The Government and the Believer - Life of Paul Part 67

Well, good morning. Good morning. How's everybody?

Yeah, good. Hey, welcome to all you guys down in Overflow. We're glad that you're here. Thanks for coming. Hey, if you brought a Bible, how about opening it with me to Acts chapter 19? We're going to be continuing in our study of the life of the great man, the apostle Paul. And, you know, most of us here, I think, know who Judge Roy Moore is.

But just in case you happen to be on the moon this summer, let me refresh your memory. Judge Moore was the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. And in August of 2001, Judge Moore secretly installed a 5,300 pound monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building. Immediately, lawsuits were filed to have it removed, claiming that it violated the separation between church and state. And this began a two-year legal battle that finally culminated this past summer with a federal court ordering that the monument be removed or threatening to find the state of Alabama $5,000 a day until it was removed. Moore, as I think we all know, refused to comply.

And this gained national media attention. People traveled from all over the United States to come and stand with Judge Moore and pray with Judge Moore. Finally, the other eight justices of the Supreme Court in Alabama overrode Judge Moore, had the monument removed. They also suspended Moore, charging him, and I quote, with judicial misconduct and, quote, willfully failing to comply with a binding court order directed at him, end of quote. And if he's found guilty, the court can impose a variety of penalties on Judge Moore, including stripping him of his judgeship, suspending him from the bench. The attorney general of Alabama, Bill Pryor, who's prosecuting Moore, said, and I quote, the rule of law means that no person, including the chief justice of Alabama, is above the law, end of quote. Well, Moore in response said, and I quote, when a court departs from the law and tells you what you can think and who you can believe in, that judge has overstepped his oath and he can't do that. Judges simply don't have that power, end of quote. And Judge Moore, of course, has appealed this to the United States Supreme Court.

So we'll wait and see how it all turns out. Now, the important point is for us to realize that Judge Moore's situation is not something new. Believers in Jesus Christ have struggled to figure out how to relate to secular human government ever since secular human government began. For example, there was Moses and the Egyptian government of Yul Brynner.

There was Daniel and his three friends and, of course, the Babylonian government. There were the early disciples in the New Testament and the Roman government. Even today, we have followers of Christ who live in communist countries, who live under Islamic regimes, who live in Israel, and have to deal every day with their relationship with a hostile secular government.

And it's not just in other countries. Here in the United States, of course, we have Operation Rescue, where followers of Christ trespass at abortion clinics, where they get arrested, fined, and even serve jail sentences in some cases, all because they believe that the secular government of America had no right to legalize abortion and they have a civil duty to disobey. So, what's the deal here? I mean, how are we as followers of Jesus Christ supposed to relate to human government? Well, that's what we want to talk about today, growing out of an incident in the life of the Apostle Paul. So, let's jump in.

A little bit of background. Remember, here in Acts 19, the Apostle Paul is on his third missionary journey in the city of Ephesus. He has spent two and a half years here, and the result is that the entire Roman province of Asia, let's show you a map, everything green that you see, the whole western side of modern day Turkey, was permeated and saturated with the message of Christ as the result of Paul's ministry. Now he's getting ready to leave town, but as he does, a huge riot breaks out in town. Remember that the temple of the goddess Diana, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was here in Ephesus, and people would come from all over the world to worship here, to buy souvenirs here, and there was a lucrative souvenir business in town, and one of the leaders of that business, a fellow named Demetrius, became worried that Paul was leading so many people to Christ it was going to hurt his business. So he organized this huge riot in town. Well, the people, they couldn't find Paul, the rioters, so the rabble grabbed two of his associate missionaries, Gaius and Aristarchus, and they dragged them down into the theater that's here in Ephesus, and verse 30 says that Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples wouldn't let him. Even some of the Asiarchs who were friends of Paul sent a message begging him not to venture into the theater.

Now that's where we've been, so let's pick up right now and see where we're going. Verse 32. And the assembly was in confusion. Some were shouting one thing and some another. The scene here was one of total pandemonium, Luke says, and the verse 32 continues, most of the people didn't even know why they were there. Hey, you know, they were just like, hey, there's a riot in the theater. What do you say? Let's go down, check it out.

And they didn't even know what the riot was about. You say, well, that sounds kind of dumb. It's no dumber than you following ambulances when they pull in your neighborhood to go see who's sick. You say, I don't do that. Oh, yes, you do. I've been in your neighborhood. I know what you do.

