God and Government

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Our Father and our God, we thank you that you have allowed us to again be in your house to study, to be about the business of examining the Word, seeking to apply its truth to our lives, and focus on the question of our obedience to the government authorities, and Lord, what the Scripture has to say about that.
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And Father, as we tonight think about the question that was posed last week about the Revolutionary War and the foundations of the American government, I pray that we would be first and foremost faithful to what the Bible says before we even consider being faithful to our country, our nation, or anything like that.
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We first must be faithful to you.
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So Father, we again just ask that you would give us sober minds, give us thinking minds, give us clarity of thought, and help us to consider all that your Word has to say on this particular issue, especially, Lord, in a time when our nation seems to have gone so far away from the principles upon which even it was established, and certainly the principles for which you have given us in your Word that a nation should be governed by.
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So Lord, as we consider what we're learning tonight, just pray that you would be merciful to us.
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Pray, Lord, that you would keep me from error as I teach.
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Not that I am worthy of your grace, O Lord, as I am not.
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I'm a sinful man.
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I'm certainly capable of error, but I pray on behalf of the people, on behalf of my own soul, Lord, that you would keep me from error.
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That I would not teach heresy or anything that would be untrue, but that my words would be centered in the truth of the Word.
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And Lord, we pray that you'll open the hearts of the people to understand the message tonight, and that as we seek to converse on this issue and to allow for variants of discussion and opinion, that we would all seek to have our minds formed, our thoughts formed, rather, by the truth of the Word.
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We pray also for those in our company and in our congregation who are not well.
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We thank you that little Christopher's surgery went well today, and we ask that you just be merciful to his family as they continue to seek to encourage him in his recovery.
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Father, we pray for the other families, Lord, throughout our congregation who have folks who are ill.
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We pray, Lord, that you would encourage us to minister to them, love them, and to do our best to always seek to be ministers of the Spirit's power.
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And all these things, Lord, we pray, we ask in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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All right.
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Well, we are engaging the 13th chapter of the book of Romans.
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So if you want to take out your Bibles and look to Romans chapter 13, and we are beginning, we began last week in verse one, and we looked at verses one through seven.
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And as I said in our lesson, we are going to, we were going today to continue looking at these verses because really, we only really examined exegetically verses one through three.
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And the subject of this lesson and last week's lesson really is the authority of the government.
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And, you know, you might could step back and say, really, the subject is God and government.
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And there is an argument that goes on in our nation about the separation of church and state.
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And I often hear people talk about how the Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state.
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The Constitution does not say anything about the separation of church and state.
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What the Constitution actually says is that Congress shall make no law which abridges the freedom of religion and free speech and things like that.
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It doesn't say anything about, it doesn't use the phrase, the separation of church and state.
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That phrase actually came from a letter that one of our founding fathers wrote talking about law and government.
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And he talked about the separation between church and state.
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However, one thing that we need to consider is that the separation of church and state is not always a bad thing.
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Because in fact, historic Baptist theology has really made a to do about the fact that there should be a separation between church and state because the Baptists made the argument that we do not want the state governing the church.
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So in that regard, there certainly is benefit to having a separation between church and state.
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However, every Baptist I know and every Christian that I know will make this immediate follow-up statement is though there must be a separation between church and state, there can never be a separation between God and government.
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There's going to be a separation between church and state because we don't want the church influenced and governed by the state.
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However, God is the God of all things and he is also the God of the government.
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God, and this is why many of our leaders in the past have recognized the authority of God and they have said things like the motto of the United States should be what? In God, we trust, right? And what's another thing about God that is found in the history of America? We find these truths to be self-evident that all men are what? Created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.
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Right.
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So right there in the very first part, we hear that statement about a creator.
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So even our founding fathers did not, though they understood that the government should not control the church, neither should the church control the government.
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They understood that ultimate authority comes from God and they understood that there really is no separation between God and government.
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So with that being said, we read Romans 13 and we look to what the Apostle Paul says about the authority of the government.
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Tonight we're going to read those seven verses we read last week as our introduction and then begin our discussion.
