Submit For Christ

Well, good morning everyone once again. Uh again, as I just said, our mission is to treasure Jesus and help others follow him. And the way we do that is by opening God's word and opening our lives to love. And so, let's open his word to 1 Peter chapter 2. We're going to be looking at verses 13-1 17 uh today. And then next week, actually, Mike will be leading us in the next section um of the passage.

And so make sure you come back for the second part of being subject to others. And so today we're going to be looking at verses 13-1 17. And the big idea for this is to fear God, to love the church, and to serve the world. And so you're going to see that. And and to be honest with you, I think this passage is actually from a principle standpoint of just seeing what God's calling us to is is actually easy to understand. It it it makes sense.

this is what God has sent us to do. I think it's the application of it um that actually is what's really difficult for us. Really difficult for us because it could be um this is where we can draw in different preferences, different contexts, uh different experiences with other institutions or human institutions where we kind of then struggle with well I don't want to submit to this um political leader. I don't want to submit to this political government. I don't want to submit to this uh bad husband. I don't want to submit you know kids never want to submit to their parents.

And so um you know when it comes to human institutions um the application of it and actually walking and applying it to your life is the difficulty that we see here versus literally just seeing what it says to do. And so um as we walk through this, think about that. All right. So, it's and and I also believe that part of what he does and and as you'll see this over the next few weeks, um it does tell us what to submit to, but it leaves the application a little bit vague on how to actually do it. And I think that's important because it's just that's where wisdom comes into play. Seeing how Christ did it and then applying it to our context is really important because again as you'll see be subject to every human institution.

The emperor as supreme, the king in all of his uh in all of his authority, the president in his role um as as a leader of a country. People will receive that and hear that differently depending on their context, depending on who they voted for, depending on what country they live in, whether or not their country is a democracy or is it a communist country or is it a dictatorship, whatever it looks like. So, so that's where I say the application of it is going to be more difficult depending on kind of where you land preferentially. And so, whether I don't even know if that's a word, but it sounds like a word. Um, so let's walk through this together. And be quick to hear, slow to speak, quick to understand, okay?

Because it's going to be one of those. So starting in verse 13, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. What? Which just speaking off the cuff here, like what a concept for a government would that be, right? Um to actually do that and not do the opposite. Verse 15, for this is the will of God that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.

Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. All right, there's a lot going on here, or at least it again, it appears like there's a lot going on here.

The principle is simple, but the application of these things is going to be challenging. But I really think you have to look back at the previous two verses that we just looked at to see the context of also what he's really saying to them in regards to this because he's he is getting into some application here. If you look at the two previous verses, 11 and 12, this is what it says. Beloved, and this is what we covered last week, beloved, I urge you as sojourers and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. We tackled that heavily last week in the sense of stewarding your lives in such a way that you're putting sin to death. And you're focusing on what what actually fuels your soul.

So, not what's killing your soul and waging war against your soul, but focusing on the good grace and mercy that God has given us in the scriptures, in the Holy Spirit, in prayer, and in and the spiritual disciplines that actually fuel and give soul give life to your soul. Verse 12, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. And so in verse 11 again, Peter tells us that we are sojourers and exiles in this world. And what that means is you don't belong to this world. You don't belong to this world. You are citizens of another kingdom, the kingdom of heaven.

Like that is our citizenship. That is where we belong. If they were to look at your driver's license, the address on it is going to be heaven. The address of it is going to be in God, not in this world. You are bound by the law of the gospel, not the law of the earth, which is amazing. It means you can go drive 100 miles an hour on 465 if you want.

Um, no, that is not what it means. Verse 16 says, "Live as people who are free, but not using it as a cover up for evil." Okay? So, it doesn't give you a license to sin. We'll get into more of that in a moment. But your main citizenship, what you need to understand, your main identity is in Christ.

Period. The apostle Paul even in Philippians 3 makes this clear for us that that is who we belong to and that is who rules us and that is whose laws govern us is the law of the gospel not anything else. And so Peter is writing to citizens of the kingdom of heaven as they are sojouring in the kingdom of the earth. And he encourages Christ citizens to keep their conduct among the people of this world honorable, Christlike, so that they those who are not in Christ, those who are not citizens of the kingdom, so that they might see your good deeds and then believe in the son of God where there where these good deeds ultimately derive from. Hopefully that's not my car. Is that my car?

Just checking. Um, it's great. But this is the context here. It's Bryce's. Oh, nice. Oh, he's in he's serving in kids.

Perfect. He's probably tied up in there and a kid's like over there just like going to town on it, you know. serve in little district. Anytime you get a chance, they need it. They need help. All right.

But this is the context here of what we're looking at. That's the two previous verses. One big command to not only be good, abstain from the passions of the flesh, but to then also do good, serve the world with practical deeds of helpfulness. And that's what we covered last week. And so now he's he's starting to then look into which institutions do we actually apply that? Do we actually function um um create an application for this?

