The Christian Perspective on Government #2

God did not save us to be angry people about the government around us.

He did not save us so that we would be fearful about what the future holds. We've got to get out of that trap and examine what the Bible says about the Christian perspective on government. Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Bill Wright, and today Don presents Part 2 of a message titled The Christian Perspective on Government as we continue our series, Titus, God's Glorious Plan of Grace. Last time we were reminded that God rules over rulers, is sovereign over all, including the hearts of those in authority. Today Don will look at God's sovereignty over us, his church. How should we live in light of that?

Let's find out as we join Pastor Don Green now in the Truth Pulpit. This is a defining passage, especially for Christians living in America. We need to heed what the Scriptures say to us at this point. Paul tells Titus in no uncertain terms, he says, remind the Christians to submit to their rulers and to their authorities.

Submission. Submission in the midst of a hostile world is to be a defining mark of the way that we respond to the authorities that are over us. God has appointed our existing leaders for this time in our lives.

That's the only conclusion that you can draw from it. God establishes rulers according to his will. He directs the course of events, all things. He's working it all to accomplish his predetermined ends.

He, let's take a little bit different approach here. He formed you in your mother's womb at just precisely the time that he did. That means that he appointed you, he appointed you to live in this particular time during this course of your human life, during this course, roughly speaking, of your 70 years, give or take.

Okay, okay. Now look, this is all undeniable Scripture. This is just the plain surface teaching of the Word of God.

Now put these two things together. God is sovereign over the realm of human authority. He is sovereign over the days of your life, and he had enough capacity in his mind and power to put those two things together, to intersect your life now with the human leaders that he appointed for this particular time and place. You know what that means? That means that he's appointed exactly these leaders for exactly us at exactly this time.

Whether you want to think about that at a local, state, national, or world level, it doesn't matter. That's not even what I'm talking about. We're simply talking about the reality that God rules over rulers. Listen, that is sobering.

That is mysterious in the sense it is totally beyond our comprehension to understand how he does that. And it is encouraging all at the same time. We are walking in the midst of such profound transcendent truths that it should humble us and quiet us, and rather than immediately voicing objections about what about this man or that, forget the human rulers. Do you see the greatness of the God that is on display before you here this morning?

That's what matters. Now, that has ramifications for us today. That has ramifications for the way that we live, that the Bible spells out for us. We said that God rules over rulers.

Here comes our second major point this morning. God rules over us. God rules over us as Christians.

Now, what we're about to discuss, I want you to pick up on this, especially those of you that have done any theological reading. The way that God rules over rulers and the way that he rules over us, there's a slightly different aspect that we're going to emphasize here. God rules over rulers according to his secret will. He hasn't disclosed to us, he hasn't revealed to us what he's going to do with individual leaders, who's going to rise and fall. That's something known to him. It's one of the secret things that belongs to the Lord, Deuteronomy 29, verse 29.

We don't know that. And he rules over our lives in that same way. But as believers, there's another dimension of his will, another dimension of his sovereignty that we need to think about. And what we're looking at now is not the secret will of God in the course of human history, but what we're about to see is his revealed law, his revealed commands for the moral capacity, the moral conduct of his people. His secret will over world rulers, his moral will ruling over his people.

That's what we have coming up. God rules over rulers according to his sovereign providence. Now we're going to see that he rules over us and commands us and instructs us in how we are to live and behave and think.

And those of us that have had the blessed privilege of being led by the Spirit of God to come to saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, those of us that have had the privilege of God working through his word imparting new life to our souls and causing us to repent of sin and to lay down our lives before the Lord Jesus Christ, we have the blessed privilege of saying in response to that kind of grace, oh God, how now shall I live? Well, this is part of what he's giving us here in Titus chapter 3. God rules over us.

And what does he say to us in the context of civil authority, in the context of our world leaders? Go back to Titus chapter 3. From this great perspective of sovereignty over all, this great perspective of redemption of individual souls that belong to Christ, from this perspective of speaking through the apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, giving commands to Titus that are to carry on throughout the ages of the church, he says this, remind them, Titus chapter 3 verse 1, remind them to be subject to rulers to authorities and to be obedient, ready for every good deed. Wow.

Wow. God established civil authority and then as part of his design for the world, he calls his people to honor that authority even if the rulers are not worthy of the deference in and of themselves. Since we're in the neighborhood, turn to the right in your Bibles or scroll down on your iPads to 1 Peter chapter 2. I want to bring this up and then we'll spend a little bit more time in the passage in Romans. These are cross references simply showing us that this is the uniform testimony of scripture.

