Father, your word is your word.
Every word in the Bible, Father, is the word that you wanted to have there.
And we confess, Father, that often because of our culture and often because of our context,
we completely and utterly misunderstand your word.
Father, we confess that sometimes we just, we get it all wrong and we don't even recognize
that we've got it wrong.
So, Father, we ask that you would continue to gently but deeply pour out your Holy Spirit
upon us.
Pour out your Holy Spirit upon our minds, our hearts, our wills, our bodies.
And grant us, Father, a constant humility in regard to our own opinions, a willingness
to change our minds.
Grant us a great humility before you and your word written.
And grant us a great hunger for you and for your word written.
So that your word might come into us, into our lives.
And we will then bear much fruit for your glory in this city and at the ends of the earth.
And all this we ask in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior.
Amen.
Please be seated.
I almost want to say I apologize, but I'm not going to apologize.
But I want to give you a bit of a warning right off the bat.
I know that there's many, many guests here this morning.
And I'm going to talk later on in the sermon.
It's just going to be brief.
But I'm going to talk about abortion.
I'm going to talk about doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
And I'm going to talk about same-sex marriage.
In fact, I was dealing with so many complicated and controversial topics, I almost thought I'd
throw in tithing while we're at it.
Just to get it out of the way, you know.
But I'm going to be talking about these three.
And some of you might think, you know, especially if you're a guest and you've come here to see
maybe your daughter or your granddaughter or your niece or your friend, you know, dance.
And you think, oh, you know, I knew those, you know, fanatic, hardcore, right-wing Christians
that all they ever did was hammer away at those topics.
I knew that was the case.
Well, that's actually, if you think that about churches in Ottawa, you could go to most churches
in Ottawa for five years and never hear anybody ever talk about any of those three topics.
Most churches in Ottawa are terrified about talking about those topics, just if that's what
you're thinking.
And so you might be wondering, well, George, why on earth are you talking about it on a
day like today?
And here's another thing that non-Christians often think about Christians, and they often
think it correctly about Christians, by the way.
A lot of people see Christians as being basically hypocritical, that we believe that we want to
know the Bible and follow the Bible, but we actually ignore big parts of the Bible, the big parts
of the Bible that we don't like, or we don't just agree with, or don't fit into our lifestyle,
we just ignore.
And so one of the things that many non-Christians say about Christians, and unfortunately it's
often correct, is that we pick and choose in the Bible.
And so I just want to share with you, I mean, at Messiah, we don't want to be a pick and choose
congregation.
And so one of the ways that we try to deal with that is that we preach through books of
the Bible.
And the Bible's long, so I'd have to probably have been the pastor here for 50 years to
cover every book and every word, and that's hard to do.
But we try to deal with that problem of bits and pieces Christianity by preaching through
books of the Bible.
And when you preach through a book of the Bible, it means you're going to regularly deal with
things that aren't very comfortable for our culture.
And so that's what we're doing in this church right now.
You can look in the bulletin later on in the blog, it talks a little bit about why we do
that and upcoming things.
But we're going through the book of Romans.
And as part of going through the book of Romans, we come to Romans 13, which is what we're going
to look at.
And I would fail you as a pastor and as a man who's called to open the word of God if
I preached on Romans 13 and didn't mention those topics.
It's abortion, doctor-assisted suicide or euthanasia and same-sex marriage.
So you've been warned, and I'll return to it, and hopefully I'll return to it twice.
But it would be a great help to me if you open your Bibles, because you want to be able
to see that I'm actually not just making it up as I go along, but I'm actually trying
to follow the Bible.
I should have warned you earlier that there's free Bibles over there.
I don't mind if you get up while I'm talking and go over there and get a free Bible.
And if you don't own a Bible, keep it.
It's our gift to you, or you can return it later.
But Romans 13.
And so let's get into the word.
And here's how it begins.
Let every person, Romans 13, 1, let every person be subject to the governing authorities.
For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by
God.
Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist
will incur judgment.
And just sort of pause there for a second.
We just want to pause here for a second.
Now, this is a really easy text.
Here's the problem about this text.