And so in other words, Christians should wow the world. Like that's what we're called to do. We are called to wow the world with how much we serve it with deeds that are helpful. Christians again as I mentioned last week we or originated the idea of the modern-day organization of hospitals. We were the ones Christians were the ones who created a universal system for higher education. Christians were the ones who um are the leaders in adoption and fostering um in the United States according to a Barner research.

When I looked at another uh study on uh and this was conducted in all 50 states on those who give to charities and also nonprofits of those who contribute 90% of them are practicing Christians and churchgoers. So 90% of the money contributed to charities and nonprofits come from Christians. These are just some examples, but Christians are called to be good and do good by the grace of God. By the grace of God. And today we're going to answer the question to where, to whom, and how are we called to be and do good? And I'll be honest with you again, principle is going to make sense, but it's and it's going to be easy to understand, but the application could ruffle some feathers.

And so, the first thing I want you to see here is that you're saved out of the world, but ultimately sent back into the world. We're saved out of the world, but we're ultimately sent back into the world. And we draw this language from places like Colossians 1:13. When you say how what do you mean by we're like saved out of the world? What I mean by that is what Jesus says he he has delivered us. That's Jesus.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and he has transferred us to the kingdom of the beloved son. That's what Jesus has done for us. He has come into the world and said no longer are you going to be bound by its law. you are going to be removed from it and I'm going to save you and redeem you and place you in a different kingdom in which you serve a better master and you serve a good God, not terrible gods that were over here and you are now bound by the law of this gospel and in it there is total freedom. Total freedom. You are no longer bound by this.

You are free to do this. Which is why last week he's able to say you are now free to abstain from the passions of the flesh because you're no longer bound to them. You're totally free in the gospel and what it's done. This is true and this is good. And in the kingdom of his beloved son, we are free from that domain of darkness. Now, not free in the sense that we don't have a king anymore.

Christ becomes our king. Christ is king. But free in the sense that we are not ruled by worldly principalities. We went from being a slave to that to now being a slave to Christ. But then God sends us back into it. He sends us back into it into the world on a mission to deliver more people from sin, death, and darkness to be able to share with them exactly what he has done for us in transferring us.

And you're like, where do you get that from? John 17, when Jesus is praying to his father, he says this, "As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world." Well, wait a minute. They never left the world. Exactly. This is a spiritual thing that's going on.

He has transferred us spiritually from the domain of darkness into the spiritual kingdom of the beloved son. Yet physically, you still live at the same address. You're still on earth. So, you're just being sent back into the spiritual domain of darkness where there are still lost people who need to know what Jesus can do for them. And that's why he says in verse 20, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. Through whose word?

Through the word of those who he sent back into the world. And so we are saved out of it, but then sent back into it. We need to understand that for a foundation of what we mean when we are calling when he's calling us to be subject to every human institution. And that's the second thing that I want you to see here. We are subjects of man, but we are ultimately servants of God. We are subjects of man, but servants of God.

Look at verses 13 again. Be subject for the Lord's sake. Again, for the Lord's sake. So, this isn't just a blanket like you do this because you're supposed to do this. We're doing this for God ultimately before we even do it for anyone else. We're doing it for the Lord's sake to every human institution, which I like that he puts that in there because that's vague.

That's vague and that's important as you'll see here in a moment. Whether and he just gives some examples whether it be to the emperor as supreme. The New American Standard Bible uh translates that to a king as the one in authority. Um verse 14, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. And then verse 16, live as people who are free, not ultimately using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but living as servants of God. And so we see in verse 13 says to be subject to humans uh to human institutions as ultimately servants of God.

That's what we're doing as servants of God. We are to be subject to every human institution. Now, what does it mean to be subject to? Because I think we need to understand that. Again, I like the NASB translation of this a little bit better. It means literally to submit yourselves to.

Submit yourselves to. Make yourself available and under to them ultimately for God and ultimately for them to be able to see the good deeds of gospel centered lives that point them to the opportunity to magnify Jesus to to proclaim his excellencies above everything else. And so even though we are free in the kingdom of heaven, we are sent by God to submit ourselves as servants of the kingdom of earth of every human institution. Well, what does that mean? Peter lays out a list for us of different domains in which we submit ourselves to service. Different domains in which we submit ourselves to service.

in in in some way the best way to say it is he's freed us from the shackles that we were bound by and then ultimately brings us into the kingdom of the beloved son and then says I'm going to send you back in and you yourselves put the shackles back on in order to win them for Christ. Now it's not being bound by having to and we'll we'll work this out a little bit with the application of doing everything that they say. That's not what we're talking about. But there is a way in which we live among them for ultimately them to have an opportunity to come to know Jesus. And so I want to give you five of the different categories that he offers us not just in this passage of verses 13-1 17 but over the rest of chapter 2 and beginning of chapter 3. Here's some categories that we are to be subject to.

