Take your Bibles and turn to the 13th chapter of Romans. Okay, now, you know, just to preface some of this is, you know, I said that this whole series began with a desire to find out the role of the civil magistrate and the civil government, kind of refresh myself as I'm arguing or dialoguing with my socialist friends and my anarchist libertarian friends. and kind of just kind of have settled in my mind what God's mind is concerning civil government. And so in order to study that, you know, you got to study Romans 13, right? That's kind of the major proof text for a biblical worldview on civil government. But then having to study Romans 12 in order to understand Romans 13, and then having to understand the prophetic utterances of the Latter-day Prophets. Thus we studied the 17th chapter of Jeremiah. But I want you to know that the heart of what God was teaching me was really not the civil government at all. But what I came to understand is we have, as believers, a social responsibility to one another, fueled by our union with Christ, that has to be expressed. If there is no expression, biblical expression, of spirit-wrought social behavior amongst ourselves, and the watching world. And that is also the same theme is continued into the 13th chapter of humility and reverence and honor and respect. We are not going to be on the vanguard of those who accomplish the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Understanding that view of the gospel is not just dying and going to heaven when you die. The gospel is more than that. The gospel is having that right relationship, but then from that right relationship that we have in him affecting, penetrating, being salt and light, transforming the culture that surrounds us. And the way I believe, at least this is what Romans 12 and 13 are teaching us, begins with our hard attitudes and our humble responses to authority. We clear where we're going with it? So take your Bibles and turn to the 13th chapter of Romans. Here, please, the word of God. Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God. and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves." For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority. Do what is good and you will have the praise from the same for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil be afraid for it does not bear the sword for nothing for it is a minister of God an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Therefore, it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience sake. For because of this, you also pay taxes. For rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them. Tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Let us pray. Good father, we thank thee for these wonderful words of instruction for us regarding authority and particularly the civil magistrate. We ask father now that you would affect, transform our understanding and give us the fear of he who from whence cometh all authority in heaven and on earth, which is none other than our King Jesus in whose name we pray. Amen. So we're talking now about social behavior of Christians towards authority. So today's message is going to be simple and direct. Having laid the foundation for chapter 13 from chapter 12 in Romans, the social behavior of the believer is critical to the accomplishing of the redemptive purposes of God. Redemption is more than going to heaven. You die. Look here. I've already written this down. We are privileged to be a part of his redemptive plan for creation and the present and eternal redemption of humanity. It is the answer to the second petition of the Lord's Prayer. Thy kingdom come. All redemption begins with a Godward society from the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit that fuels and regulates our social relationships with one another. Within the church, we are individually gifted with a measure of faith to be self-consciously exercised through spiritual gifts for the building up and the maturing of the body of Christ. In regards to our social behavior with all men, we are called to foster five self-deprecating attitudes. Like it or not, five self-deprecating attitudes. Authentic love, considering others is more important than ourselves. Humility, enthusiasm, empathy, and respect. These Christ-like attitudes manifest themselves in Christ-like blessing of the nations, particularly overcoming evil with good towards our enemies and our persecutors. This is the method of restoration. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. These attitudes and the objective of blessing provide the background, the underpinning for the 13th chapter of Romans. Like inside and outside the church, our social behavior with regards to civil authority will overcome evil With good. We begin with verse one. A recognition of God's sovereign authority. Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God. Paul begins by reminding the Romans and us of the obvious. God, the creator and sustainer of creation, is sovereign and possesses all authority and power. The humiliation of Christ earned him his exaltation and the transfer of authority to Christ the mediator, Christ the King. For he reminds, he tells us, all authority has been given me in heaven and on earth. Go and therefore make disciples of all the nations. This is the fulfillment of the prophetic hope of the old covenant. This is the Christmas story. For a child will be born to you, a son will be given, and the government will rest on his shoulders. And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, and there will be no end to the increase of his government. or of peace on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness. From then on and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts, the zeal, the enthusiasm of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. And you see the confident expectation that Isaiah had one day God is going to establish his kingdom on earth thy kingdom come if you are a person and you all are God has ordained that if there exists governing authorities God has ordained that. You and the governing authorities existence is the fruit of God's decretive will. And that decretive will is good and acceptable and perfect as we learned from Romans 12. and is acceptable regardless of your or your authority's moral character. You thinking with me now? Whether you are a good person or a bad person, whether the civil government is a good authority or a bad authority, it is good and acceptable to God. This is how things are. He has ordained good people and bad people. He has ordained good authority and bad authority. It is what it is because it is established by God. For God hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass through creation and providence. You don't like to hear that, do you? I see the looks on your face. God would ordain evil authority? There just sounds something wrong with that. But it is the case, and it is a continuation of the thought of Romans 12 right into Romans 13. All authority is derived and limited for man. He goes on to say, therefore who resists or opposes authority has opposed the ordinance or the institution of God. The decretive will of God is opposed when you resist authority. And they who have opposed it will receive condemnation upon themselves. I think the interpretive grid that I'm using here is that condemnation comes from the authority itself. You oppose the authority, there's going to be consequences when you oppose authority. God has instituted and limited authority among men in specific spheres of sovereignty. He has instituted the family, the church, the civil authority for his own glory and the public good. Excuse me. No, that's what I said. I'm sorry, I'm lost. God has instituted and limited authority among men in specific spheres. He has instituted the family, the church, and civil authority for his own glory and the public good. That is what our confession of faith says in chapter 23. But he has done so because men are sinful. And some will not govern themselves under the prescriptive will of God without coercion. This derived authority was recognized by Jesus before an evil, coercive, civil ruler, Pontius Pilate. And Pilate entered into the Praetorium again and said to Jesus, where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, you do not speak to me. Do you know that I have authority release you and I have authority to crucify you. Jesus answered, you would have no authority over me unless it had been given you from above. For this reason, he meaning Caiaphas who delivered me to you has the greater sin. Jesus having been unjustly slapped in the face repeatedly and righteously indignant towards Pilate's abuse of authority obeys God's higher authority and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers so he did not open his mouth. He also was unafraid to speak truth to power without fear while still being in subjection to that power. Because authority is derived from above, the abuse of that authority for self-serving ends constitutes sin on the part of the magistrate. In this case, Caiaphas and Pilate. Jesus speaks to this sin of abuse of authority, but Paul in our text does not, in Romans 13, speak to the abuse of power. Only that if you oppose this institution of God's decretive will, there will be judgment from the magistrate. Magistrates will assert and protect their authority. Our commanded submission to governing authorities is not setting forth the idea that our submission to them is morally right because they demand it. As though whatever they command, because they command it, it in of itself is the right thing for us to do. Our submission like Jesus's submission is morally right because it is in keeping with God's precepts of attitude and action presented in Romans 12 for the advancement of God's redemptive purposes. Jesus submitted to Pilate for the advancement of God's redemptive purposes. We can all appreciate that and understand that. We maintain and nurture love, humility, enthusiasm, empathy, and respect. We strive to be a blessing to the nations in every human relationship. We have no king but Jesus, and we are children of that king. We always obey God. rather than man, not just when lawful authority tells us to do something that is morally repugnant. We always obey God rather than man. We always keep before us the consummation of his kingdom before our eyes. Lest we have forgotten the larger catechism 191, what do we pray for in the second commandment, thy kingdom come? In the second commandment, which is thy kingdom come, acknowledging ourselves and all mankind to be by nature under the dominion of sin and Satan, we pray that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed the gospel propagated throughout the world, the Jews called, the fullness of the Gentiles brought in, the church furnished with all gospel officers and ordinances, purged from corruption, countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate, that the ordinance of Christ may be purely dispensed and made effectual to the converting of those who are yet in their sins and conform and the confirming comforting and building