Romans 13_5-7 The Blessing of Godly Government
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Summary
In this episode, we continue our series on the theology of authority and how it relates to the family, the church, and the state, and how they relate to one another. God has given us the authority that was lost in Adam s fall, and we need to learn to rebel against it.
Transcript
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Amen. We are halfway through chapter 13 of Romans, which is a great blessing because at
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the end of 13, I'm going to take a short break. We'll talk about some eschatology for a few
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weeks, and then we'll dive back into 14, 15, and 16, and by God's mercy, we will finish Romans.
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It might be 2029, but we'll get there. Just to give you some context to remind you where we've
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been, you remember that Corbin offered a sermon on the spheres of sovereignty that taught us about
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how the family, the church, and the state are distinct God-given structures and how they relate
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with one another. I offered a sermon on the theology of authority, demonstrating how Jesus
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reclaimed the authority that was lost in Adam's fall, and how Christ declared that all authority
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has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and disciple the nation. So we have a
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shift of power return to Christ in some dimension in the gospel. And so as a result, authority,
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all authority now flows from Christ. But we learned about an important distinction.
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Earthly authority or power is to be distinguished from persons. So you have power which is pure
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and stems from Christ and persons which are fallen and sinful. Now authority that defies
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god's law is called tyranny and while scripture calls us to submit to authority that submission
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is never absolute in fact it's actually conditional or uh it's limited if you want to use a different
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term on these lower authorities exercising authority in alignment with their higher
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authority, which is Christ. We also learn that God in His
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And while righteous rebellion against tyrants is necessary
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and even right, Christians must first ask, what sins brought this judgment upon us?
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What repentance ought we to consider prior to our rebellion?
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And we talked about how too often the church gets frustrated with the tyranny of the government,
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running straight for rebellion without first examining themselves
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and asking why did God allow such wicked rulers to reign over us in the first place?
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What sort of repentance might be required from us before we rebel?
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Then last week I discussed how our flesh hates authority.
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Every sin that's ever been committed has been a sin or rebellion against authority.
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Whether it's to parents, or pastors, or husbands, or police officers, or teachers, or speed limits, or building permits, or mayors.
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We want to be autonomous and independent, self-governing individuals.
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In fact, when I was preparing the sermon, I thought to myself, oh, there are so many instances in my own life where I want to rebel against authority.
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Oh, it's just bureaucracy. I don't need to follow those rules. Let's just pass that thing and let's move on.
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It's a constant awareness of our individualism that we need to be killing off.
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we learned last week that the best way to resist our flesh's inclination towards insubordination
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is to recognize the blessings of good authority law and order i'll tell you what we all like law
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and order we talked about that last week you love that you don't have someone breaking into
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your house at night or that you know someone steals your car you can actually report them
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and get your car back we like law and order and another way is to realize the harm that comes
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without law and order i know you hate authority but you know what if we get rid of authority
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i promise you'll hate your life even more no authority is extremely dangerous
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that we needed to confront ultimately we've learned that godly government as corbin recently
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said is good godly government is good it's righteous and it's something that we should
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desire as christians we're not to be anarchists we're not to be philosophical political anarchists
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Theocrats is a church-ran government, and anarchy is no government.
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No, we are to have a Christianized state, a government that is separate and distinct from the church,
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but also still under the reign and rule of Christ.
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The term for that is what I would call a theonomist.
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The idea that we take the biblical principles and we hope that they are applied in general to the form of government that we subscribe to.
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And that those rulers would essentially submit to God's will according to the scriptures.
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Now we left off in verse 4 when it demonstrated that authority and rulers all come from God and that they're put in place to keep order.
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And if you don't want to fear authority, then obey.
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You know the feeling of conviction when you're doing something wrong?
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You think that obeying, God's designed for sexuality.
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You think that God's designed for marriage.
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and so it's really loving for us to tell you as pastors
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obey obey it's better for you we are the beneficiaries it's god's not the beneficiary
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of obedience we're the beneficiaries of obedience it's actually good for us to obey
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To carry out his wrath and justice against evil
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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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So first, because we're going to be smart Bible interpreters here.
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Now, I'm going to tell you, every time you see a therefore, you must ask what it's there for.
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Therefore, signals that this verse is a concluding statement from the previous claim.
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And so, he's saying, therefore, as a result, be in subjection.
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Not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience.
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Now, another word I want you to catch in verse 5 is the word must.
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which signals that this is a command therefore we must be subject to authority that's basically
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what he's saying and paul shows that this objection is twofold one it's it's external
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punishment and it's internal for conscience two reasons that we must obey authority and paul
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I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.