The first one is citizens of an earthly government. So, we're to be subject to the government in which we live under and which we preside under. That's our that's the verses we're looking at today. The second one that Mike will look at uh next week is workplace, business language that scripture uses is masters and the servants that they have. The third one is family. So, this would be wives, husbands, children.

We'll see that in 1 Peter 3 also. Then church uh Christians in general, the church of Christ. We'll see that uh in 1 Peter 3:8 as well. And then the fifth category I want to give you is just the one that he started off with. Every human institution that could be education, that could be police, they could be military, there's teachers and students, they could be sports, there's coaches and players. Like almost everything that we are a part of has some level of someone in authority and someone in submission.

And God ordained ultimately everything to function that way and it to not function so that it would be abused but function in a way for us to ultimately display the greater story of submission of God being in authority and us being in submission to him that in obedience to him leads to life leads to life like it's joyful obedience I mean you go back to the garden of Eden if they would have stayed in joyful obedience life. But when they decided to to listen and submit to something else other than God and believe a lie rather than truth, their disobedience and their lack of submission to God led to anarchy and disobedience and no submission and therefore brought in death. It brought in death. And so that's what you get if you have a if you have a society that says we don't want to submit and we want to live in anarchy. We want to do whatever we want to do. We want to live however we want to live.

I mean, this goes back to the judges. They did whatever they you wanted to do and that was that was right in their own eyes. And it did not work out well for them. It never does because we are human. We are finite. We are not infinitely wisdom like God is.

And so it leads to death. And so God creates these ultimate these institutions. He ordains these institutions. And not all of them go well. We'll talk about that. Not all of them are ultimately representing how God designed them to function.

Again, as he mentions here, governors who are supposed to punish evil and praise good depends on how you clarify and define good. Because we are finding ourselves in a society right now that is defining good in a different way that is outside of the scriptural bounds. And therefore what it's leading them to is death, not life. And they are actually praising evil and punishing good. Punishing good. And so we'll talk about how we are to subject ourselves even in that type of place.

And so another question to kind of ask when looking at these five categories is well which human institutions do we actually submit to? Which ones? Like does this mean that we submit ourselves to the government of Russia? Like which institutions does this mean we submit ourselves to the church down the road? Does this mean that we, you know, as um as husbands, do we lay down our lives for someone else's wife? As wives, do we submit to someone else's husband?

Who which institutions do we actually submit or subject ourselves to? Well, Acts 17:26 through31, I'm not going to read. I'm just going to paraphrase. It tells us that God has allotted the time, period, and boundaries of every person's dwelling places. And so, in other words, it's no coincidence. It's no accidents that you live in the time you live and you live in the place you live and you're a part of the family that you're a part of and that you're in the workplace that you're in and that you have the skill sets to be able to contribute to society with the skill sets that you have that God has ordained for you that you're a part of the church that you're a part of.

Like none of those things are a coincidence. And so my qu or so to answer the question which human institution do we submit to? You submit to the one that you're in. That's what you do. You submit to the one that you are in. Where do you live?

You submit to that government. Like wherever you find like if you look on your like I'm not sure on your driver's license, on your form of identity, whatever it is. Where do you belong? Where do you pay your taxes? That's the government in which we subject ourselves to as far as a human institution goes. Where do you work?

Most people have someone that they that they report to, unless you own your business and you were the CEO of it. But even in that, you probably still have a board or you still have a co-founder. You still have somebody that you're working together with. But where do you work? That's the institution that you submit to. Who did you marry?

That's the person that you submit to. Who are your parents if you were a child? That is the husband or the the father and the mother that you ultimately submit to. What church did you join? That's the church that you submit to. All of these are institutions designed by God for us to steward for the sake of God in his glory.

In verse 15 and 12 encourage us to not be in anarchy towards the current human institutions that he has put us in aka again government, business, family, education, military, police, etc. But we are to seek its welfare to seek its good. And honestly, I think if if if um where things get messy is when we stop submitting. I mean, you think about it in all of those categories, that's when things get real messy. Now, it doesn't mean that we don't ever push back and that there's constructive criticism and that there's there there there's faithful correction, but there is still subjection. There's still honor.

There's a way to do it that is honoring everyone because ultimately we're doing it Christlike. We're doing it for the Lord's sake. And so as citizens of another kingdom totally free, we enter into these human institutions and we submit ourselves with love and honor so that we might introduce sinners to the Savior. That's what we're doing in these in this regard. And I want to show you an example of this um that submission is to Christ first and ultimately these other institutions second. When you look at the temple text in Matthew 17 24-27 Jesus gives a good example of how this kind of um functions as far as freedom and submission.

Verse 24 he says this. When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the two drama taxs went up to Peter and said, "Does your teacher not pay the tax?" Talking about Jesus. And he said, "Yes." And when he came into the house, um Jesus spoke to him first, saying, "What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax?