Notice how broad the statements are. 1 Peter 2 verse 13, submit yourselves. Okay, God rules over us. The first point here in case I didn't make it explicit is he commands us to obey. He commands us to obey. This is how he rules over us in the realm of civil authority. He commands us to obey it. We saw that in Titus. Now we're looking at 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 13. Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake.

There it is. For the Lord's sake. For the sake of this one who is sovereign over all. For the sake of the one who redeemed your soul at the cost of his own precious blood. For his sake, from the perspective of vertical compliance with him. Vertical loyalty to Christ for his sake.

Submit yourselves to every human institution. Whether to a king as the one in authority or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God. This is the will of God on your life, beloved.

Don't miss it. Don't let it be confused by the latest things you've heard on talk radio. Those things don't matter compared to the authority of God and the authority of Scripture. Listen instead to what the Word says. This is the will of God for you that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men. Do not use your freedom as a covering for evil but use it as bond slaves of God.

Look at verse 17. Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.

Honor the king. Turn over to Romans 13. Romans 13. And see the command for the call to subjection, to obedience.

It's the same word group that's used to describe a soldier's obedience to his superior in military authority. Romans 13, verse 1. Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. And here's what we were saying in our first point that God rules over the rulers. For there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God. Therefore, verse 2, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.

Here's how you've got to think about it, beloved. You may not like the human instrument too much, but God put him there. Your submission to God, therefore, informs your response to civil authority. Now, in the totality of the teaching of Scripture, there is a limited exception to that call to submission to civil authority. And see it in Acts 5, where they said we must obey God rather than men. In the context of civil authorities commanding them to stop preaching the gospel, say, I can't do that.

I can't do that. God tells us to go. Christ commanded us to go.

I have to preach the gospel. That is not subject. That is outside the realm of civil authority to forbid. Civil authority does not have the authority to command us to sin against our God. But, beloved, don't even go there in your thinking until you have let it deeply settle in your mind that God established civil authority and he calls us to obey it. Don't be looking for the exception to apply so broadly that it swallows up and eviscerates the primary command which is stated repeatedly in Scripture. Government may allow others to sin in ways that we don't like. That does not give us the right to rebel against government when it's not commanding us to sin in the same way. And listen. Listen. Our response to sin and the moral collapse of society is not political legislation.

That's not going to do any good. Our response and our greater power is the proclamation of the word of God, the proclamation of the gospel, which Paul said in Romans 1, he was eager to preach because it's the power of God into salvation. You can't legislate sinners to stop sinning.

We're just thinking about it all wrong when we go that way in our minds. And if you look at those passages in Acts, you'll see that the apostles were still, even as they disregarded that command, they were still in submission to the authorities. When the authorities punished them, they accepted it.

They rejoiced to be called worthy to suffer for the sake of Christ. You submit to the authority. If you're disobeying on that narrow ground, you say, okay, I can't obey, but if you punish me for it, I understand, and I'll receive the punishment.

And you're not angry and bitter about it. You just say, this is how I live out submission in this realm because God commands us to obey. He commands us.

Titus 3, 1 Peter 2, Romans 13. And we don't raise up our hand against the government. Think about the way that David refused to raise his hand against King Saul, even when he had been anointed as the next king.

He refused to raise hand against his king. So God commands us to obey. That settles the issue for the Christian. Now secondly, He not only commands us to obey, He commands us to pray. He commands us to pray. Look at 1 Timothy 2. And if there is any passage that would be more inclined to bring shame on the existing church today, this would be one of those at the top of the list.

When I think about some of the things that come out of the mouths of Christians about civil authority, this passage should humble us before our God and call us to repentance. 1 Timothy 2, verse 1. First of all then, Paul says, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgiving be made on behalf of all men for kings and all who are in authority so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. He commands us to pray for them. These people that we so easily speak evil of, God says, you know what I really want you to do is pray for them. 1 Timothy 2, verse 8.

Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension. Beloved, it would hardly do for us to pray for these leaders on our knees and then get up and curse them while we're on our feet. God won't tolerate that level of inconsistency and hypocrisy in our lives. It's not right for us to be that way.

And we need to repent if that's been the way that we've operated. If they're wicked, we pray for God to restrain their wickedness. And, oh God, by the way, as you're restraining them in the public sphere, would you be so kind as to bring them to saving faith in Christ?

Would you convert their souls? Father, for they need Christ just as much as I did. And we view these things through the prism of Scripture, through the lens of the Bible, rather than letting political commentators who are unsaved and ungodly in their own right define our worldview for us. Thirdly, God commands us to obey. He commands us to pray. Thirdly, He commands us to pay. He commands us to pay. Go back to Romans 13. I should have flipped these points in retrospect, but that's okay.

Next time I will. Perhaps nothing is so universally resented across the ages, across cultures, as the government's taxing authority. We want to keep our money for ourselves. I get that. I do, too.

