Fear God - Honor the King

Scripture Reading

Will you please turn in your Bibles with me to 1 Peter chapter 2. 1 Peter chapter 2, we'll be looking this morning at verses 13 through 17. There was something that happened when I was at our former church at Eastvale, and I first started to preach. My pastor, Micah, at that time said, You know the old ladies who don't hear very well?" And I said, uh-huh. He said, notice where they all sit. And they all sat in the last two rows of the church. And they didn't have a PA system. And he said, Brian preached to the old ladies in the back of the church. So, I'm going to try to speak up this morning. I hope you don't feel like I'm yelling at you. But let's go ahead and turn in our Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 2. Verses 13-17, you'll find that on page 1077 of your Pew Bibles. Hear now God's perfect Word.

Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.

Prayer for Illumination

As free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God, honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the King. Let's pray. Lord, You are the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You are our Sovereign, our Master, our Maker. And Father, we pray now that as we come to Your Word, that Your Holy Spirit would work in our hearts in such a way that it would become alive unto our souls. Lord, we pray that You would please turn our hearts from sin, and let us rejoice in who You are. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Sermon

We come to the passage today, and it is a topic that we as Americans do not like. I mean, if you're going to be in good public society, what are the two things you don't talk about? Religion and politics. And here, God said, we're going to talk about both of them in one swoop, one time. And just as an encouragement, this afternoon in Chalk and Talk, we're going to be talking a lot about politics and the church. But see, this is especially difficult for us because it's not just that it's one of these things where we get squirmish talking about politics, but there's also a very clear command.

This whole paragraph is held together by the very first three words. Therefore, submit yourselves. Submit yourselves. It means being obedient. And we're Americans. We light off fireworks, we have barbecues, we celebrate every year that we do not submit to authority. No, we told those tyrants where to go. And yet, in verse 13, which is the key, everything else hinges on this paragraph to those three words, therefore submit yourselves. This is a command from God.

And many people struggle. Many people struggle with what does it look like to submit ourselves to authority. Again, I mean, I was raised in a culture where this is a free country. I could do whatever I want. And the Lord says, not so fast. You're free, but not in a certain way.

And so as we get into this passage, I do want to tell you that this is going to be a difficult passage for us. Many of you may struggle with it. And I also want to say that I know a number of you have also been under those who have had authority, and they have used their authority for abuse and tyranny, and not for your good, not for the punishment of evil or the praising of good, but for their own wicked ends, and that is evil and wrong, and that's not what is going on in this passage. And we're going to talk about that. But as we just sang in Psalm 2, all ruling authorities must bow their knee to Jesus Christ. And so what is this idea of submission and how does this work out in our Christian lives, especially here in America?

Well, first I want you to look at the explicit command to submit. Look with me at verses 13 and 14. Therefore, submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of those who do good. Make no doubt about it, Peter commands, y'all submit. Y'all submit, obey, listen to, they make a law, you follow the law, they give orders, you keep the orders. That's a very clear statement that he says in verse 13. And notice after what he says, submit yourselves to whom? To every ordinance of man. These are man-made rule, man-made laws, man-made ordinances, right?

There's a way in which sometimes my feathers get ruffled because I don't understand why those fools made the speed limit so slow. It's man-made. They made the decision. Why didn't they make a better decision? But it was their decision, and they're the ones in authority, and so even though there's every fiber in my being that doesn't want to set cruise control on 55, that's the man-made ordinance. Do we submit to the Lord? than they are for man. But notice the reason for it. To every ordinance of man, why? For the Lord's sake.

We submit not out of just blind obedience and loyalty to the ruling authority, but because our Lord instituted that authority. They make the ordinances, they are man-made ordinances, but God is the one who puts rulers in their place, and who removes rulers from their place. And this is because rulers' authority is not inherent in their selves, but it is derived from God Himself. The only reason why there can be a president, a principality, a principle, whoever has authority, is because they derive that authority from God Himself.

This is what Romans 13 teaches us. And so our submission isn't passive. No, our submission as Christians to all the man-made ordinances is an act of faith. and who God is. And this is not just talking about when it says, to every ordinance of man. This is not just talking about to the civil magistrates. It's not just talking about to the government. This is all predicated based on coming up from the fifth commandment.

Honor your father and your mother. I'd encourage you, maybe this afternoon or this evening, go to the Westminster larger catechism and see what are the duties required of superiors to inferiors. What are the duties of inferiors to superiors? How do we operate when people have different stations and relations in life? There are people over us, there are people who are equal to us, and there are people under us. How are we supposed to treat one another?