From their sons or from others?" Now, remember, this is a temple tax. And Jesus knowing who he is and who the father is in his role over the temple. Think about that in regards to the question being asked here. Who pays tax from their sons or from others? And when he said from others, Jesus said to him, then the sons are free.

So, in regards to who's owning the temple and who should pay tax to it, essentially what Jesus is saying is, I'm free to not have to quote unquote do that. But for the sake of the human institution of the temple, I am going to submit to it and pay tax. Think about that in regards to kingdom of the beloved son. who are the sons and daughters that are free in regards to the law of the land but enter into it and abide by paying a tax or submitting to what they are ultimately doing. And so this is what Jesus says. However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up and when you open its mouth, you will find a shekele.

Take that and give it to them for me and also for yourself. So Jesus, though he doesn't have to, submits himself to it in order to honor, in order for them to have an opportunity to see what he has come to accomplish because of who Christ is and what Christ sends us to do. We submit to Christ by submitting to and serving the human institutions of the world. And in verse 15, our text, Peter even tells us that this is the will of God for your life. This is the will of God for your life. How many of us when we were I mean I I tend to think of it in college terms, but we were in college and we're sitting around asking that question, man, what's the will of God for my life?

What's the will of God for my life? And what we usually do in regards to that is we're looking for answers that are based on where am I going to live? What am I going to do as far as a job or a career? Who am I going to marry? How many kids am I going to have? what hobbies am I gonna you know like what is the will of God for my life we think in specifics not in generalities and what he says here is it's actually the will of God for your life is not what country you belong to but it's what you do in your country it's not what career you choose but what you choose to do with your career it's not who you marry but what you choose to do in your marriage it's not what church you join But what you do as a part of the church, the body of Christ, as you again as you look at this text, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be the emperor or supreme or to governors is sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.

For this is the will of God that by doing good in those institutions, you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. So this is a gospel like the will of God for your life is less about what career you're doing but how you leverage that career for the sake of Christ in the gospel. It's less about who you marry but about what you do with your marriage that shows the relationship of Christ in the church that puts the gospel on display. It's more about what you are doing for the sake of Christ than it is it checking off your preferences in life. What kind of house I have or whether or not it has a great view or whether or not I have a 401k that's building and ready and or or like it's not about those things that are serving me, but it's ultimately about whether or not we're leveraging those things to serve Christ and for his sake. That's what we're doing.

That's the will of God for your life. And so when I talk to younger people that are kind of figuring those things out, when I was a youth pastor and I was speaking with students and you know, they had to have their lives figured out before they go off to college because that's the scam of it all. You know, it's like they're 18 years old and they got to know exactly what they're going to do. And I would just tell them all the time, don't worry about it because you're going to change it 10 times over the next 10 years. What you need to make sure is that wherever you find yourself and whoever you find yourself with, doing whatever it is that that God gifts you with, make sure that you're making disciples. Making disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded you to do.

That's their goal. That's the will of God for your life. And what that should actually do is actually should take some pressure off of you that you don't have to get all the specifics correct. And so it's never going to be once we arrive at the very specific house that we have in our mind then we can start to live our lives. No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're in that, you know, halfbedroom apartment.

It doesn't matter if you have the one the one child and you're still wanting to have three children. It doesn't matter where you find yourself. What matters is what you are doing where you are. Whether or not you are submitting to the institutions that you find yourself in right now at this specific time and moment in your life. And are you leveraging it to do good so that it puts to silence those who are ignorant? Which is again where we all were.

Where we all were. And because God sent missionaries back into the domain of darkness while we were ignorant and foolish, we were able to see the gospel word. Remember what he said in John 17:20 that I'm not only praying for those who already know me, but I'm praying for those who will by the word of those who are sent. which means those who were sent chose to live in a very very specific place. But God ordained that because he says that in Acts 17 and under his sovereignty because they chose to buy this specific house, they ended up reaching their neighbor for the Lord. That's my story.

Like the literally the the the family that moved next door to me in White House, Tennessee makes no sense. Makes no sense. And the reason why I say that is because they only lived there for about two years. And prior to that, they lived in a neighborhood where the family worked, where they went to church, uh where the the extended family that they had all lived. They lived in Hendersonville, Tennessee. That's where all of their world revolved around.

And then for two years, God uprooted them and moved them next door to to to 108 Pebble Creek Court, White House, Tennessee. and he placed them there. And for that two years, I was the Bart Simpson next door. They were the Ned Flanders and they shared the gospel with me. And if you didn't grow up in a non-Christian home, you might not know that reference. I was the one trying to corrupt them and they were sharing the gospel with me.

And as soon as I got saved, as soon as I got saved, they moved. They moved. Guess where? back to Hendersonville, Tennessee. I was like, "Why did y'all" And it's like, "Okay, they were sojouring." And as they were sojouring, God had work for them to do.