And see, it's none of your business either, but you're curious. That's why they went down to the theater. They didn't have a clue what was going on, but they joined in the riot anyway. I mean, this is hysterical. It's biblical humor, which is why you're not laughing, but this is hysterical.

It is. Now, okay, well, the Jews pushed verse 33, Alexander to the front, and he motioned for silence in order to make a defense in front of the people. As soon as the crowd realized he was Jewish, they all shouted in unison for about two hours.

Great is Diana of the Ephesians. Apparently, the Jewish community in town wanted to make sure that the crowd knew that they had nothing to do with Paul and the missionaries. They wanted a clear line of separation. So they appointed this spokesman, Alexander, to go up and present their position. But all he did is make the crowd madder. Well, verse 35, the city clerk quieted the crowd and said, men of Ephesus, doesn't all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great goddess Diana, an upper image which fell from heaven?

Her image was made out of a meteorite. That's what he's talking about. And the city clerk here, we know we have copious archeological information telling us there was such an office in Ephesus. Let me tell you what he did. He was the liaison officer between the local government of Ephesus, like the government of Washington, D.C., and the federal Roman government, like the federal government today. He was the go-between guy who kept them all happy with each other. And he stands up and says, this riot is getting out of control.

I need to do something. Verse 36, therefore, he says, since these facts that we're the guardians of the temple are undeniable, you ought to be quiet and not do anything rash. He says, you have brought these men, that is Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul's friends here, even though they are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of our goddess. Now, notice what the town clerk says to the mob. He says, hey, everybody, Paul and his missionary associates, they are not lawbreakers. They haven't publicly blasphemed our goddess, which, by the way, was against the law in Ephesus, nor have they robbed temples. This was an idiom that was used in the Roman Empire to talk about lawless behavior and criminal behavior. He says, these guys have kept the law. They haven't done anything wrong.

What are you doing? Let me summarize the rest of the passage. He goes on to say to them, look, if you've got some charges against Paul or against his friends, there's a court system in town.

Now, I don't know of anything, but if you know of something, take it to court. Meanwhile, the Romans don't like riots, and we definitely don't want the Roman army coming into this temple to pay us a visit, so go home. Verse 41, and after he had said this, he dismissed the assembly. Now, here, friends, is the cogent point that I want you to get out of all of this, and that is that had Paul had a habit of defying the government, defying the authority of either the local government or the Roman government in any way during his stay in Ephesus, certainly the city clerk would have known about it, but as far as the city clerk was concerned, look what he said here. He said Paul and his associates are law-abiding citizens. They deserve the protection of the law.

They deserve the due process of the law. I don't know of anything they've done wrong, is what he says. And remember, back in verse 31, we saw that the Asiarchs, that many of them were friends of Paul, these were local Roman officials, very high-ranking Roman officials, and it's impossible to think that they would have allied themselves with Paul and publicly been friends with Paul if Paul was an insurrectionist or causing trouble or a law-breaker.

It's illogical they wouldn't have done it. Sir William Ramsey, the great expert on the life of Paul, wrote, and I quote, The speech of the town clerk directly negates the charges against Paul and his companions, namely that they were disrespectful in action or in language against the established institutions and laws of the Roman government. Moreover, he says, the friendly policy displayed by the Asiarchs towards Paul is proof that Roman imperial policy was not yet hostile to Christianity and that they, as Roman officials, did not regard Paul as dangerous or as carrying on any unlawful or subversive actions against the state. End of quote. The point here, friends, is that when it came to relations with the government, the apostle Paul was a model citizen. Here in Ephesus, in two and a half years, he hadn't even gotten a speeding ticket in his chariot. Nothing.

He was a law-abiding model citizen, and the clerk was able to stand up and say to the mob, everybody knows that these people have not broken the law in any way. Now, that's as far as we want to go in the passage today because we got a question we need to ask. So, bada bing, bada boom. You all ready? Here we go.

One, two, three. So what? Right.

Ceylon, so what? What difference does this make to me? I mean, what are we even talking about?

How does this relate to my life at all? I don't think it does. Well, I'm sorry. I think you're wrong. I do think it does.

