Let me read two different passages of scripture. First is the wonderful first psalm. Psalm 1, this is God's word. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. And then in the New Testament, our passage that we're going to be looking at, I'll read a longer section from verse 13 down to verse 25. of 1 Peter chapter 2. 1 Peter chapter 2, beginning at verse 13 in chapter 2. This is God's Word. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, Honor the emperor. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you've been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you've been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. And if you've got your Bibles still open to 1 Peter chapter 2, that's where we're going to be working in verses 3 to 17. Let's pray that God will help us as we do this. Father in heaven, please give me grace and strength for this task. It is a serious thing, Lord, to look at your Word and to let your Word cut between joints and marrow. It's a serious thing, Father, for me to rightly, rightly divide the Word of God and for us to carefully listen and think through what your Word says. Please help us for we are weak and we need strength. We are sometimes weary and we need refreshment and your Word gives us that refreshment. We pray, Father, that you will bless this time now. Guide my words. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I usually, and those who know me know this, I usually have something where I talk to the young people and have a little something that they can get hold of, hopefully, and take with them. Now, I have four kids. My oldest two weren't born in America. They were both born in South Korea. And they became citizens of this country, and they were both very, very young when they left Korea. They don't remember anything about Korea. And America is the only country they've ever known. They've grown up and they've always thought of themselves as Americans as they should. Now, if you're growing up in a family that's Christian, where your parents are believers, you may have a time where you say, I haven't known anything else but believing in Jesus. That may be how your parents have taught you as you've grown up. I hope there's never a time when you don't think about that fact. But following Jesus means that you have to think sometimes about God's priorities and about the things that God wants you to do in your life and to live for Jesus as you grow up and have God as your Heavenly Father. So I want you to listen, if you can, and maybe talk to your mom and dad, if you want, and I encourage you to do that, about all these things that we're going to be talking about. Now we're in the midst of looking at the first letter of Peter. And Peter, as he's writing these things, is writing in a particular time. The things may be easy for us to read, but very hard for us to live out. But because they're the word of God, we have to believe these things and try to obey what God says. Now, let me tell you what I mean about 25 years ago, and Bob and Valerie may remember this, Vermont was on the edge, the verge of voting to have civil unions. This was what gay marriage was called back then. And though it's happening all over the place, back those years ago, it was a very a very hotly disputed thing. We had hearings at our state house in Montpelier and hundreds of Christians lined up to speak. We were only given three minutes to speak and the sentiment of all those people was overwhelmingly this is a bad idea because God opposes it. And that strong opposition to civil unions didn't sway the legislature and it passed a law anyway. And so now the law of the land is that homosexuals may be married. Peter says in verse 13, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution. Be subject. It's a command. It's the word hupotaso, which is a military term to line up in order. So you line up in order. How do you do that when the government or the institution or your husband or your parents are saying things that you don't agree with? Now, Peter is living in a time when his government was a man in Rome named Nero, the emperor king. Nero, if you don't know about him, was infamous for his cruelty and his perversity. And Peter would experience that when he was himself crucified, according to Christian history. Christians were a distinct minority. They were scorned and hated by many people in their cultures, in different places of the Roman Empire. To be a Christian was to be one inviting suffering. And to be a Christian was to be out of step with your culture. So we're going to be thinking about this, this morning and this evening. Now, a key to understanding what Peter is talking about is found back in chapter one, in verse one. He says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles, elect exiles. or they're exiles of the dispersion. They're Christians who were sent like seeds in different directions. Now, as you think about what it means to be a Christian in America in 2024, if you want to really think about it, you should read the prophets. like Jeremiah and Daniel and Ezekiel. Men who were prophesying in a time when the culture was cracking, falling apart. Christians have to be thinking about being exiles. We're exiles because our home is heaven. Peter says that we have to be thinking about being exiles and aliens and strangers, those not living in the house, because our home is really heaven. Paul, when he writes about this in Philippians 3.20, says our citizenship is in heaven. That's where our real citizenship is. Yes, we're citizens of a country in this world, but we're really citizens of heaven. And how do we keep this balance? Keep thinking about heaven on the one hand and thinking about how we live in this world, because we still have to vote. Citizens have to vote. Citizens have to participate in the political rough and tumble, you might say, of the world. We can't, on