There's something so blindingly obvious about this text that if we recognize what's so blindingly
obvious, it's going to completely and utterly turn this text in a different direction.
But it's so obvious that we forget it.
And here, I'm just going to, you know, if you're a guest here this morning, I'll say it.
You might not know this.
But for Christians, many Christians aren't even aware of this.
But just before we get into it, I'm getting tongue-tied.
Christians believe what Jesus teaches.
And what Jesus teaches and the Bible teaches about itself is that the Bible is God's word
written.
And what that means is that every word that we see here, this is what Christians believe
because Jesus believed it, that every word that you see here is ultimately the word that
God wanted to have there.
Now, it doesn't have, like, it's not like dictation.
It wasn't as if one day Paul was out for a walk and then God took him over and he had
to go to a table and he had to sort of write like this as God sort of overwhelmed his personality
and overwhelmed him and made him write down every word.
That's not how it works.
It's demons which possess us.
And I don't have lots of experience with this, but my guess is that if you're demon-possessed,
if you listen to ten different demon-possessed people speaking or writing, they'd all basically
sound exactly the same because the demon actually possesses them.
And God doesn't possess us in that way.
He never overwhelms us.
And so Paul would just be writing what Paul is writing.
But what Christians believe, and actually Romans teaches this, but it's a little bit later
on, is that Paul writes just from his heart dealing with a particular problem.
But God is sovereign over it.
And so that later on, it's recognized that God caused those particular words, the particular
words that God wanted his people and the whole world to know, God used Paul to get that done.
Just as he used Peter and he used Amos and he used Isaiah and he used Jeremiah and he used
the different writers of the Bible.
And because he actually just uses Paul, it sounds like Paul.
And if you read, you know, Isaiah, it sounds like Isaiah.
And you read Jeremiah, it sounds like Jeremiah.
He uses their personalities and everything like that.
But God acts in such a way that the actual words that are written are the words he wants
to be written down.
And then he also acts in such a way so that it's recognized by the church, by the followers
of Jesus, that those are the actual words that God wants to have written down.
So it doesn't mean that Paul is particularly a special person.
It just means that God used him.
It doesn't mean that Paul was smarter than you and I or more insightful than you and I.
If we went back in a time machine and just listened to Paul, it's not that he was more insightful
than us, a special person.
Every writer of the Bible is in a sense like Balaam's ass, that God uses the donkey to speak.
And so why is this significant?
Well, it's very, very significant if you understand that it's God who's telling us to do this.
In fact, Andrew, can you put up the point?
If we don't understand this, we're not going to understand anything in Romans 13.
The King of kings and Lord of lords, the true and living God, tells his grace-ransomed children
to submit to human authorities and to respect and honor them in a way which fully glorifies
and honors him.
Now, just help me down.
I'm going to help to unpack this a little bit.
A few years ago, but maybe about 10 years ago now, actually more than 12 years ago.
I'm getting old, so things long ago actually happened relatively close.
Anyway, I was the chair of a national organization, and I also was, in a sense, the CEO.
And we had this really important thing going on.
I was still part of the Anglican Church of Canada, and there was this really important
meeting of the Anglican Church.
And we wanted to have a presence there to sort of represent, you know, biblical Christianity
in their deliberations.
And it was going to be very, very far-reaching, this meeting, in terms of the things they would
decide.
So I was there.
Several other people were there.
And we hired a communications person to help with daily press releases and a daily newsletter
because we wanted to just represent biblical truths as the Anglican Church was making
this important decision.
So we hired somebody.
In a sense, I hired him.
I was the chair of the board and the CEO, in effect.
And so we hired somebody to help us.
And he worked with a few volunteers.
And at the end of the event, as the three- or four-day or five-day conference, I can't remember
how long it was, but it was a long conference.
At the end of it, the Anglican Church of Canada made a horrendous decision.
And a couple of the very, very key volunteers who had been working with this guy that we'd
hired, they had their own private agenda.
And so they wanted to spin this particular important communication from the organization
in a way that favored their particular agenda.
And I heard about it that morning.
And I was horrified.
They were going to say the exact wrong thing.
The board would not have agreed with it.
It was the wrong thing.