And let me tell you why. Because, friends, we live in the most political town in the world. I mean, President Bush could sneeze in public in this town, and it would somehow become a partisan political issue. This town has the most unbelievable ability to make everything political, and what that means is that as followers of Jesus Christ living in the city of Washington, above followers of Christ living anywhere else, we need to know what God tells us about how he wants us to relate to secular human government because we are living at the central point of secular human government for all of America. And besides this, on a more spiritual level, this issue, how should Christians relate to politics and political action, this is one of the most divisive issues among evangelical Christians today. I've seen followers of Christ say some of the nastiest, meanest stuff about one another over this issue. Political activists will call non-activists backsliders, liberal, compromisers.

Political non-activists will call activists rebels and hotheads and fanatics. And so what does the Bible really say about this? I mean, are there any guidelines in the Bible at all about how we are to relate to secular human government?

Well, the answer is yes, and I want to talk to you about it because Paul has just illustrated them for us. Romans chapter 13 says this, Rulers hold no terror for those who do right. Do what is good, and rulers will praise you. For human government is a minister of God to you for the common good. But if you do what is evil, you should be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword in vain. Now here in these verses, God reiterates to us, reminds us of the three purposes of human secular government. Number one, to encourage right doing in society. That's why he says do what is right and rulers will praise you. Number two, to punish wrongdoing in society. That's why he says that rulers do not bear the sword in vain. He's referring to the fact that rulers in the time of Paul would wear a ceremonial sword every time they were in public, indicative of the authority they had to punish wrongdoers even to the point of the death penalty.

That's what he's talking about. And finally, human government as a purpose has to maintain order in society. That's why he says here that government is a minister of God for the common good. Now in telling us this, God is encouraging us to cherish human government, to love human government. For without human government, stable human society would be impossible. No matter how bad a civil government may be, it's better than anarchy. To have every man doing what's right in his own eyes is the worst possible condition for a human society.

And what's more, it's important for us as followers of Christ to realize that stable human society has always been the kind of society in which the message of Jesus Christ has been able to spread and proliferate most successfully. Now I want to ask you a question and I want everybody here to be brutally honest, okay? All right, you ready? How many of you guys went to high school? Yeah, most of you. All right, do you remember when you went to high school, do you remember Pox Romana? You say, yeah, I remember that. That was a disease like small pox, chicken pox, monkey pox.

No, no, no. Pox Romana is Latin and it refers to the stability and the order that the Roman Empire brought to the entire Mediterranean basin for two or three centuries. And friends, historians agree that this was one of the key reasons why the message of Jesus was able to spread so rapidly and so pervasively in the New Testament times and in the two centuries after that because there was a stable orderly political framework in which the message of Christ was able to do that. And in light of this, God tells us as followers of Christ that we have a duty, we have a responsibility to promote and maintain this kind of order in society in whatever society we find ourselves. Romans 13 verse 1, let every person be in submission to the governing authorities for there is no authority except that which God has established. And the authorities that exist have been established by God. Therefore, he who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted. The word here to be in submission is a military word.

It talks about ranking of officers under one another, lieutenants under captains and captains under majors and majors under colonels. And what God is telling us here is just the way, in the same way a military officer submits to the orders and the authority of a superior, not because of the person in the office but because of the authority of the office, in the same way we may not respect the people that are in government above us, but we must respect the institutions and the authority that are invested in them because God was the one who set them up. The authorities that exist have been established by God, even dictatorships, even atheistic regimes.

You say, Lon, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, wait. I'm having a real problem with this because do I understand you to say that God established apartheid? Do I understand you to say that God supports the mandatory sterilization of women in China? Do I understand you to say that the Bible teaches that God supports persecution of Christians in the Sudan or the degradation of women in Iran?

Is that what you're saying? No, friends, I'm not saying that at all and that's not what Romans 13 is saying. God doesn't support these kind of human rights violations in any way, shape or form. What Romans 13 is saying is that even if a government has sinful policies, even if a government has unrighteous policies, every government in place today on earth is there at the pleasure of Almighty God.

They exist in some way to advance God's plan for the ages and when God is through, with whatever purpose they've been chosen to serve by Him, He can and does wipe those governments out. Psalm 75, look what God says. He says, not from the east or from the west, nor from the south comes exaltation. God is the judge who puts one government down and lifts another government up. And I love what Pilate said to Jesus. He said, don't you know that I have the power to crucify you and I have the power to let you go? And I love what Jesus said. Pilate, son, listen to me, you don't have any power at all except what's been granted you by God and as soon as God wants to take it away from you, son, it's going to go away. It's all about what God's chosen to give you at this moment in time. Friends, it's so important for us to realize that God has a global plan for the ages and He often uses ungodly human governments to accomplish that plan.

