1 Peter 2:13-16

Speaker 1: Amen. Hey, man, thank you for that song, brother Matt, appreciate your willingness to sing for us here this evening. And hitting that. I know they're at the end of the day. You've already been singing quite a bit. I applaud you for doing that for us because I know my voice is going out by the end of the second sermon. So I appreciate the singing here today. Take your Bibles if you have them and turn to the book first. Peter. First. Peter, chapter number two is where we're going to be this evening. And as you find your place, if you wouldn't mind, join me in standing in honor of reading God's Word. First, Peter, chapter two. We're going to begin reading in verse number 13. The Bible says verse Peter, chapter two, verse number 13. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord sake. Whether it be to the king as supreme or unto governors as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God that with well doing, you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men as free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness. But as the servants of God honor all men love the brotherhood. Fear God honor the King. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. Thank you for the opportunity. We have to once again open your word, look into it, learn from it, and apply it to our lives. God, I pray that you would give me the words you'd have me to say here tonight. The message would be a challenge and an encouragement to those that are here in Jesus name that I ask these things. Amen. You may be seated. All right. So I know this is a tough question, but does anyone recall any of the times where I have stood up here and challenged you about prioritizing the discipleship of your children above anything else in their upbringing? You might remember me ever saying that. I said it this morning, so I hope it sounds familiar to somebody. But when it comes to raising our kids more than athletics, more than education, more than arts, and more than citizenship, you and I are expected and responsible to raise our children to be disciples of Jesus, to follow him, to serve him, and to receive Him as our Savior, their savior. So a disciple of Jesus. If we are going to actually follow Jesus on the path that He has laid out for us as disciples, what will that do or what will that mean when it comes to our relationship with athletics, education, arts, being a good citizen? If we're following Jesus, I believe that we will have the right relationship with all those other areas whatsoever that I hand find it to do do it with dynamite. That is a guiding principle along the path of discipleship that a young person can apply to their education or to athletics or to the arts that they are investing in. And if we're following Jesus, I also believe that it will have an effect on our relationship with the government that God has placed over us. I believe that disciples of Jesus ought to be the best citizens in the country. All right. A few of you agree. I'm glad to hear it. You see, Jesus isn't silent on this matter of how he expects his followers to relate to their government. And spoiler alert, Jesus expects us to obey the laws of our government. Okay. Too often, though. This is not the testimony of Christians, and sometimes it's not even the testimony of churches. I've seen you maybe have seen two churches that skirt the rules in order to not have to pay certain taxes and not have to report certain types of income. And it's breaking the law and they're knowingly doing it. We could talk tonight about the $59 billion that will be embezzled from churches this year. Millions. Billions. $59 billion embezzled from churches. Who would steal from a church? Apparently a lot of people. You know, that number is expected to grow to over $150 billion a year by 2050. Sad. We could talk tonight about the 700 plus Southern Baptist pastors that have been credibly accused of sexual assault. Or we could talk about the speed limit that you broke on the way to church tonight. Christians in churches are not above obeying the law. The government. All of us need to look at our lives and examine the fealty that we have to the law of the land and make sure that we're obeying the laws of our government, not necessarily because we love our government, but because we love God. Verse number 13 of our passage, Peter says, quite frankly. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man. Peter writes here, not his own opinion, but with the authority of the Holy Spirit to compel his readers to submit to the governmental authority that they are placed under. And you and I are familiar enough with the Bible that we know that the government authority that he is talking about is the government of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire, which at this time. Was not a friend of Christianity. They were not known for their righteousness and morality in Rome at this time. I of course, I had to look up what were the most ridiculous laws in Rome? Some of them I can't share with you because they're just not even worth talking about. But here's one. And maybe some of you ladies would would kind of appreciate this. In order for a wife to prevent becoming her husband's literal property. She had to spend, at minimum, three days outside of the house every year. Now, some of you ladies are thinking, okay, wait a second. So the law is going to force me to go on a three day vacation away from my family every year. That doesn't sound like a bad deal. But the idea of becoming your husband's property, if you don't do it now, that's that's probably not as appealing. They are. The husband was you know, you talk about the patriarchy. I mean, they had it to the extreme. Literally, a husband could kill his family if they were all his property and not getting in trouble from the law. If he could show that there was somewhat, you know, justifiable reason to kill his entire family, those his business, because they were his property of her father, was