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It says, 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.
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And those who resist will incur judgment for rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.
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Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good and you'll 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 and avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.
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Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience.
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For the same reason, you also pay taxes for the authorities or ministers of God attending to this very thing.
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Pay to all what is owed to them.
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Taxes to whom taxes are owed.
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Revenue to whom revenue is owed.
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Respect to whom respect is owed.
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Honor to whom honor is owed.
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May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.
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So there it is.
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There is that passage about government that really.
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Is one of the more difficult passages in Scripture for us to for us to receive, because, quite frankly, there are times when we look to the government and we see such misbehavior on the part of those who have been elected to those offices and we see such sinful behavior on the part of those who have been elected to those offices or placed in those positions.
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And we cry out and we say and we rebel in our hearts against what is happening.
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And we and we're angry.
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And one of the points I made last week, and since some of you weren't here, I wanted to make sure I said it again this week.
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One of the things that we have to understand.
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Is that God does appoint all authority.
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But God does not appoint all authority for the same purposes.
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Some authority is appointed for the purpose of blessing.
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And some authority is appointed for the purpose of testing.
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And some authority is for plain old judgment.
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Really? There are some people who are put in authority to be a blessing.
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There are some people who are put in authority to be a test.
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And there are some people who are put in authority because the people have so rejected God.
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God has given them what they want.
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And the one that they wanted is not the one that was the blessing, but the one that was the judgment.
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Pastor Keith, how could you possibly make such a claim? Well, I go to the Bible and I see the story of King Saul.
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What does the Bible say King Saul was? Saul, his whole reign was a judgment on the people because they did not want the rule of God.
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They wanted the rule of a king.
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They wanted to be like other nations.
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And what did God say? I will give you a king, but know this.
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He will put you into bondage.
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He will be a tyrant.
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You will work for him and you will not be paid well.
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You will do all of these things.
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You will have judgment upon you because you have rebelled against me.
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Who was the ultimate one who gave Saul his authority? God.
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What was God's purpose? They are right in the text.
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The purpose was to be judgment to the people.
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Something I said last week that I hope fell upon open ears was this.
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I said in a nation that kills 4,000 children every day through what is called abortion, it really is America's holocaust.
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In a nation where drugs, sinful activity, alcohol, alcoholism and sexual lust and pornography and homosexuality are glorified and yet God's word is trampled upon where the Koran is a protected book.
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But the Bible is a book to be burned.
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How then can we expect anything but judgment? If my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves, shall pray and seek my face, then I will hear from heaven and I will heal their land.
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We know that text, right? And that's what the Christians of America do.
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The Christians of America get on their knees and they pray for their nation and they pray for their leaders and they pray against the tide which is stemming towards this utter destruction.
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And I believe thoroughly that the only thing that has kept the the rain of fire that fell upon Sodom from falling upon the United States are the Christians who stood upon their knees day after day praying the hand of God's judgment to be stayed.
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Not one of those God bless America moments that we're so familiar with.
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Because, you know, that's the way the president ends his speeches.
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That's the way Congress ends their speeches.
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That's the way local government officials, they always say, God bless America.
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A few years ago, John MacArthur had a sermon entitled, Can God Bless America? And the question was, can God bless sinful people in their sin as they continue to sin and rebel against him? And it's a legitimate question and it's a serious question.
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However, all that simply is just a rehashing of what I said last week, because I ended last week with a question.
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The question was this.
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We often are told and we believe that America had a very righteous foundation.
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You know, the pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower came because they wanted religious freedom.
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They wanted the ability to worship God as they were convicted in their hearts.
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And when they came over to the United States, which wasn't the United States then, but it was the new land, the new world.
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When they came here, they came here for that purpose.
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And then years later, a nation began to develop.
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And as that nation began to develop, it was an offshoot of another nation.
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It was an offshoot, an extension of another nation.
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But yet there came a time where the people stood in this very nation and which at that time was simply an arm of another and said, you know what? It is time for us to declare our independence and to become a sovereign nation.