Let me repeat what I just said. God has a global plan for the ages and He often uses ungodly human governments to get that plan done. I mean, look at the government of King Saul. I mean, that was not a righteous regime and yet David refused to lift his hand against Saul. He called Saul God's anointed and refused to carry on any subversive activity.

Why? Because he understood God had a plan for that government and when God was ready, God would take that government down and God did. Some of you may not like what I'm about to say but had it not been for the atrocities of Nazi Germany and for the sympathy that it generated worldwide for the Jewish people, there probably would not be a modern state of Israel today.

And had it not been for the provocative actions in 1967 of Nasser in Egypt, Israel today would probably not control the whole city of Jerusalem as they do. So let me summarize. What the Bible is telling us is as followers of Jesus Christ, we ought to be the most law-abiding, the most respectful, the most model citizens that any country has because we understand based on Romans 13 that God has the whole geopolitical situation completely under control and Jesus lived this way.

What did He say? Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and he paid his taxes. The apostle Paul lived this way. We just saw that.

Two and a half years, not even a speeding ticket. And what about Peter? Peter said, 1 Peter 2, submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men. You say, aha, I got you now, Lon. I got you.

I've been waiting for years to get you and I got you because here's how I got you. Peter, who just said that, wasn't that the very same Peter who when the authorities in Jerusalem, Acts chapter 5, told him he couldn't preach in the name of Jesus? Wasn't that the very same guy who said to them, we must obey God rather than men and defied the government and went out and did exactly what they told him not to do and got himself arrested? Wasn't that the same Peter?

It was. So you say, well, how in the world can you say both of those things? You're talking out of both sides of your mouth. You know, white men have forked tongue here. You know, what are you talking about, Lon?

Well, let me respond to that, friends. Romans chapter 13, we need to remember, is giving us general, usual guidelines for our relationship to human government. However, as we just saw from Acts chapter 5, there are cases where even the writers of the Bible themselves violated Romans 13 and defied civil authority.

Now, there were only two examples, two instances where they ever did this. One is when human government forbid them to promote Jesus Christ. That's what Peter's issue was in Acts chapter 5. That's what Judge Roy Moore's issue is in his own heart and mind, is that this government is keeping me from spreading the message of God and that means I need to obey God rather than men. The other time that it's ever been done is when secular government was acting in a way that was so unrighteous, so ungodly, and so offensive to God that believers felt they couldn't tolerate it and they needed to resist.

For example, here in the United States, this has happened with segregation, with abortion, with prayer being taken out of schools, with homosexual marriage, and many people felt this way about the Vietnam War. You say, well, Lon, so, okay, what are you really saying here? What I'm saying is, friends, there are two biblical principles here and they're both right. There is a biblical principle, Romans 13, that says we must obey human authority because it's established by God and we should be model citizens. And there's another biblical principle that says we must obey God rather than man in instances where we feel our ability to promote Jesus Christ is being threatened or where we feel our government is engaging in stuff that is so horrific and horrendous that we can't be quiet. You say, well, so how do we know where the line is between those two?

Well, that's the problem. The Bible doesn't tell us where the line is. The Bible doesn't give us any firm guidelines to know where exactly we draw that line and as a result, down through the centuries, godly men and women have drawn the line at different places and disagreed greatly with one another over where that line ought to be done. And the same is true today. Let me tell you about three people, three men of God, who all lived at the very same time in history who drew the line very differently.

You'll recognize, I think, all three names. They all lived during the Reformation. The first name is Martin Luther. Martin Luther, if he was living today, here's what he would say. He would say our job is to preach the message of Jesus Christ. Political action has no place in the church.

God is in control of the secular governments of our world and he doesn't need our help. The way we can change the world is not by politics, but by bringing people to a decision point for Christ. That was Luther's position. Now, at the same time, there lived a man named John Calvin. Calvin believed in political activity by the church, but only lawfully. His position today would be the church should definitely get involved in political action.

We should work within the system using our rights as citizens to bring our government to a more biblical position on issues. And then there was a third man living at the same time. His name was Ulrich Zwingli. He was a pastor and the leader of the Reformation in Switzerland and he believed that followers of Jesus Christ should pursue political action outside of the law if that's what it took to bring righteousness to bear on a society.