God had work for them to do. You're where you are is not an accident. The career you're in is not an accident. Who you're married to is not an accident, though sometimes you might think that. Everything that you belong to is not an accident. It's not a coincidence.

It is ordained by God to leverage to send you into it as a missionary in order that where you are there are lost people who need to hear the gospel because they are ignorant and they are foolish and they need the truth and they need to be able to see and they need to be able to have an understanding of who God is. And that's why you're there. That's why you're there. So where are we? As people who have been rescued by Jesus out of the domain of darkness, freed from the bondage of sin, made citizens of the kingdom of heaven, were sent into the world to submit and to serve every human institution by doing good, which includes good deeds and also must always include the spreading of the word of God. The spreading of the word of God.

And so where I want to spend the rest of our time just a little bit here is how do we do this? How do we do this? And it kind of finishes out in the way that he organizes this in chap in verse 17. And I'm just going to put it in three categories here. Fear God, love the church, honor everyone. Includes the emperor that he mentions here.

Fear God, love the church, honor everyone. To look at those three briefly, here's here's what he's really calling of us. First and foremost, fear God. Fear God. And I think it's really important that he puts that in there because when you're talking about every human institution, he's not calling you to fear them. He's not calling you to fear them.

He's calling you ultimately to fear God. Now, we do honor them, but we do not have to fear them. Fearless fear of God is what we're talking about. If you stand before the emperor, the governor, the president, and he wants you to recent, you can't because you fear God, not man. You fear God over any earthly ruler. And so this idea of being subject to does not mean being in blind affirmation and agreement with.

That's not what we're talking about. and and being subject to submitting to them does not mean that you do what they tell you to do. Fear God ultimately first, them second, and it's in that right order. And if what they're doing is not punishing evil and praising good, there is a way in which we honor by speaking truth and correction, by calling it out. And if they put you to death for it, then so be it. So be it.

You've served your time. You get to come back to the kingdom of the beloved son. You get to go home and hear those faithful words, well done. Well done. So, we fear God ultimately and not fear man. Unfortunately, I think we have too many Christians who fear man and government and reputation and lifestyle more than they fear God.

More than they fear God. John Bevere I heard in a podcast recently put it this way. The fear of the Lord is what keeps believers from casual compromised living. Without the fear of God, people treat sin lightly and they drift spiritually. Remember that idea is live as free but do not use it as a way to cover up evil. I think too many times we're sent back in and we still kind of heir on this side of we're totally free so we can do whatever we want.

And that actually sometimes causes us to have this light casual living in which not only are we may be covering up our own sin, but we are also covering up the evil of others by not exposing it because we are just well they're they're just being foolish. They're just doing what they're going to do. Sinners are going to sin. Like how many times have we've heard that like sinners are going to sin? Yeah. And they need to know that it is a sin.

They need to know that it is a sin. How are they how else are they ever going to change? I mean, Paul when he talks about the law, he's like, "How how would I have known that I was murdering Christians without knowing the law told me to murder or told me not to murder them?" Like, pointing out truth and explaining truth, spreading the word of God is what allows for people to understand the conviction that I shouldn't be doing this. I should be serving and and submitting to Christ. Ultimately, we need to know that.

Again, fear of the Lord is not to make you terrified of God. But the fe the fear of the Lord is not terror. It's a deep awareness of God's holiness, of his authority, of his judgment. In other words, many Christians struggle with obedience. Or I could also insert that as submission to God. We struggle with submission to God not because they lack love, but because they lack reverence of God.

We lack reverence of God. We've heard so much, God is loving. God is loving. God is loving. That it's gotten so watered down that it means God accepts you regardless of what you do. God affirms.

I don't I've never seen that scripture before. No, God does love you and he does meet you at your worst and then he says, "It's time to change. It's time to change. It's time to correct. It's time to get you on the right path. It's time to get you walking in step with the Holy Spirit, not in step with the spirit of this age.

We need to know that because that's what he's doing. And and a healthy fear of God anchors us and keeps us connected to God. Awtoer puts it this way. When men no longer fear God, they transgress his laws without hesitation. Without hesitation. And then if we're sent into the world to actually be good and do good by the sake of Christ and by the power of Christ, if we forget about that and we no longer fear the God who sent us into it, we actually just start looking like everyone else.

And we're and and so then when you actually bring hypocrisy into the mix, we're trying to tell the world, "Stop doing things." And they're like, "But you're doing it." And you're doing it under the banner of the gospel. So why should we change? Why should we believe that this is good for us? Again, I'm not trying to diminish the love of God.

I believe the love of God draws us near to him. But the fear of God also keeps you aligned with him. It keeps you aligned with him. Remove fear and obedience weakens every single time. Remove fear. If you so focus on the love of God without the fear of God, obedience is going to weaken every single time.