the one hand, give into the illusion that somehow politics is going to be our savior. We can't think about that. But we can also withdraw and live in hermitages in convents and away from the rough and tumble of this life. So we have to think about these things. Now, we could turn back to Christian history. And one of the things that I love that Martin Luther said, and he wrote this to the pope He said, a Christian man is the most free, Lord of all and subject to none. Christian man is most free, the most free, Lord of all and subject to none. And then he said, a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to everyone. How can he mean both things? Well, that's what Peter is talking about here. The child of God is heir to all the world in Jesus Christ. We're bound by the love of our Heavenly Father. And we're free, free from the condemnation of the law, from sin's mastery. We're free from death itself because we have eternal life. The Christian is accepted before God in Jesus Christ as his own dear child. And nothing that anybody does can take that away. Not what the state says, not any terrorist, nothing can take the Christian's freedom before God away. Now, when my children gave up their Korean citizenship, when they were adopted by Joanie and me, they had to start living out their American citizenship every single day, and they've done that. The child of God living as an exile from heaven in this world has to live out his or her heavenly citizenship here every day. So let's look at verses 13 to 17 and we'll look at under these headings. Righteous responsibility, right reasons, and then thirdly, rules for right relationships. Righteous responsibility, right reasons, rules for right relationships. Look at verse 13. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be the emperor supreme or the governors as sent by him and so forth. That first word, be subject, is, as I said, a command. It's an order from Jesus Christ. You submit. You be subject. The basic rule will govern the whole section when we talk about submission. Now, it doesn't sound very good, does it? Because this is what Islam is about. Islam is about submission. But Jesus means something different. Christians all over the world are faced with the question of forced submission by the state. It could be in North Korea, where there is a virtual idolatry of the great leader. Or it could be in China, where churches are being destroyed by the Chinese government. Or it could be the mounting pressure that you experience, whether you're young or old, to affirm homosexuality and transgenderism. Or you'll be considered hateful, intolerant, and bad. A hater. Why would Jesus tell his people to submit in light of the wickedness of this world? Again, we can only understand if we remember what Peter has already said. It's what Luther said to the Pope, Pope Leo X. When he was defending justification, he said a Christian man is the most free person, most free person. He's free because God is the ruler of all. Of all the rulers of North Korea and China, all the murderous jihadists of all the state legislatures of everybody. God is the ruler of all. No matter how vocal wickedness may be, God's word is final. God is Lord of all. And what God says to his children is this, you are mine. You're my possession. You're a race chosen by me, a nation of priests, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. I chose you out of all the peoples of the earth, not because of your goodness or wisdom or power or position. I chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong things. I chose the unimportant people of this world to shame the self-important ones. I have sent my only begotten Son to live among sinners and redeem them by dying for them, bearing their judgment, living righteously for them, so that I might accept and love them and bless them. And you are a co-heir with my Son, Jesus Christ, by faith in Him. And I do not condemn you, but I take you to myself to be with me in heaven forever. Therefore, no one but me is your master. God alone is the Lord of the conscience. This is the foundation of Christ's command in verse 13. Christians have the freedom to submit, to live in subjection, because we first of all are under the true Lord, Jesus Christ. And He rules over all those who claim authority over us. He is Lord of all. No matter who they are, no one has a greater claim on our lives and loyalty than our Savior. Peter made this clear when he and the other apostles spoke to the Sanhedrin in Acts chapter 5 verse 29. The Jewish leaders had commanded the apostles not to preach in Jesus' name, but the apostles replied, we must obey God rather than men. That's because God is the Lord of all. And when we are Christians, we are free citizens of heaven, approved by God as righteous in Christ. Because Jesus is our Lord, we follow Him. He is Lord of all, and He was here on earth and lived a life of submission. He was submissive, first of all, to His Heavenly Father in coming, even though it meant the cross. He was submissive as he was growing up to Mary and Joseph, even though they were imperfect parents. He was submissive as a sheep before its shearers when he was taken away in judgment, even though the trial was rigged and he was betrayed. Christ, though he could have commanded 12 legions of angels to fight against men, submitted himself to man's wicked judgments because he was fulfilling all righteousness and dying as a substitute for us. This is the path that Jesus went. We take up our cross daily, even the cross of submission, to follow Christ before there is glory. The problem is we don't like it. We don't like it. So we have to look further. He says, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution or to all human institutions. Sometimes the smallest words are the hardest ones to swallow. And here it's that word, every or all. Why doesn't Peter qualify it by saying