The Westminster Larger Catechism is very helpful in the fifth commandment there. But again, I know some of you are going to say, well, hold on, Pastor Brian. There are wicked rulers. Do we really need to submit to them? I'm gonna give you a radical answer. Yes. Yes, because Peter knew that himself. See, we wanna act like our American situation is so unique historically, but it really wasn't.

Peter wrote these words to the people in Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, Asia, while the king was Nero. Do you know what Nero thought about Christians? This guy was such a wicked ruler that when the city of Rome was in turmoil, he lit Rome on fire, he burned down people's houses, and he blamed it on the Christians. If that wasn't enough, when he decided to openly persecute the Christians, because scapegoating wasn't enough, he had a road that lined his garden up to his house, and he crucified Christians along both sides of that road and lit them on fire. Peter himself would go before this very king, before the emperor Nero himself, and would be crucified. And he says, For the Lord's sake, obey every ordinance. Our submission reflects our trust in God's sovereignty, not in the ruling authority's morality. Elder Ben just came up here and he was praying for the civil authority.

And as I was preparing the sermon, I was thinking, I wonder how impactful this sermon would have been if the election had gone a different way on Tuesday. How would you have felt if your candidate didn't get into office? Would you still say, not my president? Would you violate the law because you didn't like the person?

We know Jesus Himself, when He was in front of Pontius Pilate, Jesus said in John 19, you're going to have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Jesus Christ Himself stood in front of Pontius Pilate and said, the only reason why you're the governor is because God put you in place. And he respected even Pilate's unjust decisions.

We find examples of this type of biblical submission all over the place, especially in the Old Testament, when we go to Joseph and we see him being subject. He was wickedly and wrongfully enslaved, and yet we find Joseph submitting himself to the Egyptian authorities. We find Daniel, who he and his friends are taken as captives out of Jerusalem, brought as slaves essentially to Babylon, and they're obedient to the Persian rules as far as they can be, to the Babylonians and Persian rule. We find Esther and Mordecai doing the same thing. We find Nehemiah serving King Ashuarius as the cupbearer.

See, because submission to authority is part of everyday Christian life. That's why Jesus told us, pay taxes, give unto Caesar what is Caesar's. I gotta tell you, I don't like that Jesus said that. I wish that had just been stripped out of the Bible, because I don't like paying my taxes, but yet Jesus commands it, so an act of faith as we do it. We obey laws for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our submission to the civil magistrate is a mark of our obedience to God. So it's not written in a vacuum. This is a hard thing that Peter is saying, but there's a purpose for it. And notice there is a role for civil authority. Peter gives us a biblical understanding for what a civil magistrate, what a governor is supposed to do. The rule of civil authority in verses 14 and 15. You submit whether it's to kings as supreme, and there's no doubt that this is talking about the emperor, or to governors later on in the area that Peter is writing. That's going to be plenty, the younger.

Notice what they're supposed to do, these governors who are sent by the king. For the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. The governors were sent for two reasons, positive and negative. For those who are doing well, the positives, those who are, if I was to translate this more literally, do-gooders, they're to be praised, lifted up in their virtue, put as model citizens. But if there are those who are doing evil, they are to be punished.

This is the base role of the common grace that God has given civil magistrates, that they are to uphold what is good, and punish that which is evil. Governments are meant to do these things. This is God's design for maintaining order and justice. And when we submit to those ruling authorities like we're commanded to, that does not mean that if they are going with immorality or injustice, that we are somehow endorsing them. No, we are those who, as Christians, and we have this real big blessing as Americans, actually, if there are civil magistrates who are not punishing evildoers, and who are not praising those doing well, we have the right to talk to those who represent us. to pray for them and plead that God would turn their hearts, to go and start petitions and propose laws, even to vote them out of office.

And yet, though we can respectfully challenge authority, did you notice what Jeremiah 29.7 said? The Jewish people had been ripped out of their homes, sent to Babylon, And Jeremiah tells the people, the Lord tells the people through Jeremiah, Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it, for in its peace you will have peace. He tells them, you're being taken captives into pagan lands, with pagan people, with pagan kings, and you know what you need to do while you're there? Pray for the pagan people. Pray for the pagan land. Pray for the pagan king.