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And my question to you that I sent you home with, that I posed to you was this.
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Based on the authority of God's word and what Romans 13 says, which is that there is no authority except that which is from God.
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And essentially it says that rebellion against that authority is rebellion against God.
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Was the Revolutionary War an act of defiance to Scripture? Because it was an act of defiance to what was at that time the recognized authority, British rule.
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That was the recognized authority.
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Why? If not, why not? So I give you an opportunity now.
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Know that you're being recorded.
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Know that you're going to have, this will probably be heard.
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By the way, I got our report from Sermon Audio.
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Some over 7,000 people have downloaded and listened to our sermons in the last year.
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So you'll probably be heard, especially this one when it's entitled God and Government.
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I imagine people will listen to this.
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So if you want to answer that question, I just ask that you be brief in your reasoning.
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Some of you may want to go way into it, but I'm asking just for at least a little bit of brevity so that more people will get an opportunity.
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This is one of those teaching times where we get to share.
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So I saw a hand up earlier.
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Do you want to speak? The Church of England again.
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Okay.
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So in that sense, it was, the argument would be that because they are concerned for keeping the faith pure, keeping the faith pure, which does go back to the Acts 4 passage there, which is, you know, the whole issue, you know, the argument for the passage she's mentioning is when Peter and John are before the Sanhedrin and they tell them, you can do whatever you want, but don't preach Jesus.
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And they said, you know, are we to obey men rather than God? We, you know, we have to preach Jesus.
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We have to preach the gospel.
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We, you know, if it's if it's preach Jesus or go to jail, you know, or if it's, you know, it's preach Jesus and go to jail or not preach Jesus and be free.
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We'd rather preach Jesus and go to jail.
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That was their attitude.
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So, yeah, that that is one.
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And that's sort of the answer because Noah wrote me an answer.
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And he said, no, he didn't believe it was sin because they wanted to believe in God and not the king.
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They wanted to follow God and not the king.
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So that's very similar in the answer to the one that Noah gave.
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Does anyone else have anything to add to that or maybe something different, a different perspective? Because in that sense, what she's saying is their their their desire was to maintain religious liberty so that they were not going back under the Church of England.
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And that case, they would feel justified.
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Anyone else? Sure.
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Sure.
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But would that be, though, would that be grounds for for disobeying Romans 13? That's and that's kind of what I'm posing.
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And trust me, I'm not one to to to to argue, but I'm I'm going to I'm going to try to make you think about these questions.
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You know, would would a would an economic issue be enough for somebody to say, well, I don't have to obey anymore? I mean, it's you know, that's that's that's that's a question.
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I'm not saying yes or no.
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I'm asking anybody else.
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Are you just waiting for me to say something? Are you? I'm serious.
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I'm not going to I'm not going to argue with anybody.
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I'm just going to propose, you know, thoughts.
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And I hope you know, I hope that those of you guys who are here have thought about this this week.
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Anybody want you really look like you want to say something, Richard.
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So go ahead and say, OK, as you well know, but I want you to be very brave.
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But when the but now in the end, there was a big break, which came to be very popular.
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Yeah, we're no longer with no longer would we consider ourselves a theocracy.
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In fact, since the establishment of the United States Constitution, we have not been a theocracy.
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However, prior to that, there were certain aspects of American life which could have been called theocratic.
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In fact, many of the if I remember correctly, many of the constitutions of within the colonies had specific requirements for Christian faith and fidelity to the scriptures and things like that, which was an imposition of a theocracy at that point.
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I mean, when I say it was imposing a theocracy by demanding a certain religion to serve in government office to impose a certain belief about the Bible was that's that's theocratic.
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However, with the dawn of the United States Constitution, we moved away from any form of a theocracy and we established a what? What are we? We are not a democracy.
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We are a democratic republic.
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And there is a difference because pure democracy is mob rule.
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And that's the thing that people say we're a democracy.
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Very quickly, we are a republic, a democratically elected republic, because it is not majority rule.
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We we vote for people to represent us and those representatives make the decisions.
