience to parents, even our obedience to government or to employers is only ever to be in obedience to God through obeying them.
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Submit to governing, submit to the government, see yourself as under them. Do not have an attitude of looking to cast off their authority, but only ever obey them in the
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Lord. Only ever obey them in the Lord. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, story in the
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Old Testament, book of Daniel. They demonstrated to us submitting to the government even as they obeyed
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God, right? Their obedience fundamentally to God, submission to their government.
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And for those three young lads, submitting to the government for them looked like submitting to the flames.
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Submitting to the government looked like submitting to the flames, but they submitted to their government all the way into the fiery furnace.
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The apostles modeled submission to their rulers while obeying God. They were arrested one day while they were proclaiming the good news of Jesus in the temple and they were arrested and imprisoned for preaching, but in the night an angel released all of them with instructions, hey, by the way, tomorrow why don't you go back to the temple and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ?
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So where were they found the next morning? The guy, the magistrate showed up for the jailer, they unlocked and opened the jail door and no one inside.
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Where are they? Somebody comes running and says, hey, those guys that you arrested last night, they're there preaching again in the temple.
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So they go, re -arrest them and say, okay, what in the world is going on here?
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They brought before the rulers and here's what they said. The leaders said this, we strictly charged you not to teach in this name.
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So they knew the instructions, they knew what obedience would look like to their government authorities, yet here, they go on to say, yet here you have filled
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Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring this man, Jesus' blood upon us. But Peter, the apostle, answered them this, we must obey
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God rather than men. We must obey
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God rather than men. This is not a text about obedience, but it is a text about submitting.
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Peter wasn't trying to overthrow the government, I'm not even sure he was looking for chances to dishonor and disobey his government, he was simply trying to obey
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God. Do you see the difference? Do you know the difference between having a heart that desires overthrow, a heart that desires to cast off authority from your shoulders versus a heart to just humbly submit and do what
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God is calling you to do? Obedience belongs only to God even as he calls us to be a submissive people.
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So consider your own attitude towards government as we're going to come to communion here. The tie -in here, at first blush you might be thinking,
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Don, how in the world are you going to get communion out of this? But I don't think it's a stretch at all.
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You see, Jesus Christ himself modeled as an example what it means to submit to authority.
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On the night he was betrayed, he wandered off a little ways from his sleepy disciples and he prayed.
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It says that beyond praying, he actually, he prayed but he trembled while he prayed and he sweat great drops that fell to the ground, profusely sweating in terror and fear for what the morning would bring to him.
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Because he knew his purpose, he knew what was coming the next morning, torture, scourging.
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He was to be crucified and to face the very wrath of his father for it.
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So what did he pray? Is there any other way? Is there any other way that we could do this,
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Father? Have we really thought all this through? God. Of course, he knew the answer.
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But to model for us what submission looks like, he went through this. And at the end, what did he pray?
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Not my will, but yours, Father, be done. He submitted to authority.
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We get submission. We are called to be a people who understand it. And by the very nature of our salvation, we understand what it is to be under another.
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Because we serve a king who showed us submission. We get what it means to be under authority even at personal loss because our very salvation came from one willing to submit to authority.
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So if you've asked Jesus Christ to save you and to be your king, then let me encourage you to come to the tables to remember his body that was broken for us, his church.
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And take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us, his church.
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The cross wasn't easy for him. It was an act of submission to his Father. And he submitted to the cross for the joy set before him.
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So let's go out from here considering this radical calling. We have intense freedoms and rights as written in our
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Constitution. Amen? We have a king named Jesus if we belong to Jesus. Amen?
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And our king has told us to have a stance of submission toward our government that has been instituted by him.
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So let's be a people who recognize, respect, and honor authority.
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And let's be a people who obey God for the sake of conscience. Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you that you are so concerned with us that you give us texts like this that just seem quite specific and narrow and at the same time certainly address hard issues that we all need to wrestle with.
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Father, I thank you that you in sending your Son made a way for us to be made righteous, to be made whole, and to have hope beyond this life that our hope does not need to be placed in the government to fix things.
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It doesn't need to be placed in any other institution. At the end of the day, our only hope for full restoration is in you.
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So Father, I pray that you would move anyone in this room, any of us whose hearts have been really riled up, especially in this political climate, to just take a chill pill and submit, most importantly to submit to you and to obey you.
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And submitting to you looking like submitting to those in authority over us. Praying and looking for your hand in your work.
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Father, I thank you for the cross of Christ. I thank you for the opportunity we have to take communion together. And Father, I pray that you would bless us as we, in unity, everybody who belongs to you stands up and goes to those tables reflecting on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that he fulfilled it for us.
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He obeyed and came up under and submitted to your authority and the plan of salvation.
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And our salvation was born there in that act of submission. Help us to follow our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as our King and the government that he set up over us.