Please join me again in the Bible, this time in the book of Romans, at the end of chapter 12. Romans, the end of chapter 12. You can find it on page 948. Page 948. Romans, chapter 12. I'm going to begin the read at verse 19, and read into chapter 13 up to verse 7. So, Romans 12, 19 to 13, 7. Please give your attention. the Word of God. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 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. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid. For he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger, who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason, you also pay taxes for the authorities or ministers of God attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. A couple of years ago, my father was called upon to give a talk at a gathering of people who wanted to consider Reformed theology. So he entitled his talk, Reformed Systematic Theologians, Handmaidens of Secularization. Now, what did that title mean? Well, secularization is a word that refers to forgetting about God, excluding God, conducting life without reference to God. So Reformed systematic theologians, handmaidens of secularization. The word handmaiden in this context is not meant as a compliment. What my father was getting at was this. As you look at people who've written systematic theology from a reform perspective over the last 400 years, you will notice that they write less and less and less about civil government. John Calvin has a very nice full chapter. I read it this week. Excellent chapter on government, what it's for, what it should do, and how we should relate to it. The Westminster Confession of Faith has a chapter on government. why it's there, and what we should do in response. But since then, you have less and less, except for A. A. Hodge. Other than Mr. A. A. Hodge, there's not much that you get as you read Reformed systematic theologies. Now, this is odd, given that our Bible has a whole long book, yes, two books, entitled Kings. Odd that that same material is covered again in the books called Chronicles. Odd, given that the preceding book, called Samuel, is actually about how the prophet Samuel anointed the first two kings. As you sing psalms, you find yourself singing about the king. As you read proverbs, there's proverbs about the king, what he does, what he should do, how you should relate to the king. As you read Judges, you read a sort of prequel describing why Israel needed kings. And you get to Deuteronomy, and you have a whole section there on what the king is not to do. The Bible's got a lot to say about government. We haven't even gotten into the prophets and them telling the government what they were doing wrong. So we will not today say everything there is to say about government, or we would be here well into the night and probably all week. But we have here a classic passage. that addresses us and the civil government. What are some of the other classic passages on civil government? Maybe the most well-known is when Jesus was asked about paying taxes, and he said, give to Caesar, the emperor, the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. But almost as classic is when he's interviewed by the Roman governor, And he says to him, my kingdom is not of this world. And also, you would have no authority over me if it had not been given you from above. So this is an important biblical topic. But before we go any further with it, we want to know, why does the apostle talk about it right here? I mean, he's got this great book going on all that God has done to save us, all that God does to save his people, and how we are to be different as a result. That is the great theme of his book, so why waste a paragraph on government? Well, first of all, he's Jesus' servant. Jesus talked about it, so he better cover it, so he does here. Secondly, he's writing to a church in Rome, which was the capital Nowhere is the government more unavoidable than when you're in the capital. It's an appropriate place to talk about it. But thirdly, he needs to ward off extremism. He had said, do not be conformed to this world, back in chapter 12, verse 2. All right, everybody else is paying taxes. I'm not to be conformed to the world. That means I don't have to pay taxes. Everybody else is obeying the government. That means I'm not going to conform to this world, so I'm not going to obey the government. He wants to ward off this kind of extremism. And this is not a ridiculous supposition. He'd been a pretty radical Jewish believer, and he knew that the more radical Jewish believers thought that maybe the thing to do with the Roman government was to try to assassinate as many of them as possible. They're called the zealots. He knew about that. And so here he knows he has to give us more guidance so that we can discern the will of God. We're not to be conformed to this world, but that doesn't mean that everything in the world is to be rejected. There are some things in the world that we have to honor, some things that are of God's institution. But the reason why he says it right here is because he just told us not to take our own vengeance. that vengeance belongs to God. But does that mean that we have no earthly recourse if we are being robbed and we're not to take our own vengeance? Is there nothing that we can do if we're being raped and killed, if we're not to take our own vengeance? What is there short of direct divine action, which he can do, but does not seem to do in any visible way very often? And so he goes on to say, well, vengeance is carried out in this world. by God's servants, the government. God has provided for this. You're not to do it in your own personal capacity, not to launch into hatred and cycles of revenge. That's what God instituted government for. Now, sometimes I will say civil government to distinguish the people that get