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Yes, like to use the term democracy.
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You have to you have to.
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Yeah, representative.
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Yeah.
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You know, again, it's representative republic, but a democratic republic.
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There is voting.
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We do vote for laws.
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We vote for these things.
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However, how is the law established? Ultimately, in the nation, it is established through an act of Congress.
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And then it is it is what it was.
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It is then judged by a Supreme Court.
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And that Supreme Court is supposed to act as that third level of checks and balance.
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Right.
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The Congress creates a law.
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They impose the law.
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And then the Supreme Court can come back and say, no, this law does not agree with the Constitution.
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As such, that law is not binding on the American people.
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Right.
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That's how it works.
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So so even though we we vote for people, we vote for people to go make these decisions for us.
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And nowhere is there in any of our voting a place that we check.
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He must have fidelity to Christ or he must have fidelity to the Bible or he must have fidelity even to God himself.
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So we are not a theocracy as what was the hope of the Puritans.
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Neither are we a pure democracy, but we are a representative republic.
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So having said all of that, going back to the point of the Revolutionary War, the Revolutionary War, that's the big question, because I think it's a legitimate thing to ask, because we spend all this time saying our nation was founded on Christian principles, but the very war that made us a nation.
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Because it really was the Revolutionary War.
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It was because of that we were able to claim independence.
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Was that war justified from Scripture? And I will say this during the time Amy's right during the time there were pastors who were in America who were claiming that it is justified.
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But there were also pastors in Great Britain who were saying it wasn't.
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It's funny.
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It's funny.
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You know, we call it the Revolutionary War.
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Do you know what they call it overseas? The Great American Rebellion, because it's always on what side of the coin.
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It's also what side of the pistol you're on.
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Right.
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It's what side of the rifle you're on.
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When you're on the butt side of the rifle, you're in the right.
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And when you're on the muzzle side of the rifle, you're in the wrong.
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You're the person being shot at.
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And that's sort of where we are, because it's very hard for us to make a unbiased.
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It's very hard for us to make an unbiased judgment about because we know what God has done in America.
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We know what the good things that God has brought about in the history of our land.
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And we know there have been blessings and we and there have been many, many fold blessings in America has been one of the greatest tools of evangelism in the world.
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We've seen the Great Awakening and the second Great Awakening send the gospel through the nation and the world.
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So, yeah, I mean, there's no argument that there is a blessing which America has received from God.
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But that goes back and we have to continue to go back to the question, though, was the war itself a breach of this text? The Wesleys, you know, over in Europe, arguing, you know, that it was.
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The Wesleyans, rather, arguing that it was, you know, and the Americans here arguing that it was not.
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So we get hindsight, something they didn't have.
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We get to look back a couple hundred years and we get to go back and say, what is it? But we mustn't ever think that we're unbiased.
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Every one of us has a dog in the hunt, so to speak, because we're Americans.
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And if I ask any one of you, do you want to think that your nation was founded on something that was unbiblical? Every one of us would say, absolutely not.
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We want we want to think our nation was founded on biblical, at least biblical principles.
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And so the question is posed, and that's why I posed it to you last week.
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That's why I asked you to bring me an answer.
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And now I guess I've opined long enough.
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It's time to give my answer, huh? Does anybody else have anything before I go into what I believe is the biblical answer? All right.
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Well, first of all, Romans 13 very specifically talks about government.
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Romans 13 does not, however, address tyranny.
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And there is a difference, because government is by nature a law-making and a law-abiding system.
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Government makes laws, and by virtue of making laws, they submit themselves to those laws.
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When the government itself is breaching its own laws, it switches from government to tyranny.
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That's one way of examining the whole situation.
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What was happening in America that caused the desire, and Amy hit on one of them, she said, the desire for religious freedom.
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But Mr.
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Frazier, I know your name's not Mr.
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Frazier, but it's hard when you're up here.
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I got a lot of thoughts going on in my head.
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What Irv said is also important, and that is the economic situation.
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The economic situation is what brought about things like the Tea Parties and things like that, the arguments against the taxation.
