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.