elected and go to Washington or Harrisburg or Norristown, to distinguish them from the church government. For there is also a church government, and it also is important, and we live under both. So sometimes I'll say civil government, but to keep it shorter, most of the time I'll just say government this morning, and I will mean the civil government. We can do another sermon some other time on church government. So we're under both of these things. We're going to talk about the regular, you could say, the national government. And John Calvin says, this government is only for outward morality and civil justice. And yet we should see how lovingly God here provides for us. What do you mean lovingly, Mr. Calvin? Have you never heard of governments that kill millions of their own people? What do you mean lovingly? Don't you know about tyrants who just rule at their own whim? What do you mean lovingly? Just because you haven't met the secular regulatory state yet? What do you mean? Both the book of Judges and historical experience and the philosophers who think about such things tell us that anarchy, when there is no government, is almost guaranteed to be worse. So in this way, we can say even a bad government is generally better than no government. We're seeing here that government does not just arise from the ambition of strong people. It does not just arise from human desperation to avoid anarchy. It also arises from the institution of God. And we are obviously to receive this institution of God. Notice that's the point. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. That would mean the federal, the state, and the local. That is to say, we are to honor the president, whether it's this president, the previous president, or the next president. And we are to honor the police officer who pulls us over, even if the Corvette was going faster. We are still to be honorable, measured, respectful to the officer who pulls us over. And as we think about government, this is not a nuisance to be ignored when possible. We're not being called to obey when we might get caught. He says here, be subject. Not obey, but be subject. Recognize there's a hierarchy. and find your place within it. And don't say, I'm as good a man as the governor. I'm as good a man as the president. Perhaps you are. Perhaps you're better. That's not the question. The question is that he has the office, and we are to honor the office. You'll notice here in Romans 13, there is no discussion of something that Americans are fascinated by. There is no discussion of what kind of government it is. He doesn't use the word democracy. They had the word. It's a word older than this book. It comes from Greek. He's writing in Greek. He could have used the word democracy. The word's around. It's already old in Plato. In America, we like to think that the government is only legitimate if it has been chosen. But when this is being written, there are precious few, if any, governments being chosen. You generally had some kind of one-man rule, or perhaps you had a small group rule. Those are the three main ways of ruling. You can have most people ruling in a democracy, a few people ruling in an aristocracy, or one guy ruling in a monarchy. That's the basic way to do it. Most, a few, or one. And all that is not taken up here. It does not say government becomes legitimate if it conforms to one way or the other of doing it. You can perhaps say that that's true in terms of the local rules. In the local context, you can say it's a legitimate government if you conform to the rules here. And there's a sort of local correctness to that. But overall, it's not getting into that here in this passage. He's saying, the powers that be are ordained of God. And he doesn't get into how they got there. He doesn't say if it was chosen, or if it happened peaceably, or if it's according to the rules of monarchical accession or anything. He just says what is there. This runs counter to the tendency to fight wars to establish democracy. There's nothing here about that being key. This runs counter to saying that we need to fight wars to make the world safe for democracy. No, this just says, you know, the government's entire is to be honored. Now why did God institute government? Well, it tells you here. God instituted civil government to carry out his wrath, to take vengeance on his behalf against the evildoers. You actually don't have the word gods next to the word wrath here in chapter 13, but it's still the correct interpretation. Just reminding you, he's just been talking about God's wrath at the end of chapter 12. Yes, God can and has and will, at times, act in a supernatural way to deliver his people. When God sent Moses to Pharaoh, Moses didn't bring those people out of Egypt. God did it with supernatural power. But that's the exception in the Bible. When God would deliver his people from the Malbites, he sent them Ehud. And there was no particular miracle involved. Or Othniel, or Deborah and Beric, as you go through. Most of the time, God's acting through people. He's not dealing in a miraculous way. But then there's the question. You've just said, we're not to take our own vengeance. But God, you act in a supernatural way rarely. That's what it says. Well, this is why God has set up government to defend us. to establish order, to work out some justice, to take vengeance on eviltowers. And you will see how often here he says, God. Twice in the first verse. No authority except from God, because it exists instituted by God. And you're back again in verse 4. Once again, we're told that He is God's servant for your good. He is the servant of God, an avenger. We're told this again about the ruler in verse 6. He's a minister of God. Calvin says this is like air or bread. Something you've just got to have for life. You want to have life? You've got to have air, you've got to