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No taxation without what? Representation, right? There was laws that the government had that the government itself was not obeying.
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There was an authority system set up that was not being obeyed, and thus the people were suffering as a result.
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The colonists did not see war as an offensive action.
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The colonists saw war as a defensive last resort.
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In 1775 and 1776, the Americans had presented the king with formal appeals for reconciliation.
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1775 and 1776, there were appeals for reconciliation.
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Can we reconcile this problem that's being brought about through tyrannical behavior? The government is overexerting the authority that itself has been set up.
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The rules and the laws that have been set up are not applying to us.
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There is this tyrannical behavior which is going on, and there is an appeal for reconciliation, and these peaceful pleas were met with armed military force and several violations of British common law and the English Bill of Rights.
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The British common law and the English Bill of Rights were both breached in the behavior by the British when they came and brought violence.
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In fact, in 1770, the British fired upon unarmed citizens in what was called, most of you are familiar, the Boston Massacre.
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At Lexington, what was the command given by the American leaders? What was the command at Lexington? Do not shoot.
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What is it? You were going to finish it.
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You said it.
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No, what was it? No, don't shoot until.
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Do not fire until fired upon.
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Do not fire until fired upon.
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Do not shoot first.
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Do not engage.
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Stand your ground, but do not engage first.
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As such, the argument could be made that the behavior of, after the Boston Massacre and after those events which led up to the Revolutionary War, it could be, the argument could be made that the Revolutionary War at that point was a defensive action against a tyrannical government.
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Does that, though, mean that the government didn't have authority? Still comes back to the question, doesn't it? But we have to begin to ask ourselves the question, how were our founding fathers interpreting the actions that were going on around them when they were seeing a force that was coming in to rob them of their freedom? How did they see the action? Did they see it as an action of a government? Did they see it as a government that was intent on doing them good or as an evil force intent on doing them bad? And I think that if we were honest at least about the situation of how they judged it, there was a point at which they were fully submissive to the rule of England.
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But there was a point at which it became no longer a government that was ruling but tyranny.
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So that is how they would have recognized it.
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Is there scripture to give any support to their action? Well, you look back into the Old Testament and you see in the Old Testament heroes of the faith who did what? Who stood for the helpless, who stood against tyranny, who stood against oppression, who stood against those who were causing pain.
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You see men like, think about Hebrews chapter 11.
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Hebrews 11 names Jephthah and Samson and all of these other men who did what? Who defeated armies.
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So we have some basis for their argument that it was defense and not offense which led to the war.
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So that is one consideration that must be undertook.
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Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah are all listed as heroes of the faith and they were all involved in overthrowing oppressive governments.
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All four of those, Gideon, Samson, Barak, and Jephthah were all involved in overthrowing oppressive, tyrannical governments.
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So could that argument be made? Well, it certainly was by the pastors of the day who were arguing that the American patriots who fought against England were doing what was right in the eyes of God.
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And they were convinced that they had biblical precedent.
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They were convinced that they had scriptural justification for their rebellion.
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Although their view of Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2, 1 Peter 2 is the passage which says, go back up to it real quick, 1 Peter 2 says, submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority.
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And they made the argument that the phrase for the Lord's sake did not apply, did not cause the application to fall on them for this because the authority was unrighteous and thus it was passing unrighteous laws and following those laws could not be a righteous thing so it couldn't be done for the Lord's sake.
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So basically they were making the argument again from the text that they're telling us to do something God tells us not to do, we can't obey them, we have to obey God, and we can't obey them for the Lord's sake because they're telling us to do something the Lord said not to do.
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So in that regard they made that argument.
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But really and truly the way it all falls it's hard to make an argument simply from Romans 13 that they did exactly what was right by standing against what was a government at their time.
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We have to look at other places in scripture, we have to look at other situations, and we have to look at what happened in Toto rather than simply saying okay this text says every authority is from God, those that exist have been instituted by God, therefore whoever resists the authority resists God, and say okay they resisted authority so they resisted God.
