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All right, why don't we pray
as we begin? Father, thank you that you've enabled us to be
here this morning. Thank you for a chance to step
aside from the normal busyness of life and to not just during
Sunday school, but this whole day to be thinking of you and
who you are and what you've done and how we relate to that. Lord,
today as we look at this topic, particularly of how we respond
to government in different ways. Lord, help us to do that in a
way that's honoring to you. And we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Okay, so we are, I guess this is week five in our series called
Faithfulness When the Heat is On. I'm gonna start with a very
brief review. You know, we had an introductory
week, but then the following weeks we covered different topics. So we covered the topic of that
we should expect persecution and why that is. Persecution
is not the exception for Christians. Persecution is the norm that
we've been told to expect. And it's not surprising, right,
because We live in a world where there are those who are perishing
and those who are being saved, as it says in First Corinthians.
And really, the whole world's divided into those two things,
and we shouldn't expect those who are perishing, who do not
see the gospel as the power of God, and instead see the gospel
as foolishness, we shouldn't expect them to see the gospel
like we do. We shouldn't expect them to sort
of see our perspective. And so it's not at all surprising,
and there is a clash, and God has, you know, is superintending over
this, and this is what he's told us, but, and again, I think this
can be an encouragement, as we realize, a little bit like Stephen,
maybe, when he was being martyred, and he said, forgive them, for
they know not what they do. I mean, there's a sense that we should
have compassion on those around us. that just don't see reality. And they're living according
to the way they see things and doing what, from their perspective,
seems right, even though it's not aligned necessarily with
what is actually true. Then we covered the biblical
response to persecution. And there's some overlying principles
here. We're called to believe and trust
that God is sovereign over it. It's not some cosmic mistake
that is completely outside of God's control. And one thing
that we are told is to rejoice in the midst of it, which is
very hard to do, but that's still something we're called. But we
also look, there's a lot of biblical options that are valid. There's fleeing, there's staying
and faithfully enduring, there's probably other variations. So
there's not one and only one way that Christians should respond
to persecution. Then we looked at, last week,
a little bit, how do we respond to individuals who persecute
us? And John went through a number
of principles. One is that, and these are all
straight out of scripture, one is to be wise and blameless before
unbelievers. The second one was to seek the
good of society. Principle three is blessing those
who persecute you, and where it's talking about it says do
not avenge yourselves, avenge his mind says the Lord, right?
You know, this is the opposite reaction to what is normal. Number
four, we shouldn't be ashamed of Christian persecution. And
five, and we're going to kind of keep coming back to this theme,
is that we shouldn't be enduring suffering in a way that would
imply that this world is everything that there is. Right? And that's,
in fact, that's kind of what underlies our ability to endure,
is understanding this is not all there is. In fact, this is
a relatively minor part of what is when you think in terms of
eternity. So these were some of the principles we talked about
last week. So then this week, we're sort of kind of responding
to the same kinds of questions. In other words, how do we respond
to persecution? But we're shifting emphasis sort
of a little bit away from individuals who may be persecuting us to
a government. Right, so last week we were kind
of, and I should say, this is not a perfect, you can't totally
separate these things, but we were emphasizing sort of how
do we respond to individuals who are persecuting us for our
faith? And this week we're thinking more about how do we respond
to a government that is persecuting us? These are somewhat distinct
concepts, right? You can think of some clear examples
where, you know, maybe you've got a coworker who just is an
atheist, is offended by your Christian beliefs, thinks that
you are the problem in society, and does everything that they
can to make your life miserable, right? That's not a governmental
persecution, that's just an individual doing that, right? Versus we
can certainly think of where governments sort of use the force
of government to, you know, to persecute Christians as we've
defined that. So there are some distinct concepts, but there
absolutely is overlap, because in the end, a government still
involves people. A government isn't some abstract
entity that is no person involved anywhere. Usually a government
is represented by people. So if you have a courtroom, who
is representing the government in the courtroom? I mean, actually there's probably
a few answers. Who are some of the people who
might be representing the government in the courtroom? The judge,
the prosecuting attorney, maybe the jury even, right, in a sense.