have bread, you've got to have a government. It's that order of thing. It's part of the background necessary to make things work. Because people are sinners. And some people devote themselves to sin. Some people think growing their own food is just too hard. It'd be easier to beat you up and take yours. actually taking your food from your garden or some other way. So we need some restraint on that. Therefore, if you are robbed, the appropriate action is to call the police. You see the Apostle Paul, he doesn't initiate legal action in the Book of Acts, but he does use the system as best he can once he's dragged into it. When he's dragged into the system and he's about to be beaten without a trial, he says, wait, I'm a Roman citizen. I get a trial first. And when, on one occasion, he gets beaten without the trial anyway, he makes them come and leave him out as an apology. And he uses the system. When he knows that he's about to get dragged back to be assassinated, he instead appeals to Caesar. He uses the system. Now, somebody could eject right here. Wait a minute. In 1 Corinthians 6, the Corinthians are rebuked by Paul for taking their brothers to court. Therefore, Christians should never use the courts. No, in 1 Corinthians 6, they're rebuked for taking their brother to court. If it's your brother in the congregation, you have another court to deal with. You have this church government. If it's a problem with a brother within the church, and it's not a matter of immediate threat and danger, then you have a church government. But somebody will say it, still objecting, but we were just told to never seek our own vengeance, to turn the other cheek. Yes, calling the police officer is not to be vengeance. It is to protect your life. It's to protect your property. And if you take the unbeliever to court, it must be to restore justice between people. It must not be to seek vengeance, not to bleed him dry if you're richer. It is to actually seek a very just way of dealing with things. And Calvin says, you must have such a spirit throughout legal proceedings that you treat it as if it had already been justly concluded. And if you cannot do that, then don't even go to court. Now, that is very difficult, probably with any legal system, certainly with our adversarial legal system. And so you are well advised to avoid it as much as you can. I remember hearing a lawyer. tell us to avoid court one time. We had a lawyer come to speak to the school where I was a teacher. And the lawyer said, yeah, hire me to solve your problems. But I try to stay out of court. When you go to court, you're fated in someone else's hands. Bring me in to negotiate for you. That was a lawyer telling you to avoid court. Yeah, so you want to avoid as much as you can. And yet it is God's institution. The civil government's there to restrain evil. There's times to call. Times to call when it's not your brother. when it's immediate danger. But always, it is not for our vengeance. Now what if the government is simply the biggest gang of crooks in the country? Before this happens, you could name some countries where really the government is just the biggest gang of crooks. What then? So our basic stance here, our basic stance, must be to be subject to the governing authorities, even when they are unbelieving and unjust. That is the unavoidable point of the whole paragraph. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. Those that exist have been instituted by God. Whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. He is God's servant for your good. And the government that he was living under was not elected. It was not believing. It was not even his own kind of people. They'd been conquered by this government. It was a government that blasphemously claimed too much for the emperor, wanted to call him Curios, Lord, was on his path to claiming divine honors for him. And yet he says, be subject, and not as a tactical ploy. Because he does not say, just try to get along until you have the upper hand. No, he says, you must honor for conscience's sake. not just wrath of theirs and God's, but for conscience's sake. And Paul was not naive. Paul knew his Old Testament better than any of us. And in the Old Testament, you meet lots of bad kings and queens. You meet Ahab and Jezebel, who killed the Lord's prophets. You meet Manasseh and Ahaz, who tried to shut down the worship of God. You meet Nebuchadnezzar, who burnt Jerusalem to the ground. You meet a great number of awful kings and monarchs. I didn't mention Pharaoh, who tried to wipe out God's people by killing all the babies. Yes, Paul, therefore, is not naive about government. He knows his scripture. He also knows the bit of history between the Testaments. He knows about Antiochus and all the events that are now remembered by Jews at Hanukkah. He knew what happened to Jesus. He knew that the Jews had been expelled from Rome in his own lifetime by the Emperor Claudius. He knew all kinds of things. And yet he says the basic stance, the basic stance is this, that we are to be subject to the governing authorities. And you know, if you need to protest something, take care to protest with some intelligence. You will now get the one and only time you will get me to make a favorable mention of Hillary Clinton. Brace yourselves. Some years ago, Hillary Clinton was running for president. She was interrupted by a protester. The protester jumped up and grabbed the microphone and so on. And she needed not to alienate this constituency. And so she talked to the protester afterwards at some length. listened, and listened, and listened, and then said, look, what do you want me to do? And how is your approach going to get us there? Because the protesters are saying, we just need to be heard. And she's saying, no. What do you want me to do for you? And how is jumping up and grabbing my microphone