Every single time. And if you remove obedience, ultimately that intimacy that we have with God, it fades. It fades. The fear of God fuels faithfulness to God, which also fuels faithfulness to the church of God, which also then fuels faithfulness to actually subject ourselves to every human institution. So, we need to make sure that we have it rightly prioritized who we fear above anything and and and to kind of help you just understand what I mean by that, it means what like we keep ourselves in a position that whatever he says is what we do. Whatever he says is what we do.

Which means we need to know the word of God. And we need to stay in abiding relationship with him at all times. At all times. You let the leash get too long and all of a sudden we stop hearing the word of God. We stop knowing the intimacy of him. The conviction starts to fail.

And that's where we start to use the word desensitized. We're no longer having the hard conviction of what God has called us to be. we no longer have the conviction to put away um to abstain from the passions of the flesh. The further away you get from uh from what God loves and you start getting closer to what God hates, but you're no longer close with his love and abiding relationship. Well, then you're not going to hate it anymore. You're actually going to start to love it.

And that's what he's saying. You got to abstain from that. What we talked about last week was actually not just saying I'm I'm going to say no to sin, but it's actually running from it. as we looked at the story of Joseph, like run from it, create strategic withdrawal from it, whatever it is. And the best way to stay away from the passions of the flesh is to stay close to God every single time. Stay close to God.

And as you do that, you'll also submit to the love of the brotherhood, the love for the church. And and I love that he does use different language here when it comes to honoring like fearing God is ultimate. Honoring everyone else and every other human institution is lower. Love is in the middle. Love is in the middle. Love the brotherhood.

It's a it's a special affection that we are to give to the church, to Christians. Again, honor and love are not the same thing. I can honor the president of Planned Parenthood by showing them good and doing good for them, but I do not have to love them in the same way that I love my brother or sister in Christ. That's important. In love, I am accountable to my brother and sister in Christ. I am in submission to the pastoral elders of the church.

I can serve someone who has differing world view than I do, but I do not have to love them by affirming their worldview. I don't have to do that. I can love them and serve them and show them good deeds in the name of Christ, but I do not have to affirm and agree with what they do. I I I get so frustrated with like friends. I mean, I have a list in my head of people right now that I'm thinking of who have family members that because their family members are living a an alternative lifestyle from what the bibl what the Bible ordains that they're like, "Well, we we don't want to sever our relationship with our family members by telling them the truth. Instead, we are just going to love them.

And because we're moving closer to the love rather than the fear of God, it ends up landing in actually affirming them and celebrating them. And that is not what he has called us to do at all. You can still love and submit yourselves to the human institution of family without affirming and agreeing with them. You can honor them in this. So we do especially love, affirm and submit to the encouragement and edification of our brothers and sisters in Christ. And we also submit to and serve those who are not our brothers and sisters in Christ.

But we do not have to love them in the same covenantal way we do those who are in Christ. It's important to understand that. It's okay to say that. It's okay to say that. Which kind of comes like in a functional way. I'll always say if someone sends me an email and requests a lunch on a certain day and they're not a member of the church, but someone else that is a member of the church emails me and says, "Can I get a lunch on this specific day?"

And it happens to be that one. The member is going to get the priority. they're going to get the priority. Now, let's take this a little step further as we dive into the honor everyone. Honor all people appropriate to their role. Honor all people appropriate to their role.

I think that's why he uses this language, emperor as supreme. That the as there is very important. the emperor as supreme or as the NASB says the king as the one in authority, the governor as the one who enforces policy. Again, it should be a good policy, punishment for evil and praise for good. Honor everyone. Now, um when I was doing research on this and I was listening to uh John Piper kind of unpack this in an Ask John Piper podcast, he said, "What about he used the term rapists?

How do you honor rapists? Right now, the hot topic is the is pedophiles. Honor everyone. How do you honor pedophiles? And again, his comments that he puts on this are even the prisoner should be honored as an image bearer of God by receiving a fair trial and a just fitting punishment. So, there can still be shown honor.

What this looks like in a lowhonor culture is that regardless of the crime, if it's a crime, you might get put to death immediately. You might get put to death immediately. You steal something death. Is that honoring? Probably not. So we got to look at how can we still honor the fact that this is an individual who is made in the image of God who yes committed a crime and therefore we have a system that should be a good system.

We have a system in which we honor them by giving a fair trial but then also a fair or just fitting punishment. I like what um John I always get the the last name mixed up here or the it's really actually a nickname for him but Christom who was um early church father in the fourth late fourth century early fifth century he actually had a nickname golden mouth um because he was considered like the the best preacher of his day. Um, but he says this, "Do not say he is a murderer. Remember that he is a man. The work of God." The work of God.

Like that's a hard application for us when we think about when we see the headlines, when we're scrolling Facebook and we see the Epstein Files or what we can see of the Epstein files. How do you honor those people? That's a hard one to work out. But yet, he tells us to honor everyone. We honor everyone because we believe Psalm 139 to be true. That God knit everyone together in their mother's womb.