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Do you take pains to have a clear conscience before God and man?
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One theologian defined the person's conscience as, quote,
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The God-given inner judge that accuses and condemns us when we have done wrong
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and approves and commends us when we have done right.
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By God's grace, it's a common grace that we have a conscience.
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We know inherently good and evil to some degree.
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there are people who have seared their conscience according to scripture
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you will have confused and say what is good is bad and what is bad is good
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people in the transgender homosexual movement that push according to romans chapter one
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have said that they have seared their conscience they no longer are arbiters of knowing what is
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Pain is an excellent motive. But Paul gets down to the heart here.
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He doesn't want just pain to be the reason that you obey.
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God is a better motive to fight against this temptation of
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disobedience and insubordination to authority. Conscience.
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In other words, let your conscience be sensitive in this matter.
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Do you have a sensitive conscience for disobedience to authority?
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We want to think that maybe these small violations of authority aren't that big of a deal to God.
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these are small matters that you get to go before the Lord
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do we want to think that these are little issues
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And again, I really believe this principle, it applies not just to civil rulers, it applies to all areas of authority.
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Be subject, for the Lord's sake, to every human institution.
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Be subject, for the Lord's sake, to every human institution.
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he says whether it be the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who
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do evil and praise those who do good there's the distinction and definition of government
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what are rulers to do to punish evil and praise what is good
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peter goes on and says for this is the will of god
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that by doing good, you should put silence to the ignorance of foolish people.
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In this passage, the foolish people refer to those who accuse or slander Christians
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because they're, quote, ungovernable, right?
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And that was a big deal in the early church.
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They're not going to do a pinch of incense to the Caesar.
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ultimately submission to god to god-ordained authority not only keeps you from punishment
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physical wrath of god through the state but it also keeps you from a violation of your conscience
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if it has not been seared by your disobedience and it removes all legitimate cause for accusation
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We actually like the state. We don't like a tyrant state.
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You don't want to give them kindling for their fire against you.
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You don't want to give them justification to say, oh, yeah, those Christians, wicked fools they are.
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Now, we want to model order, again, not just to eliminate the fear,
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but because we believe order and authority are good because they come from Christ.
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not only to your own ministry and your own life
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And someone finds out that you're on the phone.
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They have some sort of software that can tell that you were on your phone while you were driving.
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and the news headlines are going to be all about
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the irresponsibility of this Christian man or woman
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This is the kind of stuff that I'm talking about.
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All of us, every single week, are going to struggle with authority.
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Not just for the fear of punishment, but for the sake of conscience and for the reputation of our works before a broken world.
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For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.
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pay to all what is owed to them taxes to whom taxes are owed revenue to whom revenue is owed
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respect to whom respect is owed and honor to whom honor is owed again we're smart bible interpreters
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so we know grammar and this sentence starts with the word for okay for almost always signals
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an explanatory clause, a clause, an explanation of the verse before.
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So Paul is explaining that maintaining order and administering justice against evil
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and upholding good depends on the tax revenue of its citizens.
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If you value these things, it is sustained through taxation.
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Do you like that if you call the police, they show up?
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Just as God-appointed ministers in the church cannot perform their duties,
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Without tithes and offerings, the God-appointed ministers in the state cannot perform their duties without taxation.
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In order to live in a society according to God's design,
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you give to the ministers that have been appointed by God in the church to support that sphere.
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You give through taxation and revenues, parking tickets, building code violations, whatever it may be, to support the revenue of the state.
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And I really want to make the connection for us that when we pay taxes, we are sustaining the work of God in the state.
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If God says that these people are his ministers, that's what we're doing.
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I'm not talking about tyranny. I'm talking about ordinary, normal, governmental life.
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Yes, we should fight for lower taxes that are fair and just and honest.
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Now, we're witnessing actually something, I think, quite incredible in the United States under Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
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They're actually attempting to reduce taxes and are uncovering how the American people have been robbed.
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There's going to be a great blessing that comes out of this.
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What I want you to see is what's happening here.
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to come in and examine the books of the government
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I have no inclination to say that he's a Christian,
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J.D. Vance, who's standing up against woke lies left and right,
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you just go, wow, thank you, Lord, for giving us good rulers.
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especially in comparison to previous administrations.
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Now, the application of this verse is not that it's just illegal to evade taxes.
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We do not have to pay the maximum amount of taxes possible.
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If the government allows you a tax break, you're free to take it.
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If there is a legal way that you can shelter some of your money from being taxed,
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Illegal and or dishonest methods of evading taxes, however, must be rejected.