So I went and I found the guy.
And I said to him, have you sent off this press release yet?
Have you released it?
He said, no.
I said, good.
You're not sending it.
It's wrong.
And he said, well, whoa.
Like, he said, well.
And he mentions these two really important people in the Anglican Church.
And they've agreed with it.
And I said to him, I sign your checks.
I sign your check.
I'm your boss.
They're not.
You're not sending it because it's wrong.
Now, there will be another sermon illustration as to the two volunteers and the strips they
tried to tear off of me when they found out that I'd actually put a kibosh to what they
wanted.
But here's the significance.
They, this fellow worked with volunteers in a sense because I, who was his employer, told
him that he could work with these two people.
But I never relinquished being his employer.
He was my employee, not those other people's employees.
So what's significant about this text?
And it's really even more significant because, as you'll see later on in the text, it's going
to refer, the text is going to refer to the rulers and authorities as the servant of God,
the slave of God.
So what we need to understand here is that this text is not a blank check to whoever's in power.
I can tell you right now that Justin Trudeau would probably be deeply offended to hear that he's
described as the slave of God.
And I don't think I would be overstretching matters to think that Beverly McLaughlin and the Supreme Court
justices of this country would be offended to understand that the Bible is describing them as God's slaves,
but he's describing those who are followers of Jesus as his children.
It's all the way through the Romans.
You'd have to be reading Romans all the way through here.
So that's why I've tried to express it this way.
Just remember what's happening here.
It's just like me hiring this guy to work with other people, and I give him some instructions.
Only it's different because it's not, God isn't speaking here to his employees,
but he's our Father in Heaven speaking to his children.
And he doesn't stop or relinquish being our dad.
And I could have said our Heavenly Father, but I wanted to emphasize here Lord of Lords and King of Kings,
the Creator, Sustainer God, the Sovereign God of all the universe,
who has ransomed you and me.
If we put our faith and trust in Jesus, he has ransomed us through Jesus.
We are now the children of the living God by adoption and by grace.
And that God asks me to respect and honor and submit to human authorities
that the text is going to describe as his servant and his slave.
This is not the government of Canada telling me how to worship or the Supreme Court giving me permission.
You see how this text, in a sense, to use a postmodern word,
it deconstructs and relativizes all human power and authority.
And then within that tells me not that Christians should rule,
but that we are to submit and honor and respect.
So it's a very, very surprising thing.
And from that, we have to understand as well several other things about the text.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities,
for there is no authority except from God,
and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed,
and those who resist will incur judgment.
So is this text saying that when God looked down at Moclair and Trudeau and Harper,
he said, I don't like Harper and I don't like Moclair.
I like Justin Trudeau.
So I'm going to make Justin Trudeau the prime minister,
and my people better submit to him.
Right now, I'm going to pick your boogeyman.
If we were in an American United States and Trump wins,
would all the Bible Belt Christians have to say,
God liked Trump better than all those other guys and that one gal?
Or if Hillary Clinton wins,
well, all those Bible Belt Christians have to say,
obviously God thought Nelson Cruz and Trump and Sanders were terrible, evil men.
He chose his woman.
Is that what the text is saying?
Just to put it very boldly and bluntly.
Well, if you could put up the next point,
this prayer is completely consistent with Romans 13.
And if we don't understand how this prayer is consistent with Romans 13,
we won't understand the text.
Lord, please spare our nation from the government that we deserve.
And in your mercy grant us a government which is better than we deserve.
Lord, please spare our nation from the government that we deserve.
And in your mercy grant us a government which is better than we deserve.
That prayer is completely and utterly consistent and congruent with Romans 13.
If you go back, and I don't have time to do this for obvious reasons,
you go back and you read the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament,
which Paul at that time would have just understood as the Bible.
And it's very, very clear.
In fact, the book of Habakkuk, which I'm going to return to in a bit,
it's a very, very famous book.
It's a very, very odd book because Habakkuk is complaining about
how completely and utterly evil Israel is.
And God says, good news.
I've heard your prayer.
I'm answering them.
I'm sending the Assyrians to take over and obliterate Israel.