Because as it has peace in the land, you will also have peace. Brothers and sisters, we are living more and more in our society, it seems, in a post-Christian America. Do we pray for the peace of our rulers and of our land? Again, some of you are going to say, well, Brian, what if the authorities aren't doing their duty? There's always going to be imperfect governments. And we use every legal mean to seek justice. We see Paul do this, right? It's not that this is just blind obedience, that we don't have any say. Actually, there's three different examples in which Paul used his own Roman citizenship to show that what people were doing was wrong.

When he was in Philippi, he was unjustly chained and beaten and put in prison. And God used that to save the Philippian jailer and his whole household? But when the Philippian jailer and the magistrates wanted to just send him out the back door and go home, he said, hold on, hold on, hold on. Is it legal for you to arrest, chain up, and jail a Roman citizen?

And they were afraid. And he said, no, no, no, with the same type of dignity you brought me into the prison, with the opposite type of dignity, you need to lead me out of the city. And they did it. He also did this in Jerusalem. He was arrested by those who were guarding the temple. They tried to arrest him, and Paul again asked those who were the Roman soldiers, as they were about to scourge him, is it lawful for you to scourge a Roman citizen? And they had to stop.

See, it was not wrong for Paul to appeal to the law. And he did it even again as the Jews had sought under everything possible to try to kill Paul and to condemn him. Eventually he said, I appeal to Caesar. He used his Roman right to appeal even to the emperor.

So it's not wrong for you, Christian, to use your legal rights as citizens. And that's not an act of rebellion. That's an act of submission even to the law. And so engage in your civic responsibilities. Go vote. Advocate for justice. But then do the hard thing. Do the hard thing. Pray. Pray for your civil leaders. I know sometimes it gets really uncomfortable. It gets really uncomfortable Sunday morning when we start praying for the government authorities. And sometimes you might have wondered, scratch your head, like why in the world do they do this? Why do they pray for judges and the president and for congress people? Why do they do that? Well, it's because God's told us to.

1 Timothy 2, verses 1 and 2. Therefore I exert first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority. Why? that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. We pray for those who are in authority over us, so we may live godly, quiet, peaceful, and reverent lives. But notice in verse 16, As the civil magistrate does their thing, and they're supposed to be, there's something that Christians might be tempted to do. Verse 16.

As free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. Christian freedom frees us from the bondage of sin. But there's this twist that happens, and it happened in the first century when Paul and Peter were writing, and it happens even in our day, where people will think, well, I'm free from my sins and I am saved freely by the grace of God, and so I can not worry about sin, I can just keep on sinning. And God says, may it never be. God forbid that be the logical conclusion of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. No! No, we are free from the shackles of slavery and sin to obedient love of our King, Jesus Christ. And so Christians must avoid their misuse of freedom. Freedom in Christ is not a license for sin.

Galatians 5.13 says, For you, brethren, have been called to liberty. Only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. You have been free, given liberty in Christ to serve and love others, not to sin. So don't use your Christian liberty.

The idea here is almost like a cloak or a mask. It's like kids going out on Halloween and instead of just having fun, instead of what they do is they go and wreak chaos and havoc over all the neighborhoods. No, that's not what your freedom is for. Your parents may have let you out of that house, but that doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want to do. But you might say, well Brian, hold on.

How can you say that we have both liberty in verse 16, but also we have to submit in verse 13? Well, it's because true liberty is found in obedience to God. True liberty is found in obedience to God, which includes submitting unpopularly to earthly authorities. I think Jesus Himself showed this in an amazing way. If you can imagine any person who has ever existed who had the most amount of freedom, it would be Jesus Christ.

And yet, Jesus submitted to Mary. He submitted to Joseph. He submitted himself under the law. He submitted himself to Pontius Pilate. He submitted himself to the ridiculing Herod. He submitted himself to the Jewish law, paying the temple tax. Submitted himself to Caesar, paying taxes.

And so use your freedom, not for sin, but for God's glory. Serve one another. Serve the church. Serve the community. Use your liberty not as an excuse for lawlessness, before the Lord's glory. And so Peter continues on here in verse 17, and he gives us four pillars of Christian conduct. So as we are slaves of God, verse 16, He says, what does it look like to be bondservants or slaves of God? Or the first pillar of what does it mean to be a servant of God is to honor everyone. We must show respect to all people as image bearers of God. Whether that person... and again notice the expansiveness of this. Honor all people.

Honor is something that is so lacking in our American culture. Where those who are gray-haired and are elderly are not held in high regard, but they're just pushed to the side and put in nursing homes and just treated as a burden and a problem rather than people to be treasured and learned from. Children aren't honored as they're seen as a problem and you have a whole generation of my millennial generation who doesn't want to have kids because they don't want to actually spend their life pouring into children. If they do have kids, just shove them off and let somebody else watch them and care for them because they're a burden. They don't even honor their own children. Honor race.