Even those on the list, they bear God's image. How do we honor everyone that we disagree with? Again, the liberal, the conservative, the Democrat, the Republican, the pro-choicer, the pro-lifeer, the person who's been jabbed 29 times, and the antiaxer, the one who has aborted a baby, and the one who has miscarried a baby. How do you honor everyone? All people everywhere are to have Christians who serve them with honor, dignity, value, seen as a person, not a policy. Honor everyone.

What honor does not mean? It does not mean blind affirmation of everyone's beliefs. It does not mean blind affirmation of everyone's beliefs. There is a kingdom of earth that is in continuation. So kingdom of earth in continuation and then there is the church age and era that has ushered in the kingdom of God. And for the time being those two overlap each other.

And as they overlap each other we are sent we are of this kingdom and we are sent into this kingdom. And we are sent into it to subject and submit ourselves to the government in order to promote to promote what is good, to do what is good, to vote for what is good, to serve what is good, to create what is good, so long as what is good is correctly defined by the word of God alone. So we're not we're not voting in politicians to tell us what is good. We are voting in politicians and submitting to the process of our government in that process of voting in order to establish what we see scripturally is good for a society for a people. So that it ultimately in doing that good, it puts to silence the ignorance of foolish people and it punishes evil. That's the role of it.

That's what it should be doing. This must be active and it must be proactive involvement instead of passive or lazy Christianity. In other words, do not use your freedom to cover up evil. Rather, use your freedom to expose evil. To expose evil. One of the greatest ways that you can actually honor others is by telling them that what they're doing is wrong.

If a government ever gets this backwards and they start praising what is evil and punishing what is good, the way we honor is by speaking truth and seeking correction. Seeking correction. The Bible is presented example after example that this is what invites the judgment and wrath of God. When a government gets it wrong, when they get it wrong and they punish good and promote or praise evil, for example, if a nation or people approve of, affirm, and legislate what the Bible considers sexual immorality, that practice brings God's judgment. It does. Read Sodom and Gomorrah.

Read about it. Look at Romans 1. Like this is that is the litmus test for a nation that is praising evil and punishing good. And it says every single time it invites the judgment of God. And so, how should Christians submit to a government that is heading in that direction? Well, we want to promote and vote and create policies that are anti- praising evil and punishing good because what we're ultimately wanting to do is we're wanting to steady the hand in the judgment of God and say don't not yet.

We want to try to help and serve these people for the sake of Christ. We want them to right now what they're doing is ignorant and it's foolish and so send us into this. We don't want to just sit on the couch and say just because we elected something that we have no work to do. We have to actively engage in every human institution in order for it to ultimately come to know Jesus Christ. Obviously not the human institution. You you can't baptize America, but you can share the gospel with every individual that is a citizen of it and hope that as they get baptized, really, you're praying the Lord's Prayer, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

That's what we're praying. If that sounds like a Christian nationalist, please hear me say this. I love my nation. This is what was Josh Howard is how he phrases it. If everyone like says you are a Christian nationalist, just just simply respond with saying I love my nation and I love Christ. I'm not trying to baptize the nation by policy and make it Christian forcibly.

But what I am saying is that I want to bring the gospel into every human institution. And I want to see people no longer be ignorantly and foolish. And I want to see them come to know Jesus Christ and to be individually baptized. And then as they grow in the gospel and the word of God and his design for a society, they start then implementing it in their lives. So that not only does their circle or their neighborhood start to look beautiful like the welfare of the city that it should be, but also so does the county, so does the city, so does the state, so does the nation. What's the opposite?

If we sit back on the couch, it's going to be taken over because evil is not going to take a day off. And so, it's going to become the opposite. And when it does, it invites God's judgment. And so, he's sent us into it saying, "Spread the gospel. Make disciples of all nations." If you actually take that to mean what it means, then that means go and Christianize all nations.

Not by policy, but by person to person to person, which will by default affect policy down the road because they will then vote for and they will then institute things that are biblical. when we just leave it up to the powers that be, you don't want to know who those powers are. And so sometimes this is going to look like us pointing out evil. And and and this is where the application is difficult for us because when we point out evil, often times what's going to happen is the other side is going to say of you that you are doing something that is evil. Whether that sounds like you're mocking their religion or their beliefs or their worldview or that you hate them or that you are narrow-minded and bigoted. like they're going to say things that's going to make you feel like I'm not honoring them.

I'm not loving them. And we got to realize that honoring everyone again does not come down to affirming them, loving them, and just letting them do and say and believe whatever they want to do, say, and believe. You have to expose it. You have to expose it. You have to teach them. We have to tell them this is what God's word actually says for us.