So, you know, there are people still involved. So, I don't want to make too
strong of a distinction, but again, the focus today will be
a little bit more on this. So, let's begin by turning to Acts
16, and we'll look at verses 16 through 40. And this is, I
think, a little bit of, let's call it a case study. So I'm going to go ahead and
read this. There's a number of questions.
I'll show you what the first question is so you can kind of
be thinking of that. And the first question is, who were the people
that Paul and Silas interacted with in this passage? There's
different groups or categories or individuals that they interacted
with. So Acts 16, 16 through 40. Now while Paul was waiting
for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he
saw the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue
with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace
every day with those who happened to be there. All right, I'm, Act 17, I'm like,
this is not the passage I thought it, I was, sorry, I was reading
from Act 17. It is Act 16, probably, okay.
There we go, sorry about that. So Acts 16, as it says on the
slide, Acts 16, 16 through 40. As we were going to the place
of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination
and brought her owners much gain by fortune telling. She followed
Paul and us, crying out, these men are servants of the most
high God who proclaim to you the way of salvation. And this
she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed,
turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of
Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very hour.
But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone,
they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace
before the rulers. And when they had brought them
to the magistrates, they said, these men are Jews and they are
disturbing our city. They advocate customs that are
not lawful for us as Romans to accept and practice. The crowd, now let me just ask
a question there. Is that a legitimate charge?
Is that what's really going on? No, that's not. That's really
a false charge, right? Okay. The crowd joined in attacking
them and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave
orders to beat them with rods. And when they had afflicted many
blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer
to keep them safely. Having received this order, he
put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the
stocks. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing
hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly
there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the
prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were open and everyone's
bonds were unfastened. When the jailer woke and saw
that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about
to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But
Paul cried with a loud voice, do not harm yourself, for we
are all here. And the jailer called for lights and rushed
in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and
Silas. Then he brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do
to be saved? And they said, believe in the
Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. And they
spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his
house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed
their wounds, and he was baptized at once, he and all his family.
Then he brought them up into his house and set food before
him, and he rejoiced along with his entire household that he
had believed in God. But when it was day, the magistrates sent
the police, saying, let those men go. And the jailer reported
these words to Paul, saying, the magistrates have sent to
let you go, therefore come out now and go in peace. But Paul
said to them, They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men
who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison. And do
they now throw us out secretly? No, let them come themselves
and take us out. The police reported these words
to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that
they were Roman citizens. So they came and apologized to
them, and they took them out and asked them to leave the city.
So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they
had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed. Okay, so who
were the people that you say that Paul and Silas interacted
with? Okay, there was a slave girl,
yeah. The jailer, okay. Kind of like a play, like who
are the actors in this play? There's more. The owners of the
slave girl, okay. The one that levied the false
charge. The magistrates, okay, I think that's, yeah, there's
the crowd, the police, those are probably more minor roles,
they're sort of like, but okay, so that's the flavor. Now, which
of these interactions or which of these people that were involved
sort of most closely represented the government? Yeah, that'd
be the magistrates, right? So that's sort of the governmental
role that's going on here. So how did Paul and Silas respond
to each one of these? So let's kind of skip the slave
girl, because in a sense, it wasn't the girl herself. It was
the evil spirit. So there was the business owner
that Paul basically made them go out of business. And we don't
actually have a lot, Paul didn't actually interact with them that
we're aware of directly. So I'm gonna skip that. So let's
talk about the magistrates. How did Paul and Silas respond
to the magistrates through this whole story? What did? They confronted them. How did
they confront the magistrates? Okay, so in terms of, they sort of raised their rights
under Roman law to be treated according to Roman law, right? So they, because that didn't
happen, they sort of raised that as an issue. Okay, good, cool. Okay, so they also submitted
to the magistrates in the law. In what way did they submit to
the magistrates in the law? Yeah, yeah, they underwent the
punishments. They went to the jail. They, you know, they stayed in the
jail when the earthquake happened. It's hard to note all the motivations
there, right? Because there's other examples
of being let out of the jail by an angel, right? But still, their response to being in jail
was not shaking the bars and yelling, this is injustice, let
me out. What was their response to being in the jail? Singing. They're doing exactly what we
heard a couple weeks ago, rejoice. Right? Okay, so. Yeah, yeah, the prisoners were listening,
obviously had a huge impact on the Philippian jailer, you know,
all these different things, right? So there's a lot going on there,
right? So people are watching how they
were responding. So basically they both submitted,
but also, sort of pushed back in terms
of the Roman magistrates not following their own rules, right?