getting me there to do what you want? You have to have a plan. Yes. To protest in a way that actually thinks about what could they do for you shows respect for the government. It's not just a matter of making noise or being heard. Being heard to what end? What law do you want passed? What law do you want rescinded? This is the way that we respect the government by asking for specific things that they perhaps can do for us. Simply to make angry noise does not honor them or really achieve anything. Now, most of us here today are Americans. Our country started with a rebellion, which I don't think is all that unusual, but our country started with a rebellion. And as Christians, we're not perhaps happy with many recent trends. So what we want to know is, what are the exceptions to this paragraph? Well, we obey the government as part of obeying God. Obeying God is the great goal. Obeying God is the reason to obey the government. He tells us to. Therefore, if the government requires you to disobey God, then you may not do that. Because you cannot obey God by disobeying God. You cannot obey God by obeying the government that tells you to disobey God. Now you are caught up in the contradiction. And so we see the apostles in Acts 4 and 5, when their government told them, talk no more about Jesus. They said, we must obey God rather than men. And they went on talking about Jesus. And they did so because Jesus had prophesied, you will be brought before kings and governments for my sake. The one who denies me, I will deny before my Father in heaven. So what are the exceptions? We are not to deny Jesus. We are not to be silent. We are not to disband our churches. We are not to return escaped slaves. That's right in the Torah, by the way. If a slave escapes to you from his master, you shall not return him to the master. These are certain exceptions. If we get a law that is flatly contrary to the law of God, well, as has been said, a just man-made law squares with God's law. But you notice the limits on these exceptions. That's what you do. The apostles said we must obey God rather than men. They did not launch an assassination campaign against the high priests. They did not launch an armed rebellion against Rome. They did not declare the government to be illegitimate, because it was run by unbelievers. Even when the government is promoting evil here, and so we may not obey the command to do evil here, we still must obey the government here, here, here, here, and here. And we're not to say, well, they're commanding evil here, so I can disobey here. Wrong. Got to honor these good commands over here. while not obeying this evil command over here. Now, there is an objection from the opposite side, shall we say, the anti-American objection. The one that says, no, wait a minute, you say there's exceptions, but I see no exceptions in Romans 13. There's no exception to obeying the government in Romans 13. You say, yeah, that's OK. There are in the rest of the Bible. And you read every paragraph in the Bible in the context of the whole Bible. The apostles said we must obey God rather than men, and they did so rightly. So then, the words here are not naive. They give us the broad purpose of government. Governments do this more or less well, more or less badly. The basic institution retains its legitimacy. And of course, the most crucial law, the law that everyone hates, is the laws about taxes. That's why they tried to trap Jesus on taxes. If he says, don't pay him, the government comes after him. If he says, do pay him, then lots of people don't like him anymore. What'd he do? He came up with a very powerful way of saying, pay him. He said, you got Washington's face on your money? Well, you're getting a benefit from Washington. He prints you money. Then you better pay him for the service of using his money. Because, by the way, money is great. It's much better than trading cows around. It's very useful to have money. So he gives here a list. You've got to pay the taxes, and you've got to pay the revenue, and you've got to pay the respect, and you've got to pay the honor. That is to say, you've got to pay your income tax, you've got to pay your sales tax, you've got to pay your property tax. If you import and export, you've got to pay your tariffs. Even when you drive on the turnpike, you've got to pay your tolls. Now, you may legally minimize in the convoluted American tax system. You may become experts at working the system. But when you sign, this is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge. It is to be true and accurate to the best of your knowledge. Work it as you like, but you must stay inside the law. This is what he calls for here. And when you sign about this is all of your wages and tips, that means that being paid in cash is not being paid tax-free. They can't trace it. But it says, you sign, that this is all of my wages and tips. There is no tax-free wage that gets paid to you in cash. Now, may we participate in government? Setting aside specific American questions for the moment, in general, may Christians in other countries participate in government? Since government takes vengeance. Since government uses force. since it bears the sword, may we serve in the governance. But we are never to seek our own private vengeance. We're not to do it on our own. We're not to do it on government time. But as it says here, the government's job is to wield the sword, and the government is a servant of God in so doing. It's not sinful to be the servant of God. And we may then wield the sword as a directive as part of the government. That is one reason why we have not only examples of kings, like David and Josiah and Hezekiah, who are good kings in the Bible, we also have examples of good civil servants, like not only Joseph and Daniel, but also Nehemiah and Mordecai, serving in pagan systems as civil