able to sell his children into slavery. He could sell his children into slavery. It had to be for a set amount of time, for a certain amount of money. And by the time that that money had been given and the time had been served, the child was supposed to go back to the to the parents. And he was allowed to do this three times. You can sell your kids three times each. So this is this is really weird that if you did it the third time, then at the end of the set period in which they would be slaves, they were emancipated from your parental authority and they were able to go free. So, you know, you don't want to do the third time because then you lose your kids. So, you know, it's this weird stuff going on. I mean, this stuff doesn't even sound like it actually happened. But this is the government. To which Peter says, Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man. The Christians were supposed to submit to these rules. He even specifically tells them here and I think this is interesting that they are to obey kings and governors equally, he says, whether it be to the king as supreme or unto governors. They weren't supposed to pick and choose between federal and local laws. Which one? They wanted to obey. The emperors, especially at this time, were often corrupt, often cruel. But sometimes there were local governors who were much more generous. And so Peter is telling them, look, you may have a local governor who is more reasonable and more appealing to your worldview, but that doesn't mean you can just disregard whatever the emperor says. You're still under his authority. The compelling argument here is understood more clearly when you and I remember the treatment of Christians by the Roman government. Peter knew better than we do about what it means to live for Christ in a truly anti-Christian society. There's a lot of problems with our society. There's a lot of faults with our government. But you and I. Haven't felt. Pressure and persecution. The way that the people in the first century were feeling it because of their faith. And yet. Peter uses his pen to call Christians to submission. Now, we understand because we've said it with with the Sermon on the Mount. That in order to get a full picture of what God expects from his his people, you have to give attention to the whole counsel of God. And so, no, the next 529, Peter himself stands before the Jewish religious leaders, and he says probably what some of you are thinking. We ought to obey God rather than men. Same guy saying both things. Obey God rather than men. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, whether it be kings or governors. Now, even if it isn't true of your government. Government was established by God for a purpose. Government is one of the institutions that God established and the authority that they draw from is divinely ordained. Peter here gives a very succinct, very helpful understanding of what God intends for government to accomplish. He says, to give, to submit to the Kings as supreme or unto governors. Why? Well, as unto them that are sent by him being God for the punishment of evil doers and for the praise of them that do well. So you as a Christian with a Christian biblical worldview, when you look at government, what is government's purpose? It's to punish evildoers and to praise them that do well. That's it. That's government's role. Was the Roman government super successful in performing this? Probably not. But you know what Paul said? And this has always intrigued me because you hear preachers like I just did, tell you about how Roman government authority was against the Christians. But Paul, in Galatians Chapter five, when he's talking about the fruits of the spirit, what does he say? He says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace. Longsuffering. Gentleness, goodness. Faith. Meekness, temperance against such. There is no law. You see, we get stuck sometimes looking at and focusing at the laws that we disagree with. And what Paul is saying, and I think what Peter would agree with is. Love, joy, peace, these fruits of the spirit. There's no law against these things. Like in his day. Not in our day. So submission to authority. But I don't like the authority that's in office right now. Well, we don't submit because we like the authority that's in office right now any more than our children. Obey us because they always agree with us. Do you always agree with your parents? No, I didn't either. But I don't obey them because I always agree with them. I obey them because that's what God expects. And so if we're going to find a deeper motivation for the submission to authority as adults, especially to our God given authority, which is the government of our country, then we have to have a deeper cause, deeper reason for that. And Peter gives it to us in verse number 13, he says, Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man. Why? For the Lord's sake. Then he reiterates in this verse there 15 he says, For this is the will of God. I don't know if you teenagers. I've ever said this. This was something I dealt with a lot as a teenager myself, wanting to know what is God's will for my life. What is God's will? What does God want me to do with my life? And when somebody talks about the will of God, typically they're talking about, where do I? Where's God? Want me to go to college? What career does God want me to have? But there are some things that God has told us straight out what His will is for us. One of those is that we would keep ourselves pure. Another one here is that we would submit ourselves to the authority that's over us. If I was to preach on children of your parents, I'm pretty sure a lot of the adults be like, Oh, yes, that's right. Yeah, you give it to them. When we then turn the attention to us and God tells us as adults to submit to the authority He's placed over us, then we're like, Oh ho, ho, ho, hold on. Don't you realize how wicked and evil our government is? Yeah. Don't you realize how wicked and evil