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Yeah, take advantage of the tax laws if you can.
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Again, yes, there are arguments for tyranny against taxation.
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and at some point there would be valid reasons to not pay certain taxes
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however i believe because of this administration this generation is going to be spared from that
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very difficult and very tumultuous trial of carrying out righteous rebellion against taxation
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that would not be something you'd want to do a lot of people go to jail
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so in the same way that government in and of itself is not wicked
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taxes in and of themselves are not wicked in fact they're good and godly
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furthermore this whole teaching is not paul's doctrine but paul's teaching on christ's doctrine
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just we don't talk about the roughness of Christ
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He says, show me the coin used for the poll tax. They brought it to him.
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It was a denarius. And he said to them, whose likeness in
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his scriptures is this? And they said, well, it's Caesar's. And he said to them,
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then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God
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So you could do a whole book on this, but I'm just going to give a paragraph.
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Jesus affirms that a person can remain a faithful Christian while submitting to civil authorities.
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For a Jew and early Christians, first century, this was a legitimate concern, by the way.
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they often viewed the state and religion as kind of an all-in, one-thing, all-or-nothing reality.
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They really struggled with the idea of having state is good and religion is good and they can be separate.
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Especially to a Jew who felt like they ought to be a theocracy and Roman rule upon them was certainly not God's will,
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even though it clearly, according to the Scriptures, was God's will.
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And so, what this means is that you can actually pay taxes
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and not feel like you're violating your Christian faith.
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You can actually pay taxes and fund that thing that you don't actually fully agree with,
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because who's on your money well it's the presidents of the united states
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so we're going to pay those taxes to those things that we are beneficiaries of
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as we walk down these streets and live under their care
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now i explained in my sermon of theology of authority as we saw in romans 13 that all
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authority is established by God. All authority. Your
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the presidents of the United States, the Senate,
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the Congress, they are authorities established by God.
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and this means that we can submit to governing authorities within biblical limits
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even if the state or whatever ruler or authority you're under does not acknowledge the worship of
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christ but are not making you do things that are unbiblical so you can submit as a wife
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the right thing according to scripture would say well this there's no sin in moving
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and you are to submit to your husband who is a god-ordained authority in your life
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and you ought to follow him there the same i would say to children in situations that
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are difficult the same i would say to employees at employers hey you have a job here and we've
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decided to relocate you to another place, to another department.
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I know you might not like that, and this man might not be
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a believer. You are to submit to that reality, because it is an authority
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There are things the government's going to do that are not sinful that we don't like.
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matter. People don't simply hate authority and taxes. They often hate the people who
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enforce authority and collect taxes. For a long time, people have been afraid to become
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police officers. I mean, it's been about three years now, but ever since about 2020, being
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a police officer was not a desirable position. It used to be. It used to be a very honorable
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career path in the eyes of American citizens. But we have hated those who enforce authority.
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The IRS, as broken as it may be, I can't tell you the many jokes that I've heard about IRS agents.
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we don't like people who enforce authority or who collect taxes
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but in this verse paul tells christians not only to submit to authority and pay taxes but also to
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respect and honor those people who are in authority and collect taxes he says pay to
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paid to all what is owed to them taxes to whom taxes are owed revenue to whom revenue is owed
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So this passage is grammatically, it's in the imperative.
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It's something that God will hold you accountable for.
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It's just another one of those things that God says,
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The words pay to are the same Greek words that Jesus uses in his passage
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where he says, render to Caesar what is Caesar.
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And he starts with taxes, but he moves on to revenue
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Now, in terms of respect, he's speaking of reverence.
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They have power over you to punish you by God's sovereign design.
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We are to have reverence for those in authority.
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Proverbs 24, 21 says, my son, fear the Lord and the king.
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don't join with those who don't fear the lord and who don't fear the king
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don't be a part of that christians are not to be reckless revolutionaries who
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openly disrespect those who are above them in power
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you are to be an ordered people a respectful people an honorable people
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it's very easy to get caught up in the world's way to treat people the way the world does
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government your workplace our primary efforts are to be what repentance prayer evangelism
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discipleship that is reverent that's our primary objective now after all of those things have been
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done after you have exhausted repentance and prayer and evangelism and discipleship that is
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reverent yeah then comes righteous rebellion but outside of all of those efforts being exhausted
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that is exactly we talked about this in the first sermon that i gave what was the revolutionary war
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1776 do you know what they did they followed that process
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they petitioned the king over and over and over again
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it was a constant constant state of the churches in the colonies of repentance of prayer to avoid
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when your parents may feel like you're a tyrant
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We talked about this concept of the inaugural speech for President Trump and how they would say the Honorable Mike Johnson or the Honorable George W. Bush and how we need to get back to a culture that recognizes honor.