In fact, Zwingli died in 1531 on the battlefield with a sword in his hand and a helmet on his head fighting to free Switzerland from the Catholic rule. He died on the battlefield as a pastor. And his position today would be this. Political righteousness is part of the church's mission.

If we have to break the law and engage in open civil rebellion to bring it about, well then, so be it. Now all three of these guys lived at the same time. All three of them believed the only way to get to heaven was to trust Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross plus nothing. We would call all three of these guys today evangelical Christians.

They were all three godly men and yet they had three vastly different approaches as to where they drew the line between these two biblical principles. Hey, Luther today, his model would be Billy Graham and he would be a member of the Plymouth Brethren. If Calvin were alive today, his model would be James Dobson and Martin Luther King Jr. and he would be a member of the Christian Coalition if he were alive today. And Zwingli, if he were here today, his model would be Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who actually tried to kill Adolf Hitler in a bomb attack, almost succeeded and ended up getting killed himself by Hitler in a concentration camp.

That would be his hero and he'd be a member of Operation Rescue if he were here today. You say, okay, Lon, I understand that. So here's my question as we close. Which one of these three guys is correct? Well, the answer is all three of them. You're saying, I see there, Lon, you've been living in Washington too long. No, no, no. No, they all three are correct. You can build a compelling biblical defense of all three of these positions.

You can. And what this means if you can do that is that where an individual follower of Christ draws this line between these two principles is a matter of conscience between that individual believer and the Lord. And if this is true, and it is, then what this means is as followers of Christ, we have to allow each other liberty in this area. We have to realize that other sincere believers may seek God on this issue and may come up with very different convictions than we come up with. My wife, Brenda, and I, we clash over this all the time because I'm Luther and she's Calvin on the outside and Zwingli on the inside.

That's my wife. We don't agree on this at all. To put it another way, if I come out of this being Luther and you come out of this being Zwingli, it doesn't mean I'm backslidden, cowardly, and liberal, and it doesn't mean you're an unbiblical rebel, a fanatic, and a nut. What it means is we both sought God and we came up at different places. And on this issue, the Bible allows that liberty. And the important point is for us to understand that we've got to administer grace to each other in this area. We've got to be able to say, well, I don't see it exactly the way you do, but you know what, this is an area where there's liberty and I respect the difference and I'm not going to judge your spirituality and brand you as anything because you came out on a different place than I came out. Romans 14, 5, For who are you to judge somebody else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand, for the Lord has accepted him and the Lord will see to it. Now, that is the model of the Bible for us in this issue where God grants liberty. God says you've got to grant liberty to your Christian brothers and sisters. And if you have a sincere conviction, wonderful, you pursue it as unto the Lord. But if they have a sincere conviction, you let them pursue it as unto the Lord. And you guys don't judge each other and don't brand each other. Show some grace to one another.

Now, that's the position of the Bible on this. And you say, so long, you know, in closing here, so just tell us, you know, kind of our little secret. What's really your opinion of Judge Roy Moore's situation?

Well, can I be honest with you? Okay, here's my opinion. Judge Roy Moore is probably going to be the next governor of Alabama. Amen. Let's pray.

Let's pray. Lord, thanks for talking to us today about, well, really a very hot and relevant topic in our world. We as followers of Christ, we listen to Christian radio, we watch Christian television, we hear people talking in the media, and everybody's throwing all kinds of stuff at us, making us feel we ought to be on one side, we ought to be on the other side, and it's very confusing. And I pray that today would bring some clarity to all of that for all of us. And, Lord, free us from feeling like there's only one right way to see this, particularly if we don't feel that way in our heart.

Teach us, Lord, that whether we're Luther, whether we're Calvin, or whether we're Zwingli, as long as we've sought You and that's our conviction, that's okay. And we would take a moment right now to pray for the United States, to pray for our government. We want to pray for President Bush and his advisors. We want to pray for our Congress. We want to pray, Lord, for the government in Washington and local governments around America, that indeed we would see a movement back to a biblical position on issues. And, Father, we pray that we could be a small part of that by making an impact on this city that is so significant that the policymakers for America in this city would begin to turn this nation because they've come into contact and they've made a decision for Jesus Christ, and we had a part in that. So, God, help us do our job in this city and we pray that the ramifications would affect all of America for the good and the godliness of this nation. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.