servants. For that matter, of course, then we get the ones who act like kings, or without being kings, like Moses and Joshua and the judges. So as a general rule, you may serve in the government. Someone will say, those were all Old Testament examples. What about the New Testament? Well, in the New Testament, John the Baptist was approached by some soldiers. Soldiers of whom? Well, either Rome or some little underling of Rome. And the soldier said, what must we do to repent before God? What is the life of repentance in our lives as soldiers? And he said, don't extort money and be content with what you get paid. which would leave them soldiers. He did not tell these soldiers of either Rome or Herod to stop being soldiers. He said, be a good soldier. Be an honest soldier. Don't be an oppressive soldier. So as a general rule, you may. We're called here to honor our government as God's servants for our good. I remember somebody here telling us that he went with his RP pastor once to a protest. And the pastor began this way. I am a minister of God, and you all on the city council are ministers of God." That's a good beginning. He's telling them what God says about them. He's informing them of their duty. He's not being a handmaid in the secularization. He's telling them, this is what God says to you in government. You are a minister of God. Now, in our country, our founding fathers rebelled against God. They were part of Christendom. And in Christendom, that is Europe and the American colonies, all such governments had always said, King Charles, by the will of God, da, da, da. Or the colonial charter said, in the name of God Almighty, da, da, da. And the US Constitution begins like this. We, the people of the United States, to set up things the way we want to establish this Constitution. There's no mention of God in it. And that was radical in 1787 in Philadelphia. That was a break from 1,000 years of how people in this Christian tradition had acted. Founding fathers, they acknowledged God when they were rebelling against their king. They appeal over the king's head to God in the Declaration of Independence. But 11 years later, when they have gotten rid of the king, they don't need to acknowledge God anymore either. So we live under a secular constitution. I look at them and I think of Romans chapter 1. Although they knew God, they did not see fit to honor Him as God or give thanks. And recent American history sounds like an unfolding of the rest of Romans 1. Every government should acknowledge God's authority, because as servants of God, you ought to acknowledge God. If you follow Psalm 2, you ought to acknowledge Jesus Christ. But although they sinned, they did not cease to be God's servant for our good. They're there. They're certainly the instituted government above us. And we are therefore to honor them. But I speak this way to remind you that we are to honor them and not idolize them. There's two original sins in the US Constitution. Slavery is often called the original sin. but alongside it is secularization, not loving God or neighboring. Nonetheless, as we cast a critical eye on it, we still honor those who serve in the government. And we may appeal to this Constitution, as Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship. Just take care not to idolize. There may be 10 in the Bill of Rights, but these 10 amendments were not brought down from Mount Sinai. Those pretend commandments brought down on Mount Sinai. We care not to idolize those amendments. So how can we honor the office? I want to suggest two concrete ways. First of all, speak in measured tones, whether online or in person. Speak in measured tones and make sure you know what you're talking about. Speak in measured tones without rancor or lies. We're being torn apart by our speech in this country. Let your speech, whether it's typed or spoken, always be seasoned with salt. Understand that our media companies are desperate for money because their money-making systems have fallen apart. They've discovered that outrage brings you back, and so they are outraging the whole country to make money for themselves. It's the only way they see to stay in business. Don't you fall for their tricks. If you can't read the news without getting outraged, stop reading the news. But don't get drawn into it. And secondly, it would be good to know and thank your local official. Some of them work hard. The local commissioners, they work regular jobs, and then they spend their evenings and their weekends working on township business. You should know them and thank them for their service. Just thank them if they're from either party. Because we're called here to honor civil government. It is part of God's will. And the mind that is transformed by the will of God thinks differently. It doesn't think differently by trying to dispose of what God has instituted. It thinks differently by, you might say, having less fear and more respect. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to act rightly. towards those whom you have placed over us. And so, Lord, we thank you for the senators and the representatives, and for the president and the vice president, and for the judges and the governors and the commissioners. Yes, Lord, we thank you for the police officers and the probation officers, and all those, Lord, who serve to be your instruments to take vengeance on evil. Now, Father, we are grieved as this, like everything else, is touched by sin. And so, Lord, we pray that You would be reforming and refining and bringing repentance to those who work in government, who forget Your name and do not wish to give You thanks. Lord, we pray that You would bring them repentance and faith. And Lord, we pray for ourselves, that You would bless their work so that we might be able to live quiet and peaceful lives. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.