And Habakkuk says, God, no, you can't do that.
You got it all wrong.
They're way worse than Israel.
Okay?
And then you go back.
You read about Nebuchadnezzar.
You read about all of these.
Just read Isaiah.
Read Amos.
Read Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
Read the book of 1 and 2 Kings.
Just because the person's in authority,
sometimes they are there because it is the ruler the nation deserves
and it is a punishment.
I know I've opened up a whole other can of worms.
And I don't have time to go into it.
But Trump or Clinton cannot, or Trudeau cannot say,
I am obviously the choice person that God has chosen.
It might very well be that they are there as part of God's judgment.
And that is completely consistent with Romans 13,
which is why, in a sense, we have to be careful
because when our friends or the people that we like are in government,
we have to be careful that we stop praying a prayer like that.
But there is no mere human collection known as a nation,
which is God's favored people.
Israel is an exception.
But apart from that, there's no,
and even then Israel, just because they're Israel,
doesn't mean they do a whole pile of evil things, by the way.
Read the Old Testament.
Israel did horrible things.
Okay?
This is a prayer that we have to pray.
I mean, my hope and prayer is that God didn't give us Trudeau
as a punishment upon our nation.
I'm not trying to make a, I'm not making a political,
I really am not making a political comment.
I'm not.
This is a prayer we have to pray
as a nation that has a concern for our nation.
So some of you might say,
okay, George, well, this is all a little bit,
you've turned the text a little bit upside down on me.
But George, doesn't the text seem to say
a whole pile of nonsense stuff?
Doesn't it seem to say that, you know,
it's just stuff that isn't obviously true,
that, you know, rulers punish evil and rulers do good?
Like, okay, George, so this has surprised me,
but even if that's all true what you've said,
doesn't the text just say nonsense?
Like, how could anybody with a straight face
say that the government does good
and rewards people who do good?
Is it Linda McKibben?
Is that her name?
One of the most dangerous people
in the province of Ontario.
How many times has she been arrested now?
I mean, is it 25 times, 27 times, 30 times,
something like that?
Just because she quietly stands and prays
near an abortion clinic,
and she's thrown in and out of jail constantly.
Like, how can George, how can Romans be true?
It's obvious that governments don't reward good people
and discipline bad people.
Well, let's look at the text.
We're not going to hide from it.
Let's look at Romans.
We'll start at verse one.
We'll go through to verse seven.
Let's listen to it again.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities,
for there is no authority except from God,
and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore, whoever resists the authorities
resists what God has appointed,
and those who resist will incur judgment.
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.
Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority?
Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,
for he is God's servant for your good.
But if you do wrong, be afraid,
for he does not bear the sword in vain,
for he is the servant of God,
an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.
Therefore, one must be in subjection,
not only to avoid God's wrath,
but also for the sake of conscience.
For because of this, you also pay taxes
for the authorities or ministers of God
attending to this very thing.
Pay to all what is owed to them,
taxes to whom taxes are owed,
revenue to whom revenue is owed,
respect to whom respect is owed,
honor to whom honor is owed.
So, doesn't it seem to say odd things, George?
Here's the first thing.
Here's where your doctrine of the Bible
is really, really important.
If, in fact, God uses different human beings,
not because they're wise or particularly insightful,
but that God just uses them.
He chooses that he's going to use them
and they just write the way they think they need to write.
But at the end of the day,
the end of the process,
God has sovereignly worked in such a way
that the words that they've written
are the words that he wants written.
And therefore, there's not 66
completely different books in the Bible.
I mean, there are,
but there's ultimately one author
who's written the Bible.
And if you understand that,
then you say to yourself,
you can ask hard questions like this.
God asks us to ask honest,
intellectual, hard questions.
But we need to say,
okay, well, is God going to actually write something
which is just so obviously contradictory or foolish?
In fact, even without the doctrine of the Bible,
Paul writing these words would,
I mean, Paul knows that he has been unjustly put in jail.
Paul knows that the authorities act in a way
that oppresses him.
And in fact, Paul knows,
if you go back and read the book of Acts,
Paul knows that he used legal and quasi-legal means
to oppress people before he was a Christian.