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So that would be the simple way of looking at it but I think there's more to it than that.
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This is one of those passages that is very hard to interpret.
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As I said last week there's three ways to interpret it.
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There's the view that says all authority is from God without exception, and then there's the other that says all authority is from God which is good in their behavior.
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And then there's the third which said this is actually referring to church government.
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Remember how I said I don't think that one applies here because it talks about taxes.
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Never is giving to the church identified as a tax so I think that that sort of is thrown out.
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But it does come back to the question when does a government cease being a government and begin being a tyranny or something that is worthy to be rebelled against.
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There are so many questions.
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That's why I said this is not an easy thing and there's so many questions that come up as a result of the difficulty of this passage.
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I think you hit the nail on the head because verse 3 is the hardest part when it says for rulers are not a terror to good conduct.
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I would imagine the people in Burma before it became Myanmar, I believe the people of Burma would have had problems with that verse because it says the rulers are not a terror to good works.
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Their rulers were kidnapping their children and forcing them to become soldiers at age 12, 11, 10 years old.
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They were fighting among tribes and Burma was going on in the jungle and women were seeing their sons stolen and their daughters raped by those people who were in authority.
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In fact, that's why it's not Burma anymore, it's Myanmar because there was so much bad publicity for the nation and so much international appeal towards their stopping this horrid behavior that there was a change there.
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You won't find Burma on a map now.
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But it's hard to hear that.
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A ruler is not a terror to good conduct.
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Sometimes they are.
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So is the Bible wrong? And again, this is one of those times we have to be honest, intellectually honest and ask is the Bible wrong or is our understanding faulty? Have you ever asked yourself that question? If you come to a passage that just doesn't seem to resonate with the truth, if you come to a passage, there's only one of two things.
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It's either the Bible is wrong or the way I understand it is wrong.
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If it doesn't resonate with the truth, for instance, there are certain Bible passages that talk about science and they talk about certain things that we might think are unscientific.
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The Bible says that the sun makes a circuit in the heavens.
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And you say, wait a minute, I learned after the Copernican Revolution that the earth makes a circuit in the heavens and that the sun is the center of the galaxy and the earth moves around it.
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But yet the Bible would indicate that the sun is moving around the earth when you read that the sun makes a circuit in the heavens.
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So one of two things is right.
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Either the Bible is wrong or our understanding is wrong.
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Which is it? Well, in that way, it would be our understanding because that's using what's called phenomenological language.
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Phenomenological language is simply the language of appearance.
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And when we get up in the morning, the sun's over there.
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We go to bed at night, the sun's over there.
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And when we look at it, it makes a circuit in the heavens.
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In that sense, it's making a very clear statement about what we see.
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If the Bible had said at that point, 1500 years before Christ, if it had been written in the Bible that the sun itself is the center of the galaxy and the earth's going around it, everybody would have said, I see it.
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They would have said that's not scientific because at that point they didn't have the ability to measure or see beyond the most natural way of seeing things.
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Right.
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So in appealing to verse three, I think you're exactly right.
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When we read that rulers are not a terror to good conduct, just that very phrase we can we could we could say, just like I said last week, Idi Amin.
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He was a terror.
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To what certainly would have been considered good conduct of his people.
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Adolf Hitler was certainly a terror to what would be considered.
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The good works of his people, I mean, the Jewish people, the the.
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The others who he hurt, I'm trying to think that the gypsies and others who he killed wasn't just Jews, by the way.
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There were a lot of people that were killed by Hitler outside of the Jewish people.
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So we could say Hitler was a terror to good conduct.
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Thus, this verse is not true.
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We could say it.
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I mean, was a terror to good conduct.
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This verse is not true.
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We could say.
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And you could say Nero was a terror to good conduct, and as such, this verse is not true.
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Or.
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We could say this, that this verse is speaking very clearly.
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Of something that we are missing.
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And that is this.
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That the definition of good conduct here is not the conduct that we often consider good.
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But the definition of good conduct here would be more in line with obedience.
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Generally.