up of those who are already converted that Christ would rule in our hearts here and hasten the time of his second coming and are reigning with him forever. that he would be pleased so to exercise the kingdom of his power in all the world as may best conduce to those ends. You see the function of our submission to civil authority and praying for his kingdom to be established on this earth is for the expansion of his glorious kingdom on this earth so that Jesus will be acknowledged. for what he is, the king of heaven and earth. I think it wise at this point to distinguish between authority, government, and the state. Authority, government, and the state. Authority simply put is power. Power to choose, to decide, to influence and control behavior. Authority finds its expression in government, in the administration of authority, in the administration of power. You know, it is improper to speak of government as exclusively civil government the way we do all the time when we talk about the government. God has instituted many governments, self-government, family government, ecclesiastical government, contractual and covenantal government, and civil government as well. But it is civil government that is at issue here in chapter 13. God's institution of civil government as with all government is for his glory and his people's good. This is his perspective. This is his prescriptive will concerning civil government. God would have never conceived of civil power in any modern democratic Republican form of nation state. that would not have entered into this Jewish rabbi of the first century's mind. His was a world of the Sanhedrin, of kings, of imperial governors and emperors with their Praetorian guards. Paul in verse three shifts from a discussion on the decretive will of God to his prescriptive will. This is not how things are, this is how things should be, beginning in verse three. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same. "'for it is a minister of God to you for good. "'But if you do what is evil, be afraid, "'for it does not bear the sword for nothing, "'for it is a minister of God, an avenger, "'who brings wrath to the one who practices evil. "'Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, "'not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. "'Though this is how things should be, God's prescriptive will for authority is rarely exercised according to his prescription. And this is because what is good and what is evil is subject to human interpretation. God determines what is good, true, and beautiful by the word of his mouth. Earthbound men seek to determine for themselves what is good, true, and beautiful in order to serve their own ends. If history teaches us anything, it is that the arc of authority is bent towards self-promotion. Individual men are sinful. Man writ large is no less sinful. God's decretive will, however, remains good, acceptable, and perfect because God uses evil self-serving authority, as we see with Jesus, to accomplish his redemptive purposes. Evil authority will be just as susceptible to the judgment of God as evil individuals, even more so because of their public position, according to our confession of faith. This is where I would distinguish then further between government and the state. Civil government exists for the promotion and protection of righteousness and the punishment of lawlessness. The state exists for the coercive promotion of its own self-interest and as such becomes the enemy of God's people. But God has not left us without direction as to our response to the state or our response to illegitimate authority or our response to bad government. We are to submit to his higher power and his redemptive plan. We resist evil with good. We bless and do not curse. We exercise sound spiritual judgment, vertical discernment, with confident hope of the bigger picture. His kingdom will come. Therefore, we are in subjection, like Christ, not simply to man's authority, but ultimately to God's higher power. Think of it as a form of secession. We southerners kind of love the idea of secession anyway, so this shouldn't be a problem. It is a form of secession. We secede from the authority of a civil power and subject ourselves to the authority of God Almighty. Our blessing, our doing right in the sight of all men, frees our person from the coercive wrath of the state and frees our conscience from the fear of the state's wrath. The only wrath we fear is God's wrath for not being a blessing and overcoming evil with good. Jesus gives us a great example of this in regards to the reasons why we pay taxes, which is a subject of verses six and seven in our text. Because of this, you also pay taxes. For rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing, render to all what is due them, tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Our bond slavery to Christ is true freedom. Our bond slavery to Christ is true freedom. Our obedient subjection to human authority is also freedom. Because of this, he says, subjection that leads to freedom of your person and conscience from the wrath of the state, because of this, you pay taxes. Jesus exemplified this. When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the two drachma tax came to Peter and says, does your teacher not pay the two drachma tax? And he said, yeah. When he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first saying, what do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth collect customs and poll tax? From their sons or from strangers? And Peter says, well, from strangers. Jesus said