Okay. So we can see there, there's
a little bit of nuance here, right? There's not just, again,
one thing, but in terms of interacting with the government, this is
what was going on. So let's actually continue. There's
the jailer, right? Paul and Silas interact with
the jailer. Well, I'll answer the question, it's obvious to
all of us. He was very kind to the jailer, right? He basically spared the jailer's
life, probably realized he was doing that. Remember earlier
in Acts when an angel came and rescued Peter from a prison? The angel caused the doors to
open and said, like basically said, Peter, come out. Remember
what happened to the, Prison guards on that one? Yeah. I think they killed them all,
right? I think maybe four or, anyway, they killed the guards,
right? So this guard had reason to be fearful. Paul was very
kind, and Paul and Silas, and, you know, turned out to lead
to the salvation. So is the prisoner a representative,
or sorry, is the prison guard a representative of the government? Yes, in what way? Yeah, yeah. But there's probably
a sense that the prison guard is sort of less, I mean, they're sort of less,
they're not the ones that made all the decisions here. They're
just doing kind of what they were told to do. They're not,
you know, they're just sort of doing what they're supposed to
do, right? As opposed to the magistrates were actually making
decisions and made some wrong decisions, right? And it would
have been, It really wouldn't have been possible for the prison
guard to be like, you know what? You were unjustly accused. I'm
going to let you go. That just kind of isn't how that
works, right? So in a sense, the prison guards
sort of officially are representing the government, but it's almost
more of an individual interaction at that point. Okay, so I just
want to kind of get us thinking in terms of this biblical example
of, you know, those kinds of things. And we see sort of this,
you know, there's some individuals, there's some people as the government.
So let's go, and we're gonna review from Romans 12. This was
last week. So this is, again, from the Book
of Romans. As Paul often does in his books,
he teaches a lot of theology and then transitions to practical
application. We covered this last week. I'm
gonna read it because I think these all still apply. They're
not just covered for last week. And we can see Paul living out
exactly what he later wrote to the Roman church here. We see
that in the example we just read being lived out. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation, be
constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the
saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you,
bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice,
weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another.
Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise
in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but
give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible,
so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 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.
And we went through this last week, so I don't intend to kind
of recover these things. because we did it, but I thought
it was good to kind of remind ourselves, you know, there's
a lot here that applies in situations like Paul, and you definitely
could look at Paul and Silas, and you could say, did they do
these things? And you'd say, at least from,
you know, as it's recorded, yes, they very much had these kinds
of mindsets, right? Now, you know, this is one of
those situations where I kind of wish there weren't chapter
divisions in scripture. because we sometimes assign too
much. So the next verse continues with
the same vein. When Paul wrote it, he wasn't
thinking, okay, let me switch now to chapter 13, right? He
just, he continued, anybody know what comes next? Yeah, yeah, so here's where it
continues. So this is still kind of like, here are, here is sort
of practical instruction for godly living. based on everything
I've been talking about theologically. So this is now very much directly
speaking to the topic that we're covering today, which is how
do we respond to a government that may be persecuting us? Okay,
context is always important when we look at scripture. Who is
this being written to? Besides the church as a whole
because it's scripture, but who specifically is Paul addressing
at this point? Romans, what's the book of Romans, so is Paul
writing to the Romans? Yes, yeah, so he's writing to
believers in Rome. It is to the Romans, it's not just he was
in Rome when he wrote it, right? So he's writing to the Roman
church. What is the Roman church political, like what is the situation
where the Roman church is at this point? Yeah, so the government,
it's the Roman government, this is the head of the Roman Empire
at this point. It is not in any sense a Christian-friendly
government, right? It's sort of mostly made up of
complete pagans. And we could go through, you
know, and there were, it's not all bad, right? There are things
about the Roman Empire that were, helpful, and as it says here,
in a sense having order, and there's a lot of order. The Roman
Empire was well known for structure and order and that kind of a
thing. But it was certainly, they were
very much the minority at this point, right? And it's believed
that Nero was the emperor during this point. I think, to be honest,
I think it's sometimes a little bit, there was sort of some scapegoating
and some persecution of Christians under Nero. There actually was
significantly more persecution under later emperors, Diocletian
and others that we may cover later in this class. But nonetheless,
Christians did not have a respected place in society, let alone any
sort of representation within the government. So that's who
this is being written to. So it says, let every person
be subject to the governing authorities, for there's no authority except
from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Okay, so Romans, the government that you're under has 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. So you can see there, there's
a couple things kind of being said here. One is, look, God
has given government authority, so when you're resisting that
God-given authority, you're actually resisting God, that's one point.