your kids parents are? That was a dangerous one. But you kids could have said amen there. Okay? Yeah, you, of course. God is not making some sort of absurd or flippant request of us. God wants us to do this because it is important for the testimony of the Gospel that those who claim to be Jesus followers be also obedient to the law. We don't obey because we love our governor. Our President. We obey the law because we love God. First Timer 15 tells us about the effect that Christians obeying the law will have. It is the well, it is the will of God that we would do this. Why? So that with well doing, you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. I didn't realize this. I'm not a huge fan of alliteration, but Peter must have been. This is one of multiple occasions where Peter uses the same letter in several words in succession to make a point. In this case, he uses words that all begin with the Greek letter Alpha. Like there's a whole string of them. I don't speak Greek and understand Greek, so I'm not going to try to say any of those words, but. From my study, it's there. And this isn't the only place where it happens. But Peter and many of the early Christian leaders were having to deal with the same problem. We studied the Book of Acts together. You'll remember that over and over again. Paul came up against opposition many, many, many times, a high percentage of the times that he faced opposition. It didn't come from the Romans. It didn't come from the Roman government. Where did it come from? It came from the Jews. Every city he went into, Jewish troublemakers, instigators would come in and try to throw a wrench into the ministry. And the the biggest accusation or the Jews beef with the Jesus followers. What they accused them of being was anti-law. They accused them of being anarchists, that they wanted to tear down any sort of authority, that they just you know, they always talk about freedom and liberty and grace, and they just they just want this whole thing of just do whatever you want. Because this, of course, wasn't true. It wasn't even true that Christians had no use for the Jewish law. They just didn't see it as necessary for salvation. But that didn't stop the Jewish leaders from projecting the Christians as a threat to the law and order of Rome. And if you've studied any bit of Roman history, you know that Rome was big on law and order, weren't they? So Peter says Christians must be mindful of obeying the laws of their government. And by doing this, they will remove the opportunity for their critics to justify their rejection of the gospel. Says that they will put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and that ignorance is a spoken ignorance. It's not just, you know. I mean, I might be ignorant about some things and hopefully I'll just keep those things to myself. Sometimes we're ignorant about things and we talk about them anyways. He says, Hey, look, you can silence their ignorance speaking because there are foolish men if you will follow the law. It mentioned a few instances examples earlier of Christians in churches who have made headlines for not following the law. What effect does that have on the skeptics of Christianity? Especially a pastor. Who gets caught in criminality. I knew there were hypocrites. I knew they were troublemakers. And it puts a black mark on the testimony of the gospel in our land. When Christians and churches. And Christian leaders. Get caught committing crimes. There's another aspect, though, to a Christian's obedience to the law. He says the first time a 16. It's the will of God with while doing you may put silence the ignorance of foolish men as free, not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Do you have to be a Christian to obey the law? No. Are there non-Christians who obey the law? Sure. What motivation do they have for obeying the law? Huh? Jail. Huh? Fines, tickets? Yeah. All of the negative motivations. If I speed, I'll get a ticket. If I run the red line, I'll get a ticket. If I go and rob a bank, I'm going to go to jail. We've already said these should not be the motivations for why you and I keep the law. That's a lost person's motivation for obeying the law. You and I, as believers, ought to have a higher motivation for obeying the laws of our land. They don't want to face the consequences. But for us as believers, we obey the laws of our government, understanding that we are servants of a higher authority. What is the say in the version of 16 as? The servants of God. Who has more authority? God or the president? God. You know what's cool about that? As his child, as his son, as his daughter. We are citizens of a greater kingdom than any on this earth. We serve a greater ruler than any on this earth. Revelation calls him the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. As a citizen of heaven, I have total freedom that no government can take away. That's why so many have been martyred by their government for the sake of the cause of Christ. And they say, You can't take away my freedom. You may put me in jail, you may beat me with whips, but you can't take away what I have. Why? Because they are citizens of a higher kingdom. But as a citizen of a higher kingdom. Free. Regardless of what my earthly authority might try to restrict. I do not leverage this freedom maliciously to disregard this temporary home that I have. I am also a resident of the United States of America. Primarily, I'm a citizen of heaven. That's my home. The ambassador here. But while I'm an ambassador here, I'm going to respect the laws of this land. When we lived in D.C.. Everywhere we'd go, there'd be cars with license plates that would say diplomat. It were the worst. Because they thought they couldn't get pulled over. They thought they didn't have to obey the laws. They thought they could drive however they wanted. And, you know, we all thought about those diplomat cars. Bunch of bombs. You know. How dare you? You think you're better than me? You hypocrite. We thought