We have a systemic issue in our culture and we know this is true. We know that there are many people still in our land who will look at others with racist intents and show them dishonor. May it never be we each were made in the image of God. Whether somebody is wealthy or poor, we are called to honor them. Whether they are a genius on the spectrum, Or with mental handicaps, we're called to honor them because they were made in the image of God. So we as Christians, as servants of God, honor all people.

This is what Jesus did with the woman at the well. When he broke through social norms because he honored her going there, knowing that she needed to have the living water. Pillar number two, love the brotherhood. As servants of God, we must deeply love fellow believers. The early church demonstrated this in their selling of their goods and holding all things in common.

Paul wrote to the Philippians and he told them in Philippians 1, verses 3 and 7, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, because I have you in my heart. Do you truly love brothers and sisters in church? And I'm talking about even those people who may not like you. You know those people who sit on the other side of the pew? Do you still love them? Do you pray for them? Do you care for them? Being a servant of God is marked by honoring all people and loving the brotherhood. Notice the third pillar, verse 17, fear God.

God, this is not a type of fear that is slavishly worried. Oh no, at any point God is going to crush me under his punishment and hand. No, this is the type of awe-filled reverence that Moses has when he comes to the burning bush. And God tells him to take off your sandals for the ground upon which you are standing is holy. And Moses takes off his sandals and bows before the Lord. This is the idea of reverence that we find in Isaiah when he has a vision of the temple, and there's a seraphim standing there, and they have these six wings, with two they're flying, with two they're covering their face, with two they're covering their feet, and the angels cry out day and night, Holy, Holy, Holy! And Isaiah has reverence and falls on his feet and says, Woe am I, for I am a man of unclean lips. Because we know who we are, but we know who God is. This is Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai when God spoke.

And they had a reverence for who He was. That is the type of fear we're talking about. Not the type of fear that can't approach our Heavenly Father. This is one of these amazing things that happens in the Christian faith. The God who is reverenced, the God who is trice holy, perfectly pure and glorious, and all of his majesty has also called you his children. And so we fear him with respect, with reverence, And out of that fear of God, notice the fourth Christian pillar of being a slave of God.

We honor the king. We respect our civil leaders, even when we disagree with them. And I gotta tell you, this is a hard one for me. It's, man, I really like ridiculing people who are in public office. But it's to my shame. It's to my shame because I talk about them a lot more than I pray for them.

Again, this does not just mean that we endorse everything they do and enable their tyranny. Nor does it mean that somehow just because we submit to them, that somehow we are compromising our faith. No. No, our faith tells us we honor the King. Because our Lord told us that's what faith looks like.

But notice the order of these last two. I think it's very important. Look with me at verse 17. I think there's a hierarchy here. Fear God. Honor the King. There is a priority structure here. We reverence, we fear, we bow, we obey God as our supreme authority and allegiance. He alone is the King of kings, and out of that we honor the kings.

But when the kings decide that they want to play God, when Caesar decides that he's just not content with taking what's Caesar's, but he wants to take what's God's, we say, no. No, we won't go that far. And so there are times when we are called not to submit. Submission does have limits.

And Peter himself knew that and showed that. In Acts chapter 4, the Sanhedrin gathers together and they are mad because Peter and John are preaching in the temple in the name of Jesus Christ. And they tell him, don't do that anymore. Don't preach in the name of Jesus.

And in Acts chapter 4, Peter himself says, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak of the things which we have seen and heard. When the Sanhedrin, when the ruling authorities, with the ordinances of man, tried to make them go against with their Lord Jesus Christ, they said, go kick rocks. Judge for yourself. We're going to obey Jesus. We know what we saw, we know what we heard, and we serve Him. It happened again, though.

One of my favorite things is, as a result of all their preaching and stuff, Peter and John are thrown into prison. They are shackled, thrown into prison, and in the middle of the night, an angel comes, releases them from prison. They go out, they meet with the Christians first, they go praying, and the very next day, do you know where they are? They're in the temple preaching about Jesus. And the Sanhedrin, the elders show up and they're, hey, hey, hey, weren't these guys in jail?

And didn't we tell them not to preach in Jesus' name? And in Acts chapter 5, 28 through 29, when they confront him, they put him on trial again. Peter himself said, they said to him, did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with this doctrine and intend to bring this man's blood on us. But Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. That is the point in which we say, No, we cannot submit anymore.