And the second is, government does tend to, I don't know, favor
good and resist bad. And sometimes, you know, we can
look at this, we're like, I don't know, I can think of lots of
counterexamples where that's not the case. But I think, in a sense,
we need to think about this as compared to, compared to anarchy,
compared to no government, everybody does whatever they want, right? Just about any government is
better than anarchy. There's people who are like,
yeah, we need to have, essentially, they wouldn't call it anarchy
because it has a negative term, but essentially we need to just
have freedom to do everything we want and sort of really are
calling for anarchy. But there are places in the world
where there's anarchy going on right now. And there is never
a place where there's anarchy where it is good for anybody,
really. So even evil governments still
have some residual potential good effects on society. And you can think about some
of the most evil governments in our world. and it still is
probably better than anarchy, right? So I don't, anyway, so
I will mention, we're gonna talk about caveats here, right? This
is not absolute, and we'll get to that in a second, but still,
this is what the scripture's saying, this is what Paul was
writing to the church that was in Rome, living under the Roman
government. Continuing in verse four, 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 because of this, you also
pay taxes, for the authorities are 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.
Okay, so I suspect for most people in this room, this is not a brand
new passage. You know, we've seen this before. You know, Pastor
Steve preached through Romans, so we've covered it before. But
it certainly should be a key passage as we're considering
how do we respond to government. Some notes on this. As we look
at scripture, and this is something actually last spring we talked
about a lot, and this is something that we have to think about in
our life. As we go through life, and as
we can come up with situations, and we apply scripture to those
situations, There's a sense that we, as we look at scripture,
you know, we've talked about how there are some things that
are crystal clear, there are some things that are like maybe
implied, and everything in between there, right? And so this is
very explicit, very unambiguous teaching, right? This is not,
hey, we took some example somewhere, and if you kind of squint at
it a little bit, you can maybe see that there's a principle
there that might apply, right? That's not what this is. Kind
of the opposite so so to me what that means is that we need to
to you know submit ourselves to God Who is saying this and
recognize? This is what God is saying to
us, and and so we can't just sort of write it off, right?
What that means is essentially as we live our life. We will
have to sort of mentally deal with this is what God has told
me and And we can't just say, well,
I don't like that. I'm going to do something different,
right? That being said, even according to scripture, this
is not absolute, right? If you just read Romans 13, you'd
be like, there is never, ever a situation in which we should
not obey governing authorities, right? But that is not what scripture
teaches either, right? So a good, let's turn to Acts
5, 17 through 29. I will go ahead and read this again.
I'll read it just so that those who are online can hear. Hopefully
I'll get the right chapter this time. So here's kind of the context
and the case of where we can see that we don't, there are
situations in which we don't obey the governing authorities.