about those diplomat cars, about how some people think about the Christians. God has asked me, his servant, to obey the laws of the land where I am a representative for him. And so I obey not because I I'm so I'm super happy with everything my government does, but I do serve a perfect king. He's asked me to do this. We're going to wrap up. See the kids getting antsy. Popsicles are calling their names. I can just smell the blueberry lime and cherry flavors in that bomb pop. Further, Angel. Real quick, final, final verse, verse number 17. Peter gives a summary of how a Christian can be a good citizen and a good example for the gospel in their community. First 17. First, he says, number one, honor all men. Honor. Amen. Can I be kind and respectful to all men? Absolutely. If I interact with someone whose lifestyle I absolutely disagree with, can I still be kind to them and show God's love to them? Yes. Honor all men. Number two, love the Brotherhood. If you've traveled outside the country, you know, you come across another person from America. It doesn't matter what part of America they're from. They speak English. They've got things in common with you. And there is an instant bond. It may be a Republican and a Democrat, but because you're the two Americans, they're in that McDonald's in Costa Rica. You guys are connected. Hey. We are all pilgrims in a strange land. We are all ambassadors of the Heavenly Kingdom. This is not our home. This is foreign territory. Why would we spend any time tearing each other down? Love the Brotherhood. We need each other. So it's out there. We believe in fellowship. Walking together through this life. Love the Brotherhood. Honor all men. Number three, fear God. How can Peter say we have to obey God rather than men? Because you didn't fear men if your got. Paul warned us that the fear of man was. A snare. It was it was a trap. It prevents us from taking the stands we have to take. It prevents us from serving the Lord the way we're supposed to. Fear God. Then finally honor the king. There's no arguing tonight as to who the king figure is for us. Okay. I say that I do realize some of you would like to argue about who the rightful king is for us tonight. So please don't don't take that too far. We understand who is in the office. It's minute it's Joe Biden. Brother Matt, you seem confused. Yeah. That guy. This is hard. I see the posts. I laugh at some of the posts. That depict our president in less than an honorable light. It's amazing how with the as many pictures are taken of our political leaders. If you have a pit litical leader that you don't like, it's very easy to find a picture in which they look like a crazed lunatic. And then you post that and then everyone's like, Oh, that's what they look like. Yeah, they don't look very reasonable. But God has told us over and over again. In the Bible that we're supposed to have a different opinion of our leaders than everybody else. Even when we don't like them. Even when we disagree with them. I mean, when Peter is writing about this, you know, his leader was the emperor of Rome. Depending on when it was written. First veto was written. It may have been a guy. That's famous. We're setting fire. Jerome. Famous for lighting his garden with Christians that he set on fire. What's his name? I really can't think of it. Thank you. Nero and Zorro in my head. And I couldn't get it out. You guys. I was just. Being catty with you. I just. I couldn't think of it. Yeah. Nero in that position. And yet, he says, honor the king. If we're going to be good citizens of a heavenly kingdom, if we're going to be good representatives here in this foreign land. And what Peter is telling us here tonight. It's pretty applicable. But we're blessed. Because we live in America. Where we have more freedom. To serve the Lord then a lot of the rest of the world. I mean, to apply these things for us. It seems very hard. But we celebrate America. Because it's asking less of us than these verses do of other people. When you think about some of the other countries in the world, these words still apply to them. They're king won't be gone in two years. They've got him until he dies. We celebrate America. But we're not. Walking around with rose colored glasses on. We see the floors, too. And we understand that this isn't canine land. Guard, regardless of what I say about Texas. Our ultimate goal. Our ultimate goal is and have. That's what we look forward to. We obey the laws of our land because we want to appoint other people to go there to. So this. This next. Tonight and tomorrow. Celebrate our independence. Celebrate our freedom. Celebrate the good things about our country. But keep in mind that our ultimate loyalty does not lie here. It lies in heaven. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. Thank you for the good attention of the folks that are here. Well, I pray that you'd help us to take your word and apply it to our lives. We would. Seek to point others to. To the gospel. That our relationship with the government that you have placed us under would be such that supports the testimony we claim to have. Or help us to be obedient. To the laws of this land. And Lord that we would not. Sully or darken the testimony we're supposed to have. We'd be lights for all to see. Or thank you for the privilege that we have to live in America to worship and serve you here in freedom and safety. Thank you for those that have given their lives to preserve that freedom for us, those that are still serving Lord in our government and our military. Among our first responders. And I pray that you would bless them, especially this week. God, we pray for our nation's leaders, as we do every Wednesday, that you would give them wisdom which would help them to make godly decisions that affect the country. Laura, we asked you to have your hand of protection and blessing upon us as we seek to be a witness for you. In Jesus name, I ask these things. Amen

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