to him, then the sons are exempt. However, so that you do not offend them, go to the sea and throw in a hook and take the first fish that comes up and when you have opened its mouth, you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for you and me. Now when you read this the first time, Did you get the impression at all that Jesus was thrilled with an opportunity to pay the civil magistrate taxes? Was that what you heard in this text? I hear frankly a little disappointment with Peter's eagerness to pay tribute to this tax. I think it is also interesting that one shackle is equal to 3.36 drachmas. About 84% of what the two drachma tax demanded. Now, I'm not suggesting that Jesus cheated on his taxes. I'm suggesting that Jesus gave enough to sate the magistrate, to get him off his back. Both the words in the Old Testament, which translate gift, ransom, or bribe, are used to show submission of an inferior to a superior. In an examination of Old Testament passages that mention gift or bribe, two principles clearly emerge. The first, the Bible always condemns an authority for taking a bribe. Those in authority who are deciding people's future are to be the embodiment of impartial justice, truly ministers of God. And secondly, The Bible never condemns the giving of a gift or a bribe. In fact, the opposite is true. Proverbs clearly states that if we need to meet with a great man, we should remember to bring a gift. It also states that if we need to pacify an angry official, we might want to try giving him a gift in private. Proverbs 21, 14, a gift in secret subdues anger, and a bribe in the bosom strong wrath. This is a difficult concept for Westerners to understand. In many settings worldwide, gifts and bribes are not simply a way around the law. They also can be a culturally based incentive for officials to do their prescribed jobs, to be the ministers of God they're supposed to be. If an official is delaying action or is misrepresenting or misinterpreting the law, it would not be unbiblical to offer a gift. It may violate our Western cultural assumptions or even our personal scruples and convictions, but we may not say that it contradicts scripture. Scripture is clear that God's people who are in positions of power and leadership must uphold impartial justice. But increasingly, God's people do not have godly rulers. We suffer under unjust decision makers, blaspheming tyrants, and lazy clerks. And as such situations, God's compassion and wisdom are found in his not forbidding a godly bribe. This is how I view my income taxes. In fact, all the taxes. I think entirely consistent with Romans 13 and Matthew 17. It is a godly bribe to keep the wolf off my person and out of my conscience. So I pay, I tip my hat and I smile so that I can get on doing the work of the gospel as God has defined it and not as the state has defined it. Well what does this say about our own political involvement involvement. Well Romans 12 speaks around that as God has called and gifted you that's what you're supposed to practice. Never but for the church at large we should never seek political power to accomplish God's redemptive purposes it will corrupt. Remember, Jesus is already the King. So we must secede to free your person from wrath and conscience from fear. Instead, we bless and do not curse. Instead, we do good in the eyes of all men. We are polite. We pursue authentic love, humility, enthusiasm in the gospel, empathy for one another, and respect. You know, Paul continues his letter with a discussion of love. Oh, no one anything except to love each other for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. And in verse 10, love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Never forget that the vertical fuels and transforms and regulates our horizontal relationships. Consider then that we love God vertically because he first loved us. We also love our neighbor because he first loved us unconditionally. This love is beautifully described by a 17th century Christian poet George Herbert who wrote three poems about love but the most famous one is entitled Love Three. Listen carefully. Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, guilty as dust and sin. But quick-eyed love, observing me grow slack from my first entrance in, drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning if I lacked anything. A guest, I answered, worthy to be here? Love said, you shall be he. I, the unkind, the ungrateful? Ah, dear Lord, I cannot look on thee. Love took my hand and smilingly did reply, who made the eyes but I? Truth, Lord, but I have marred them. Let my shame go where it doth deserve. And know you not, says love, who bore the shame? My dear, then I will serve. You must sit down, says love, and taste my meat. So I did sit and eat. Let's pray. Good Father, we thank you for the amazing love that you have bestowed upon us. We thank thee, Father, that your authority's high and lifted up above all others. And we thank thee for the reality that, Father, we can submit to your kingship in our submission to civil authority, not because they're good or right, but because you are good and right. We do pray father that as we submit to your commandment to be submissive to civil authority, to pay our taxes, to render tax to whom tax is due, honor to whom honor. We do pray, Father, that by our congenial, respectable, loving, humble response, that your grace might be noticed. and your love observed. Help us, Father, to be your people in the earth until your kingdom comes. For we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.