And by the way, what we're reading in this passage, the governing
authorities are essentially the religious leaders. So we're back
now in Jerusalem. and where there's sort of a blending,
the governing authorities and the religious authorities are
kind of the same in that particular situation, but they're still
the governing authorities. But the high priest rose up and
all who were with him, that is the party of the Sadducees, and
filled with jealousy, they arrested the apostles and put them in
the public prison. But during the night, an angel
of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and
said, go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the
words of this life. And when they heard this, they
entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach. Now when
the high priest came and those who were with him, they called
together the council and all the Senate of the people of Israel
and sent them to prison to have them brought. But when the officers
came, they did not find them in the prison, so they returned
and reported. We found the prison securely
locked and the guard standing at the doors, but when we opened
them, we found no one inside. Now, when the captain of the
temple and the chief priest heard these words, they were greatly
perplexed about them, wondering what this would come to. And
someone came and told them, look, the men whom he put in prison
are standing in the temple and teaching the people. Can you
imagine the confusion here? I mean, it's like, what is going
on? And you just have to kind of
laugh. Then the captain with the officers went, and you can
imagine the panic. with the captain and the officers
and the, you know, people guard, like, you know, time to say goodbye
to my wife because this is probably my last day on this earth. And
it actually was for some of them. Then the captain with the officers
went and sought them, brought them, but not by force, for they
were afraid of being stoned by the people. And when they had
sought them, they set them before the council, and the high priest
questioned them, saying, we strictly charge you not to teach in this
name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching,
and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us. But Peter
and the apostles answered, we must obey God rather than men.
I'll stop there. Okay, so there's this other principle
in scripture, And it's consistent with Romans 13 because Romans
13 says God gives authority to nations, right? So there's a
sense it's a derived authority. And when they step outside of sort of God's authority, then
there's a sense that we have to obey God rather than men.
And we're gonna talk about this a little bit more in a second.
Notice, though, that this only really is an issue when there's
a conflict between the two. When obeying the governing authorities
If we were to do that, we would be disobeying God. We would be
going against what God has said. I would be sinning, you know,
to do that, right? That's the situation that we're
talking about here, where at that point, you know, the choice
between the governing authorities and God, as believers, ultimately
we're responsible to God, right? But it is only an issue when
there's a conflict between those two, right? One thing, as I read
this, note verse 26. You know, this isn't something
that we tend to key off of, but I was thinking about it as I
was thinking through kind of the issues here. It said, then
the captain with the officers. So the captain is kind of the
representative of the police, the people doing this. They went
and brought them, but not by force, for they were afraid of
being stoned by the people. The implication here is that
There's the apostles teaching in the synagogue with the people
responding well to this. If they went in and dragged them,
physically handcuffed them, dragged them by, they were afraid that
the crowd would attack them. And so it says they brought them
in, but not by force. What does that imply about the
apostles? What does that mean the apostles
must have done? Yeah, it means that they still
submitted to the authorities, right? The police came, and they're
teaching in a synagogue, and they said, hey, we want you to
come with us. They were sort of in a spot where they didn't
really have to. Right? The people around would have
protected them. But they went ahead and went with the policeman.
So that just sort of, as we're thinking this through, I think
there's, you know, I don't think that's the main point of this
passage, but it's an interesting data point. that they did that. So, as we put the pieces together,
you know, between the, you know, these are some of the key, strong,
sort of direct passages, but as we look at other passages
as well, here's, I think, the way that I would propose these
pieces fit, is that our default should be to obey the government
for all the reasons that are spoken of in Romans 13. In other
words, our first response should not be, let me not obey the government,
because it's a government. This is unnatural, right? But
sort of our default. However, there is an exception,
and that is when obeying the government causes us to disobey
God, we prioritize obedience to God. We have more allegiance
to our creator than we do to our government, in terms of when
there's a conflict between the two. And that's kind of, if you
look at the Acts passage and you look at the Romans passage,
and I think other parts of scripture. But there's more to it than just
this, because we're still then stuck with, well, what do you
do? And here's where I think it gets difficult, at least from
our mindset sometimes as American Christians. I would say there's
a however, we cannot expect to be exempt from the consequences
when we choose to obey God and disobey the government. And even if they're unjust, all
the examples that we've seen today are cases in which the
government is not, is acting unjustly, right? There was absolutely
false accusation in the Philippian situation, right? There's no
validity to this, right? And, you know, same thing here. I mean, I guess it's not, that
is kind of false charges. I think they're sort of saying,
yeah, they're trying to pin the blood of Jesus on us. And I guarantee
you, that's not the message that the apostles were preaching,
is, you know, shouldn't have killed Jesus, that's the big
problem here, right? They were saying, no, they're presenting
the gospel. So, Here's what I thought of
a biblical examples of disobedience, but accepting consequences as
a result. Jesus is one of them. That's a bit of a special case,
so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time, but there's a sense
that Jesus definitely had consequences that weren't just that he submitted
to. So much more going on there that's
probably not a great example for us to use. But here's other
ones. Daniel, right? You know, as you read the passage
in Daniel, he completely, flagrantly disobeyed the government, made
it very clear, he did what he did every day. But you have no
sense that he then fought against the, being thrown in the lion's
den. He said, you know, he was like,
realized that's what's gonna happen, and God, you know, spared
him, obviously. Same thing, Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, the same kind of idea. So, Paul and Silas and Philippi,
the Philippian jailer example. Again, we see where they didn't
fight back, they sort of submitted and even when they had a chance
to get away, they didn't. So, at some level, that's potentially
an example of that. I think Paul going to Jerusalem
and eventually ending up in house arrest in Rome, right? So towards
the end of Acts, Paul goes to Jerusalem. Everybody knows he's
probably going to get in trouble with the leaders. He gets in
trouble with the leaders there. They send him to Felix. You know,
he starts getting in the Roman system and appeals to Caesar.