the way we would like it? all righteous, all God-fearing human institutions, all legitimate human institutions. Peter writes all. And for the believers in that day, it meant Nero. These are creatures, human beings. And the word institutions is a difficult word to translate. It seems that God is talking about human society in some way. In human society, there are servants and masters. There are employers and employees. There are citizens and rulers. In marriage, there's the headship of the husband. There's order and structure that God himself has put in place. He's called his people to live under every form of government, democracy, tyranny, dictatorship, even under a Nero. What he opposes is anarchy, no government. That was John Calvin's opinion. And though in Geneva, he had great freedom. Calvin was also prepared to live under governments hostile to the gospel, like his own home country of France. So What are the reasons that God gives us? Let's look now at the reasons in verses 13 to 16. Whether it be to the emperor supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good, for this is the will of God that by doing good, you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Now, Paul has a parallel phrase, which he uses in Romans 13. He 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. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. Now, it seems crazy to us that Peter and Paul, living in the arbitrary cruelty of Nero, would write these things. Why didn't God make allowances when rulers are evil? Well, Jesus said, we pay taxes to Caesar, though everything is actually God's. He told Pilate, the cowardly Roman governor, that Pilate would have no authority over him unless it had been given from God. Submission to authority is not unlimited, of course. An employee cannot agree to his boss's command to cook the books and lie about it. A wife cannot agreed to join her husband in robbing a bank. A minister cannot agree with the government being forced to perform a marriage of two homosexuals. It's because a Christian is conquered by King Jesus that he or she must obey God rather than men when it's a question of obeying ungodly commands. Jesus Christ did not stop doing miracles that showed he was the Messiah, though the Jewish leaders pressured him to do so with the threat of death. What the scriptures teach is that our first inclination should be to submit because we are free from the fear of men when we live, when we fear displeasing our Heavenly Father. That's why Peter in verse 13 says, for the Lord's sake, submit for the Lord's sake. You remember what Jesus said back in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. Jesus said, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." This is the will of God that by doing good, Peter writes, you should silence the ignorance of foolish people. When Christians are attacked, let us be attacked or persecuted for obeying God, for seeking to please Him. That's what Jesus is talking about. Peter writes something that we should make speechless or muzzle the mouths of others by doing good. The very aim that Peter has already mentioned in verse 12. Look back at verse 12. He says, Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. This is how tongues wag when Christians flaunt the law, whether it's tax laws or their sexual misconduct or plagiarism. Peter characterizes those who oppose Christianity as foolish, ignorant, people who will not themselves submit to God. But we're to display what it means to live for the kingdom of God in a world that rejects His rule, that God might be glorified on the day of visitation. The day when Jesus Christ returns, you see that Peter is saying that we live for something beyond our personal comfort, and that's hard. We live for something beyond our personal comfort in this world because oftentimes our desire for our personal comfort keeps us from facing trial. We're receiving a kingdom that cannot be destroyed either by those in our own country who think the state supreme or by wicked rulers elsewhere. God has instituted government to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. That's what Paul wrote in Romans 13. And Peter says that in verse 14. It oftentimes seems that this is crazy. This isn't actually how it works in Nazi Germany. They praise those who murdered the Jews. and punish those who oppose that. But remember that the apostles wrote that that persecution of Christians as it was beginning to intensify at an end point. The scripture set out a general rule. The general rule for God's and of God's intention is for governments to punish or reward good or evil behavior. But governments violate that and Christians suffer. The three men in Daniel chapter 3 and Daniel himself in Daniel 6 had done nothing evil, yet they were all punished for pleasing God. But God remembers, governments that punished his servants were destroyed. God used Assyria and Babylon to chasten his people Israel, but later God judged both those nations and destroyed them. Nazi Germany received payment for its wickedness and so will those wicked rulers today. We should fear and pray for what our own nation may experience of God's just wrath. The sinfulness of man's use and abuse of authority or government does not remove the call to submit as we are able in obedience to God. for this pleases him and will in the end bring him glory. Now, briefly, we have to look at verse 17 because it has some actual examples of this. So look at verse 17 and rules for right relationships. There are four imperatives in verse 17. Honor, Everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the emperor. Honor everyone, and that is a broad term. Honor everyone. This is against the background of a society where you didn't have to honor or respect someone if they were from a different or lower social station than you. Like a servant, one of the jobs that I had one time