This is what Daniel and his friends did. This is what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did when the king raised up a giant statue and he said, everyone must bow down when the trumpet blares. And the three guys, everybody else got down on their face. These three Jewish boys stood up and they said, we can't do it. We can't do it. Throw us into the furnace. If we die, we die, but our God will still be king.

It may cost you. It cost Daniel. When they couldn't find anything against Daniel, he was certainly one of these do-gooders that should have been praised, and they set up a trap, you know, oh king, make a law that nobody can pray except for you. They knew that Daniel would still go to his house and pray. They set a trap, they find him praying, and they throw him in the lion's den.

You see, it may cost you to do civil disobedience, but I need to encourage you, if you are going to engage in civil disobedience, civil disobedience, kids, is that act of telling the government, I'm not going to do what you're telling me to do. If you're going to do that, you better make sure that this is actually what God has commanded you, and not just something you don't like. We find these examples all over. The midwives refuse to obey Pharaoh's order to kill the infants. Moses' parents refuse to kill him and hide him instead. Rahab protects the Israelite spies. The wise men disobey Herod's orders.

There are times in which we need to tell the civil magistrate, you've gone too far. So stand firm. Christian, when there are laws or policies that demand disobedience to God, take the consequences. And there probably will be consequences. But follow your King in heaven. Fear God, honor the King. Because in our fearing God, honoring the King, loving the brotherhood, not using our liberty as a cloak for vice. Notice what verse 15 said.

For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Christian, as you follow in what you know is good, what the scriptures have commanded you and set before you, You put to silence those, you put a muzzle over their mouth. Those who may slander you and accuse you as evildoers, even though you do good.

That's what Peter had just said in 1 Peter 2.12. They may slander you as evildoers, even though you do good works. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay.

We wait for the last great judgment day because at that day, every mouth will be stopped. This is what Jesus did. Jesus falsely accused and trusted himself to God and remained silent, letting his actions speak for themselves. And so let your integrity testify to your faith. as you honor those and submit to those who are in authority, whether it's in your workplace, your community, or your home. And lastly, the gospel. Jesus Christ, indeed, is our ultimate example. Christ modeled this submission.

Jesus obeyed His Father's will. And you may say, hold on, it must have been really easy for Jesus to obey, to submit. I don't think it was. Because the night before, or the night that Jesus was betrayed, He went to that mountain. And on the Mount of Olives, Jesus pled with His Father in prayer through the whole night. Father, please, if at all possible, let this cup pass from me. So intense and distraught in his prayers that he was sweating as if drops of blood, as if his capillaries opened with the pain and the anguish of knowing what the cross was going to demand of him. And yet, what is Jesus saying?

Not my will be done, but yours. Because you see, there's a way in which God works and it's a paradox. It turns the world on its head. It flips everything upside down. When Jesus was crucified, everybody that day thought this was an absolute failure. Why would he have submitted? How could this possibly be the plan of God?

And yet now we know. We know that Jesus' submission to the will of the Father, and being subject even to unjust, cruel, and wicked rulers, brought about the redemption of our souls, purchased for us the guarantee of everlasting life and the resurrection. So we submit. We submit ourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake because our Lord showed us that path. We walk in the ways of Jesus because we trust that Jesus truly does know the end from the beginning.

And it happened, brothers and sisters. The blood of the martyrs, Tertullian would write, the blood of the martyrs was a seed of the church. As the Christians were persecuted and killed, mocked and scorned, there was a whole bunch of pagans who looked around and said, those people seem like they're of integrity. How are they possibly able to endure being ravaged by lions, killed by mobs, and yet still holding on to what they believe? There must be something there about it. And thousands were saved. through Christian submission.

Closing Prayer

So, brothers and sisters, I exhort you, I implore you to trust in Jesus Christ. None of this makes sense unless you are saved. None of this makes sense unless Jesus is your Lord. But if he is your Lord, then fear God, honor the King, bring glory to your Father who is in heaven. Let's pray.

Father, we do confess to you that it's easy for us. Lord, it's easy for us to want to do things our way. Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would please help us. Lord, give us wisdom. Give us courage to submit. Give us faithfulness to pray. Lord, give us hearts that would fear you and honor the king. Lord, we thank you that you have given us the king of kings and that whoever may be leader now for a short time is just a blip on the radar in the timeline of history. For Lord, any hardship we may endure now, we know pales in comparison to eternity in your kingdom. with Jesus our King. God, give us hope. Give us Your Spirit. We pray these things in Jesus' name.