I actually love like um just this last week there was I don't you probably didn't see it but um I'm sure everyone saw the the I'm going to get myself in hot water here. It's totally fine. I'm sure everyone saw Trump's tweet on Easter, which I don't I I I wish he didn't use the f-word on Easter. That'd be great. At the same time, he also said a lot of other things in that tweet as far as like, you know, killing off a civilization um as well as uh mocking another uh Islamic religion when he said, "Praise Allah as I go through this process." Again, this is not a blanket statement of any type of support for the tweet.

Is it still called a tweet? I don't know. Yeah, it was on Truth Social. So, whatever they call it, um, is what it was. But here's the thing. There was another video that was played by Tucker Carlson, okay?

Who conservativeleaning on the right, refers to himself as a Christian, and as he's responding to it, he essentially says to mock someone else's faith is a mockery of faith itself. And I just don't agree with that. I don't agree with that because again, regardless of who it came from as far as the fact that it came from President Trump and regardless of of the other atrocities that were within the message itself, the one thing that he actually did that is actually biblical is mocking a false religion. It's like pin drop. All right. It's like, where's he go?

Where's he going with this? In First Kings 18, this is one of my favorite favorite stories of Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Elijah's the only prophet of God left. And there's 450 prophets of Baal. And if you're like, who's Baal? a false god, a demonic god behind the scenes pulling the strings that is creating a society of people who are praising evil and punishing good.

Like that's what's going on. And he says, "Hey, let's let's have a showdown. Let's have a moment. Let's have a Super Bowl Sunday where you bring all your 450 prophets and you bring them bring two bowls and I'm going to show up as well. and we're going to call on our gods, bring fire down on this altar, on this sacrifice, and we'll see which god answers. And so he even lets them, you choose which bull you want, you get to go first.

You get to do whatever you want. And those 450 prophets came and they cut the bull up and they set up the altar and they they started spinning it in circles, going around it in circles, starting asking um their their prophet of their their bail to come down and set the thing on fire to show that he is the one true God. And guess what? They started early in the morning and hours later they get to midday and nothing happens. They're even limping around like they're exhausted at this point. And as they're limping around this thing, calling on Baal, guess what Elijah's doing?

Elijah's not over on the side saying,"I actually like very impressed by your faith. I'm actually really impressed by your faithfulness to this religion. I'm actually like I'm I admire you guys. I actually see that you do some good deeds every once in a while. I see that like No, no, no, no. You know what he's doing?

He's over there mocking them. He's saying maybe maybe Baal's like taking some time off. Maybe he's actually relieving himself in the bathroom right now. Like he actually says that he is publicly mocking a false demon because that's what it deserves. That's what it deserves in order for people to see that it is ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

And then I love it. He doubles down when it's his time. He says, "Hey, I'm going to set this up. I'm actually going to build a trench around it and I want you to douse it in water." What usually does not go well with fire? Water.

He says, "I want you to douse it. I want you to douse it again. I want you to douse it a third time." So much so that that trench he built, he created a pool that this thing is sitting in. And then he calls on the one true God. And that thing, it says the fire came down and it drank up the water.

And what's amazing is all of the people who were following the prophet Baal, it says they turned to the one true God. They left their ignorance because they saw the ridiculousness of it. And it also helped that he was mocking it. And then they came to the true God and started serving him. That's what we're talking about. That's what part of this process is for us.

Again, it does not mean that we affirm all people, agree with all people, allow all people to cover up their own evil. Rather, by doing good and teaching what is good, it exposes it and therefore others will believe the word of those who are sent who are sent. It's how we ultimately honor someone. How we honor them. And to close it out for us guys, as we come to communion, Jesus is the clearest and most compelling example of what it looks like to do everything we talked about today. To do everything we talked about today.

Jesus looks like, he shows us what it looks like to live in humble, God- centered submission across every sphere of life. Though he is Lord of all, he willingly honored earthly authority. Luke 20 verse 25 rendered to Caesar. What is Caesars's? He submitted in the home. He went down with them and was submissive to his parents.

Luke 22:51 fulfilled his calling under imperfect leadership without sin. 1 Peter 2 21-23. And he ultimately yielded to the father's will above all. As Luke 22:42 says, "Not my will but yours be done." Not my will but yours be done. Church, as we come to this table, he prayed that prayer, not my will, but yours be done.

while he was in the garden sweating blood, submitting to every human institution for the sake of God and the glory of God, even if that institution puts him to death. And even Jesus, this is why I say it's going to be so hard for us to actually apply this because even Jesus prayed, "Father, if there's another cup, it's going to be hard." But ultimately, where he landed, not my will, but yours be done. Not my will, but yours be done. Where every human institution gets it wrong is when they say my will not yours. This is a reminder for us that when we leave here from today and we are sent back into every human institution that we belong to.

May we pray that same prayer. Not my will but yours be done. Let's stand. Father, we thank you so much for this morning. We thank you for hard truths. We thank you that your word shapes us