That's what he did.
In fact, he was on the way with letters
from political and cultural and religious authorities.
He was going with powers to oppress Christians
in another city when he met Jesus.
Paul knows that.
In fact, it's so well known to Paul,
it was obviously a key part of how Paul understood himself.
You can see traces of how he reacted to that
throughout all of his letters.
And what's more,
Paul knows that Jesus died an innocent man.
That Jesus was a prey,
oppressed and betrayed
by the religious authorities
and by the Roman authorities,
by religious scholars
and the secular scholars and powers,
that Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent
and Pilate had Jesus condemned to death.
Paul knows this.
So what on earth is he saying here?
What on earth is he saying here?
What he's saying here, amongst other things,
is that Paul here is actually talking about
basically what we would call as general principles.
Just some general principles.
And it's actually a very, very curious thing
that he talks about these general principles in such a way.
Like, if you think about it for a second,
like, I've had people come and talk to me now
because increasingly,
especially if they have something to do with government,
that there's things going on at the government level
that for Christians are problematic or evil.
And how do they actually work in government?
Do they have to resign?
Or what do they do?
And surely, if you think about it for a second,
how would you give some general advice?
Well, do good.
Like, wherever you are, do good.
And if you're in power,
like, make sure that, you know,
if there's a, like, the Kameshi affair like that,
which, you know,
if there's complaints about misconduct,
like, you deal with that misconduct, right?
Like, you try to deal with the wrong things
that are going on in your workplace
and do good.
And that would be part of the way
that we're going to try to give people
a bit of a sense about how they work.
And if all this,
all that was in the text here
was just these words,
then it would be a lot more confusing.
But as we're going to look at in a moment,
there's also verses 8 to 14.
And so what Paul is doing here
is he's giving some general principles
in the context of God's word
to help Christians to understand
how they're to submit
and how they're to respect
and how they're to show honor.
And one of the things
which is exceptionally,
I mean, if you think about this for a second,
you'd have to think that God does this.
Is my mic dying?
Is my battery dying?
No?
I'm fine?
Okay.
It seems like it goes out all of a sudden,
but maybe it's just my hearing.
But when Paul wrote this,
it wasn't as if
there were Christians in power.
In fact, when Paul wrote this,
probably around the year 59 or 60,
the Christian faith
was an unregistered religion
in the Roman Empire.
They were a minority of a minority
of a minority of a minority
of a minority.
And the Roman state,
Nero was a god.
Everything's organized
around the worship of the gods.
The state practices slavery.
The state practices infanticide.
And there's no Christians in power.
But it's very interesting
if you look at this
in terms of
sending some basic principles,
not only,
as I'm going to explain in a moment,
principles about how we live
under a power like that.
But it actually looks down the road
to when Christians
get in positions of power and authority.
Because the very, very same principle,
which is going to help set the stage
for how you submit and respect
and show honor,
is communicating to Christians
that once they get in power,
what their job description is.
That they're to do good.
That they're to punish evil.
So it's very, very,
it's actually quite surprising
because it's 300 years
after this approximately
before Christians will be in power.
Now obviously many Christians
haven't kept it,
but it's very, very interesting.
And so this particular thing,
this is telling us
some general principles,
but some of you might say,
okay, George,
maybe it's saying
some particular principles,
but doesn't the whole idea
of being submissive
and showing honor and respect
mean that you have to do
what people in authority
tell you to do?
Well, okay,
we just keep these different things
that we've just heard
and remember that Paul,
with no break in his argument,
goes from all these things
about paying taxes and honor
to verses 8 to 14.
So let's look at these right now,
then we're going to sum it up
with two quick points
and then an overarching thing.
Look at verses 8 to 14.
So he's already told us
about, you know,
doing good
and what the state
in theory is supposed to do
and it's implying,
by the way,
that sometimes we're going
to fall victim to the sword
if we don't do what they want,
but look at verses 8 to 14.
Owe no one anything
except to love each other,
for the one who loves
has fulfilled the law.
For the commandments,
you shall not commit adultery,
you shall not murder,
you shall not steal,
you shall not covet,
and any other commandment
are summed up in this word.