was as a security guard at a multi-millionaire's home. He had an indoor swimming pool and I had a key. I had a box that I had to key in on an hourly basis in the pool area. Well, one day there was a pool party by his kids, the owner's kids. Now I was a married man at that time. I already had some kids. And then I went in there and those young people just made fun of me. Now, how often do we do the same thing for those who wait on us, serve us, are poorer than us? How often have we failed to give honor to people because they are image bearers of God and yet they seem lower than we are? How often have we failed to treat people with respect, the respect that they deserve because they are image bearers. Think of the amazing words of the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ, who is not ashamed to call us brethren in spite of our sins and failures. So we're to honor everyone. We're to love the brotherhood and the brotherhood occurs only here and in chapter five, verse nine. But you may know that the root meaning of brother is those from the same womb. So we're talking about those who are born again by the Spirit of God. Peter exhorts us to brotherly love again and again in his short letter. At least four times he uses that. It's a new commandment that Jesus gave in John 13, that we're to love one another. Chapter 26 of the Westminster Confession describes it as the communion of the saints. This can be one of the biggest challenges for us, to love those that were bound to us by our common faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but whom we would not choose, if we had the choice, to be around or to have as friends. But we are to love one another because we share one Lord, one faith, one baptism, And we're still under the heading of verse 13 of submitting to one another, not seeking our own rights, but like the best place at the table, so to speak, but caring for one another. Then we're to fear God. Remember, these are imperatives, or these are commands. Although God is our Heavenly Father, reverence and awe, fear or do Him. If you read through scripture, you'll find at least 140 different times when people are told to fear God. Moses and Jacob are men who feared God. Malachi is a man who feared God. Abraham is a man who feared God. It seems it wouldn't take any thought to recognize that we should hold reverential awe the One who holds our lives in His hand, who created all things. God is vast in His knowledge and His power, vast in His wisdom and His holiness. But for the believer, He is our Heavenly Father that we should fear, the Father who sent His Son to redeem us from our sins. What makes us fear is not the craven fear of those who think that we're going to be punished for doing something wrong, but instead that reverence for a father whose strong love paid such a price to save us. And the final thing may be the hardest thing of all in verse 17, honor the emperor. Remember, this is Nero. Jesus told us to fear the one who can send body and soul into hell. And fearing God, we don't fear the king in that way. even if the king seems to hold absolute power. Peter doesn't repeat the command to be subject, but rather to honor the king. It's the same command as his first command to honor all. How can a tyrant, a cruel and perverted ruler like Nero be honored? Hasn't he forfeited the right to be honored? It's because rulers that we have are the ones that God has put in place. No authority exists outside of God's control. Sometimes we get the leaders we deserve because of our disobedience. So we have to come and we have to begin to see what it means to honor those above us. How hard is this for Christians in Nigeria We're being slaughtered by ungodly men. How hard is this for us in our chaotic and morally and economically crazy world to keep these words? Well, the only thing we can do is look to what he says. Look at verse 16. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. We are free, but we can't use our freedom as a cover-up for evil. We have to live instead as God's servants. That's what Luther was writing about and challenging the Pope to think about. If you've not come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, now is the time to seek Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Because apart from Christ, you are a slave. You are a slave of a master, Satan, who intends to destroy you, and you must flee to Christ for liberty. But if you belong to the Savior, you are set free from the law of sin and death so you can submit honor and fear because your salvation is secured and grounded in the Son of God. One of the great ironies of Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. is that all the efforts of Huck and runaway slave Jim to get Jim to free territory in Illinois were needless. Jim had already been freed by Miss Watson and wasn't a slave anymore. We can fearfully live in this world and begrudgingly honor those and give unwilling submission because we forget that Jesus Christ has freed us from the curse of the law that condemns us and his blood brings us acceptance with God so we can live as free people, remembering that we're subject, first of all, to God. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we pray that you'll help us to live as your children in this world, remembering who we are, first of all, and what you have done for us, and submitting to you as our great king and lord. And then help us to see what it means to live as free people in this world, without fear of any man, but remembering that we are yours, first of all. Please help us, because you know that we ourselves are weak in ourselves, and stumble oftentimes. We pray, Father, for our country because our country is so divided and chaotic right now. We pray that you'll bring about that peace which passes the understanding of man to honor yourself. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.