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A ruler is not a terror to one who is in obedience to his rule.
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Generally.
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By the way, do you know the difference between proverbial and absolute truth? Do you know the difference? We got a whole book in the Bible entitled Proverbs.
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What's a proverb? A proverb is a generalized truth that though it is not applicable in every single situation.
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It is a general statement of truth.
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That's a proverb.
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For instance, raise up a child in the way he should go.
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And when he is old, he will not depart from it.
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How many times do you think Ted Bundy's parents read that? Thinking, you know, we raised him in church.
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We did what we thought was right.
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And he became one of the most horrid rapists of all time.
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And you say, does that mean the Bible is wrong? It's only wrong if you apply a crass literalism to something that is by nature proverbial and not absolute.
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The Bible includes proverbial truth.
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Things that are not absolute but are general truths.
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Now go back to the statement.
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A ruler is not a terror to obedient conduct.
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Generally, that's true.
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You've got your Idi Amin, you've got your Adolf Hitler, you've got those exceptions.
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But in general, a ruler will not be a terror to a person who does what the government tells them to do.
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Generally.
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And when it does, when he does become a terror and supersedes law and authority, he becomes a tyrant.
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So looking at the passages, looking at all that we've learned, how do we apply it to our life? Because I want to get back to the question she just asked.
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What if we are forced by the government to do something that God specifically tells us not to do? Well, thank the Lord we are not left without an answer.
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The Bible does tell us there are times and use the phrase civil disobedience.
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And you can use that phrase, I'm not saying it's wrong, but I would just say where obedience to God must supersede obedience to government authority.
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But you know what? That's never mentioned here.
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Do you know why it's not mentioned here? I'm going to share an opinion because it's not mentioned here, it doesn't say it here.
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Because that's not in Paul's purview here.
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Paul's purview here is this.
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He has just taught for he's taught 11 chapters on doctrine, Christian doctrine.
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And he's talked about Christian liberty and he's talked about justification by grace through faith.
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And he's talked about all of the things that we are to do unto God.
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And now chapter 12 begins this very practical section where he's talking about how we are supposed to behave to one another.
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Chapter 12 talks about what? It talks about offering up our bodies a living sacrifice.
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It talks about how our gifts are supposed to work in exchange with others.
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It talks about living at peace with all men as much as it is up to you, live at peace with all men.
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He's talking about what now? Practical Christian living.
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And when he comes to chapter 13, which he didn't have chapter markings, but so it all flows together.
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The extension is there's a very practical way in which Christians must view governmental authority and that is in obedience to it.
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We are to be obedient to the government.
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Are there exceptions? You better believe it.
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But he doesn't include the exceptions here because there are certain things that the scripture has already addressed that go without saying.
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For instance, Daniel would have been a person that you could say he disobeyed.
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But what did the government do? The government threw him in the lines then.
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Did God protect him? Yes.
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But Shadrach, Neshach and Abednego, same thing.
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The government said you must bow down, you must worship the statue.
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They didn't do it.
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What happened? What was Shadrach, Neshach and Abednego's response to King Nebuchadnezzar? They said to King Nebuchadnezzar, our God can save us, but whether or not he does, we will not bow down.
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And you've got to imagine the whole trip to the furnace, they didn't know they were going to be saved.
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At any moment on that way to the furnace that they were being dragged, they could have said, whoa, time out.
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I'm ready to bow.
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It's getting hot.
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I'm starting to sweat.
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I don't want to get any closer.
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Get me over to the statue.
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I'll bow down.
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I'll get out of this.
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That's right.
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They didn't know it.
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Yeah, they didn't know it, so they were in it.
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And you know what? The reason why I bring these things up is that government authority is not going to go away if we choose to disobey it because we want to obey God.
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The government says you do and we choose not to do because we feel like obeying God is that whatever it is would be disobedience to God.
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And we say to the government, we are obeying God and not you.
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We may experience the sword of the government.
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Will it be a righteous sword? No, but it still may be just as sharp.
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Well, be aware of what the text is saying.