As much as possible. But we pay taxes in obedience to God. Look at Romans 13, verse 6. For because of this, because God establishes rulers and authority, because we are to be in submission to them, verse 6, for because of this, you also pay taxes for rulers or servants of God devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them, tax to whom taxes do, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. He commands us to pay. It's a shorthand reference in some ways of our overall obligation to submit to the authorities that are over us. We pay taxes. It's a Christian duty when we pay our taxes on time and without cheating, we're honoring God with our lives because that's what he's called us to do.

Now, fourthly, and finally, I'm almost done here. God rules over us, and he commands us in the sphere of civil authority, commands us to obey, commands us to pray, commands us to pay, and fourthly, we can put it this way. He commands the way. He commands the way in which we are to do this. Go back to Titus. We'll come back to Titus and deal with the details of the text next week.

For now, I wanted to set this overall broad perspective for us. He commands the way. You and I are to be peaceable citizens as we submit to civil authority. Chapter 3, verse 1 of Titus.

Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed. Notice how it spills over in verse 2 and the way in which this governs even what comes out of our mouths, to malign no one, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men. Beloved, I'll leave it to your judgment, your assessment of the world around you, specifically the Christian world around you, whether this is what Christians in America are known for today or not. When it is a recognized political calculation to deal with the evangelical vote and to have to account for that, both for those whom they would support and those who would be trying to overcome that support, is that what we're known for or are we known for our political agenda?

Are we known for our character or for what the policies that we espouse? Scripture makes it clear and any tender-hearted Christian who looks at this needs to ask himself, is this what marks me? Is this what marks the Christians around me? Not for the sake of trying to sort them out, but just for us to get a sense, is this the testimony of the church in the world today or not? I'll leave it to you to answer that question.

I don't need to. Beloved, our duty as Christians to civil authority is independent of the man who holds the office. We honor them because we, more importantly, want to honor our God who commands us to be this way. And we do it gladly, not reluctantly. We do it joyfully, not with bitterness and resentment because we see the world from a biblical perspective. We see the world unfolding God's eternal plan for the ages. We see our own sinful souls, our own rebellious selves before Christ and say, oh, God is being gracious to me and I'm living for the world to come, not this world. And so that changes my perspective.

It changes my demeanor. God, of course, this is what you want from me. You're not telling me to try to bring in political change through political means, but you want me to be a godly man living a godly life in the midst of an ungodly world?

And this is how you define it for me? Submission and peaceable and gentle, keeping my mouth restrained from speaking evilly of others? That's what you want from me?

God, you've got it. The only thing I want to do, Father, is I want to please you because I am so eternally grateful for the fact that Christ redeemed me to be his own possession. You've made it clear that this is the way that you want me to be. Father, you have it.

The government's going to take everything I ever owned? Okay, Father, that's what you want? Maybe that will just make me a little bit more anticipatory of the life to come. Maybe it will loosen my love for this world just a little bit more and look forward to what you've commanded me to look forward to, the blessed return of Jesus Christ. God intends all of this for our spiritual upbuilding. God intends all of this to be a blessing to us, and he intends it to be the way that we're salt and light in the world. We make our stand for righteousness, not through political rebellion, but in Christian teaching, living, and praying.

This world isn't our home, and we shouldn't act like it is. We trust God's wisdom in the establishment of authority. We look for the coming of Christ rather than favorable government as our hope. We honor leaders now, even if they're personally unworthy, and trust God for the outcome, because we are completely persuaded that he will care for his own. And so we trust him forever in everything, and that, beloved, is a good place to be. Today on The Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green presented what some might consider a tough admonition to follow.

We get so angry with government, we sometimes don't want to submit to it, but our orders are clear in Scripture. And Don, can you offer further encouragement for those still struggling with this issue? Well, Bill, I'm happy to share that word of encouragement with our listeners. My Christian friend, if you are hungering and thirsting for righteousness, I understand completely that you groan sometimes when you see what's happening in the world around you and in the things that our political leaders choose to do and the decisions that judges make.

Take comfort in this. God knew that we would groan sometimes under earthly leaders, and yet in our Lord Jesus Christ and in his perfect Word, he has given us everything that we need to thrive and to survive in a world like this. My friend, remember Jesus Christ.

Remember that he's coming again. This world is not our home. Our hope is in what is yet to come in Christ.

In the meantime, we can live as responsible citizens as we look beyond our earthly leaders to the God who reigns over all. Thanks, Don. And friend, if you'd like information on getting free CDs of the messages you hear on our broadcast, just visit us online at thetruthpulpit.com. That's thetruthpulpit.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you next time for more from The Truth Pulpit.