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I actually saw just a couple days ago this, in a social media post, it said the Honorable Pete Hegseth, who's now the Secretary of Defense.
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I don't know if that was a thing under previous administrations.
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It literally said the H-O-N dot Pete Hegseth.
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And I thought, what a wonderful restoration of order.
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I don't think I ever saw that under the Biden administration.
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Someone under this administration that says, hey, whenever we write something, make sure you put honorable in front of it.
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And so when speaking of rulers and authority of those who are in authority above us, their value doesn't come from their person.
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Anybody that's been in the military understands you salute the position, not the person.
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You can salute the rank, not the officer or the actual man.
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It's honor regardless of the particular individual that's there.
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Because they've been put into a place of authority.
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And for this reason, we should be careful to reduce the estimation of those who are in authority.
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We need to be careful about reducing the estimation of honor for those who are in authority above us.
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It doesn't mean that we can't call out injustice or evil.
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But we ought to do that in a way that is careful.
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And we ought to do it in a way that does not insult them.
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and we ought to do it in a way that is just and fair.
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Now again, this I think applies to everybody that holds authority.
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The fifth commandment says, honor your father and mother.
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You value them, even though they may ask you to clean your room, or they may ask you to do chores, or they may ask you to apologize, or to work, or to whatever may happen that you don't want to obey.
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God has placed those particular individuals over you.
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And by God's grace, you have Christian parents.
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with pagan parents who are wicked and mean
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It shows that God wants to give his promises to you.
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It shows that God loves you and has blessed you.
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and it's your duty to submit to your parents and honor them in the same way that it's my duty to
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submit to Christ, or in the same way that it's a husband's duty to love his wife, or in the same
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way that it's a wife's duty to respect her husband, or in the same way it's a servant's
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duty to respect his master. We are all under authority. Kids, pay attention. We are all under
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authority. Every one of us, your mom and your dad, they're under authority. They will answer to God
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in the same way that you will. So when you fall in line to your parents, God expects your parents
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to fall in line with him. It is a good thing to have an ordered home. I promise you, you do not
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want a chaotic home. You want order in your household and in your city. I'm going to read
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just two things real quick and then we'll close. Justin Martyr, 155 AD. You know, one
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generation really after the apostles have gone. He writes a letter to the emperor and
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his first apology is what it's called. Now, apology is not to say sorry as his apology is to say
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it's a defense. It's another word for an apologetic. It's a defense for Christianity.
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And he says, quote, everywhere, we, more readily than all men, check that out, more readily than
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all men, we as Christians, more than the pagans, endeavor to pay to those appointed by you the
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taxes, both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Jesus. We worship only God,
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but in civil matters we will gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men,
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and praying that you, with your kingly power, may be found to possess all sound judgment."
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That's how Christians ought to speak of rulers. We ought to treat rulers and authority better
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than the Muslims, and better than the Mormons, and better than the Hindus, and better than the
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pagans. Tertullian, 197 AD, 50 years later, writes to the governor of Carthage, quote,
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we offer prayer for the safety of our princes to the eternal, the true, and the living God,
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whose favor beyond all other things they must themselves desire. Without seizing for all of
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our emperors, we offer them prayer. We pray for life
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protection for the imperial house, for brave armies, a
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faithful senate, a virtuous people, and the world at peace.
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systematic theology around authority early in the church.
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Hard things to say around the year 200, by the way.
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and work toward the discipleship of the nations
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But we are also to submit to those imperfect reality or rulers and realities, those authorities, those taxes, and giving respect and honor, not merely to avoid the punishment, not merely to have a conscience that's good before man and God, but also that we might look to the world as a great reputation of Christ, who is the beacon of order.
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Father God, we thank you, Lord, that you have given us insight and wisdom to this,
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because this is not something that our flesh would come up with.
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Lord, we trust that your way is better than our way.
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And Father, that we would submit to these realities,
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knowing that they come from your Son, Jesus Christ,
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And Lord, we ask that you would help us to yield, to submit,
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as children, as parents, as rulers, as masters, as servants, as wives, as husbands, as employers.
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Lord, that we would all fall into a righteous authority,
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all proclaiming the goodness of grace and mercy of your son's gospel.
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We ask that you would teach us more about order,
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that we might bring it into our city and into our towns and into our people,
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that we can restore order to these United States.