Ends up going to Rome. He spends, you know, a bunch
of his life under house arrest in Rome. So, how would you characterize
Paul's response to governing authority in that whole situation? Like, from what you remember
reading about it. Yeah, he was very submissive. Yep, yep, and again, we see he
used the law, and he basically said, as a citizen, we'll you
know, take advantage of the rights that I have as a citizen, right?
So it wasn't a matter of just completely, you know, giving
in to anything, but it was, you know, he asserted rights as a
Roman citizen. You know, I think of the case,
he's in house arrest in Rome. To me, there's no question, like,
Paul could have escaped. I mean, you know, house arrest
is kind of like that, right? Where you, I mean, maybe they
were super, super diligent. I mean, it does seem like there
were guards that were in his house with him that he converted
and things like that. But certainly, in years of house
arrest, at some point, you know, he could have slipped away, right?
But he didn't. So these are just examples. So, question for you. Are there exceptions to this?
Are there biblical examples of where someone sort of obeyed
God rather than the governing authorities, but did not submit
to the consequences of doing so? Anna? Yeah, so the Hebrew midwives
certainly did not submit to the governing authorities and they
lied about doing so. They lied about that. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that.
I actually have this here because I honestly, I couldn't think
of any of them and I was just, I was guessing there's probably
some out there. So that's probably a good one. And I think as I'm
thinking about that situation, yeah, that's a tough one. And
one of the things that I think we have to realize is that there
can be some very tricky decisions to be made. This looks like a
nice, clean equation. If this, then do that. I was
almost tempted to write a flowchart. You could write a flowchart here.
But that implies too much cleanness in the world in which we live.
I think that's probably a really good example of where I think
the Hebrew midwives could be saying, okay, so now I have a
choice. So it's clearly the right thing
to not kill the Hebrew babies. Okay, now they come and ask me,
am I doing that? If I say, if I answer honestly, then what
they are going to do is they are going to either, no matter
what, they are going to stop that from happening. They'll
either kill me or they will prevent me from ever delivering babies
anymore or something, right? And so it's going to have that
impact on the situation, right? So in that case, they made a
judgment call to lie rather than be honest. So I'd say that's a very difficult,
moral, tricky position. And you're right, God commended
them for it. So they made a good decision there. But it, yeah,
okay. Sorry? Yes, Rahab hid the guys. Right,
right, but she didn't, we don't, I mean, clearly there's cases
of people disobeying, but what I'm asking is are the disobeying
and then... when the consequences came fighting against the consequences.
So she hid them completely and that was good. But, you know,
there wasn't time for consequence because the whole country, you
know, everything, she wasn't found out and she was rescued
and everything else, right? So. Yeah, so the prophets, yeah, and I think that's probably a
similar case to the Hebrew midwives. And I was thinking about that.