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Yes, we have a responsibility if we want to break it down to brass tacks and simple application.
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When you drive home tonight and when that speed limit says 55, yeah, that's the rule.
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When you are commanded by a police officer to pull over and you think you can outrun him, don't.
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We live in a...
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Right there, right there, that should in all of each of us.
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And that's a tyranny you can oppose it by.
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One way we can do something is...
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Well, the first thing we can do though, the first thing we can do as much as the law does not cause us to sin, we obey the law.
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That would be first.
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As much as the law does not cause us to sin, we obey the law.
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If the law demands we sin, we obey God and not man.
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Right? So, that's just making it very simple.
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As much as the law does not cause us to sin, we obey the law.
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And as much as when the law commands us to sin, we obey God rather than men.
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And really that's the very simple way of how we are to recognize government's authority.
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They are a minister of God.
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Their responsibility, the responsibility of government is supposed to be to protect the people.
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When the government begins to oppress the people and becomes tyrannical at that point, is there an opportunity at that point for civil disobedience or to obey God rather than men? Yes.
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But, as long as the government is not causing us to sin, it's in charge.
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Because God has put it there.
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Remember what I said, the three reasons somebody's put in office? They're put in office to bless, they're put in office to judge, or they're put in office for what? To test.
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That third one I think we often forget.
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Sometimes there is a test.
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I want to ask yourselves this question.
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Ask yourself a question.
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If tonight you were, and I don't want you to answer, please don't answer out loud.
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Because you're going to probably be surprised by the question.
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If tonight you were at a restaurant, and the door of the restaurant opened up, and two secret servicemen walked in, and they guarded the door, and the President of the United States walked in, and you yourself may not be real pleased with him.
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I'm not saying you are or you aren't.
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I'm just, I'm proposing an illustration.
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You see him as a person for which you have great disdain, and who you hope to vote out in the fall.
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You may not.
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I'm just saying this may be you.
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And yet he approached your table.
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Would you stand? The Bible says show honor where honor is due.
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I'm asking you to answer.
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Answer it in your heart.
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Would you stand in the presence of the President? Even if you didn't like it.
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I think it's a legitimate question.
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And I think it goes to the heart.
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I think it goes to our heart.
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Because we are not standing in the presence of a man.
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We're standing in the presence of an office which God has established.
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Which many good men have sat.
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In which many good men have sat.
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And even if we don't like the man that's there now, we show respect where respect is due.
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I'll give you a little illustration.
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My children and I were at a restaurant very recently.
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The President did not walk in.
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Because you just saw a picture of me with him.
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He's in that office.
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But here's the thing.
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We have a mayor right now in Jacksonville.
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I didn't vote for him.
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But he walked into the restaurant.
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And I said, so then that's the mayor.
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He has been raised by the people of Jacksonville to a position of leadership.
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And the Bible says he was placed there by God, ultimately.
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And though I may not like, I didn't go through all this with my kids, but I was thinking in my mind, though I may not like all the decisions he makes when he walked to our table, I said, sir, and I shook his hand.
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My kids shook his hand and we even took a picture because he's in a place that God has put him for a reason, whether he is there to be a test to me, whether he is there to be a blessing to me, or whether he is there to judge our city and me included.
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There is no authority except that which is given by God.
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And I have a responsibility to respect where respect is due.
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So I want us to keep that, think about that, even though we may hate what's going on and we may try to vote him out and we may stand against anything that would cause us to sin.
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They're there for a reason.
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One of three reasons.
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And God put him there.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for this opportunity that we've had to share together, that we've had to learn together.
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And Lord, we know that we do not have all the answers.
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And sometimes there are passages of Scripture like the one we read tonight, where the answer is not easy for us to receive.
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But Lord, we know that the Scripture is not an error and that if there is an error to be found, it is in our own hearts.
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So I pray for a better understanding.
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I pray to be a better guide as we study the Scriptures.
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And I pray that the hearts of the people will be conformed to the truth, that we might all be people that are known as law-abiding citizens who are respectable and who do what is right.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.