I think there's probably a lot of examples, like the prophets
are a good example. I think that it's a little tricky
as we're thinking about Old Testament Israel, right, where this, you
know, is a theocracy. This is a country that God has
established where God is to be their God. And I believe that
as such, it is unique in the history of nations. There is
not a direct parallel. The United States is not a theocracy. God did not establish the United
States saying, I shall be your God, you shall be my people,
as a nation, in the same way that he did with the nation of
Israel. So when we see God's prophets
pushing back against wicked kings that are going against what God
has said, I feel like that's a little bit hard to say that's
the exact kind of situation that we live in today, right? So,
okay, so there are some, but I grant that there's cases. So what it means to not, let
me put it this way. So in those two examples, what
it means to not submit, you know, may not always be just turn yourself
in, do nothing to resist anything. But they certainly didn't completely
fight back. They didn't kill the person coming
for them or something like that. I didn't want to go back to the
Hebrew midwives. I think they lied, because if
they had not lied, the soldiers would have just killed the babies
anyway. Right, right. I think there was a protective
element, besides just protecting themselves. Yeah, that's right.
But also, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, Peter cut off
one of their ears. So that was a one-word plot. Well, yeah, Peter cut off their
ears, but that was, scripturally, that was soundly Like Jesus said,
that is not what you should be doing, right? So there's an example,
but it's an example of where somebody did that and Jesus said,
you shouldn't be doing that. Yeah, no, you're right, it's
an example. But I'm saying is there's not a biblical example
that says we should do it. Yeah, yeah, that's good. So,
and again, I think here's where we have to think carefully, right? Because we can look at some cases
that, like I said, if we're looking at prophets being God's prophets
when the theocracy that God has established is moving away, that's
probably a less direct thing for us to say, that's why I'm
doing this, compared with clear, teaching that we see in Romans,
where there's direct teaching about this topic, is how we as
Christians in a non-Christian nation should live and act, right?
So I'm not saying that it's not all relevant, but we've got to
be really careful to not pick sort of an example that is maybe
not nearly as relevant to overcome a lot of very direct teaching.
So that's the only point there. Couple things. One, this really
is the hard part, right? Is, you know, as we look historically
and even biblically, you know, the pain of the consequences
is what makes disobeying government so difficult. I didn't have room
to put another thing, and we've kind of already talked about
it, is Overall, this is not totally crisp and clean. Making these
calls is not always just trivially obvious, right? So this is all
the more reason that we need to be well-established in what
is the press of Scripture. In other words, what is the press
of God upon us? and have that as well understood
as we can. So then when we face a tricky
decision where it's not just crisp, I mean most of the time
it's not the government saying we need you to deny Christ and
sign this form and deny Christ. That's easy from a moral decision
making point of view, right? The consequences could be extremely
challenging. It wouldn't be easy from that
point of view. But deciding what to do is easy. There's certainly
a lot of things where it's much more ambiguous. I don't want
to imply that it's just as easy as this. But still, we can't
just write off God's direct commands either. So we have to sort of
make sure that whatever we're doing is consistent with the
teachings of scripture. And where it's not, we need to
be able to explain, okay, what principle of scripture am I applying
that should be strong enough to overcome this other one? And
that's like the theme of what we talked about last spring,
is sort of practicing doing that. Okay, probably a lot of you walked
in and were thinking like, well, what about if we can influence
the government? What should our relationship to politics, government
be in a country like the US? How might that change in other
contexts? What should we do if our government does wrong things
that don't necessarily directly involve us? And how much effort
should we put in trying to make the government better? I was
going to cover that this week. And as I was preparing, I was
like, there's not time to even hardly get through what we have.
So we're having part two next time where we're going to keep
going on this topic, but deal, you know, deal with some of these
very practical questions. But yeah, but not next week.
Next week, both John and I are gone, so we are gonna be doing
something kind of a one-off, different thing. Probably watching
part of a video. But then, Lord willing, the week
after that, we'll pick up with this and continue along these
lines. All right, let's pray. Father,
thank you again that you've given us guidance, that we don't have
to go through life and kind of wonder what you think about some
things. While it's hard and sometimes
apply those, we thank you that you do give clear instruction
and help us to be able to, therefore, think clearly in a very, very
muddled world in which we live. Thank you for this morning, and
we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
How do We Respond to a Government that is Persecuting Christians, Part I
Series Faithfulness Under Persecution
| Sermon ID | 911241331457172 |
| Duration | 46:36 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Language | English |
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