You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.
Love does no wrong
to a neighbor,
therefore love
is the fulfilling of the law.
Just pause here
before we go any further.
It's very interesting
that the argument
for abortion is,
part of the argument
for abortion
is that it's the loving thing
to do.
Part of the argument
for doctor-assisted suicide,
for euthanasia,
is it's the loving thing
to do.
Part of the argument
for same-sex marriage
is it's all about love.
But Paul here,
when he says,
you shall not commit adultery,
you shall not murder,
he says,
these are all summed up
by you love your neighbors
yourself.
In other words,
he says that true love
means that you would not
do these things.
But we'll return to that
in a moment.
Verse 11,
besides this,
you know the time
that the hour has come
for you to wake from sleep.
For salvation is nearer
to us now
than when we first believed.
The night is far gone,
the day is at hand.
So then let us
cast off the works
of darkness
and put on the armor
of light.
Let us walk properly
as in the daytime,
not in orgies
and drunkenness,
nor in sexual immorality
and sensuality,
nor in quarreling
and jealousy,
but put on
the Lord Jesus Christ
and make no provision
for the flesh
to gratify
its desires.
Now I know
that in a room
with this many people,
there's at least
one person
who's had an abortion
or who's aided
somebody to have
an abortion.
And so
this is maybe
a very,
very awkward
topic.
And I'm going to
return to it
in a moment,
but I just
understand that.
In fact,
you know,
there's been earlier,
even before it's
legalized
to help doctors
kill a patient,
it's well known
that there's other
subtle ways in the past
that doctors have acted
to bring about
the death of people.
I was involved
in a case
about 10 years ago.
So we,
and so there might
very well be
somebody here
who's helped
counsel a doctor
to act in such a way
so that they've
acted to shorten,
not just
like to actually
literally take action
to shorten life.
And I know this is
very uncomfortable
maybe for you.
Sometimes the government
tells us
to do wrong things.
things.
And when it says
here,
you shall not
commit adultery,
if you read through
both the Old Testament
and if you read
through the New Testament,
it actually,
the literal word here
which is used
is pornea.
and the pornea word group
points to the basic principle,
not that sex is bad,
that sexual knowing is bad,
but that sexual knowing
is restricted
or set aside,
maybe that's a better word,
for one man
and one woman
who've been joined
in holy matrimony.
And any sexual knowing
or sexual stimulation
outside of the one man
married to one woman
is adultery,
is pornea.
And therefore,
two men marrying
would be by definition
not something
that the church
should bless,
but that the church
with tears,
but with conviction,
should say is wrong.
And when the text here
says you shall not murder,
that means you shouldn't
take innocent human life.
And so,
any attempt by the state
to say that doctors
can be given the power
to take,
it's not a sin
to be old.
It's not a sin
to be mentally ill.
It is not evil
to have Alzheimer's
or dementia.
And it is not evil
to be in the womb.
It might be profoundly
inconvenient
for people
who are in power,
but it is never
a crime
to be in the womb.
And it's never
a crime
to be old
or to be depressed
or to be sick.
It's a call
for us
to show compassion.
It is not
a call
for us
to take
innocent human life.
and that means
that a state
that says
that there is
no restriction
on abortion
or that there
is the power
of the state
to give power
to doctors
to kill
innocent human life,
it's just wrong.
It's just wrong.
And so,
the interesting thing
here about
Romans 13
is that the Bible
here isn't giving us
a simple technique
or recipe
about how to deal
with things.
the Bible here
is actually calling us
to live
in an awkward
middle place
in between
those
who just want
to live
in Christian ghettos
and pretend
that the world
doesn't exist
in a sense
to be like a Hutterite.
I apologize
to mention them,
but I'm going
to mention them
to any
or any type
of Christian ghetto
that just tries
to live
as if the world
doesn't exist,
as if the world
is evil and gone.
There's the whole
implication of this text
is that we are
to pray for government
and we are to be
for the good
of the city,
that we are to pray
for the blessing
of the city,
that we are to be
involved in the blessing
and the flourishing
of the city.
So we're not
to take the one option
of just completely
withdrawing from the world.
On the other hand,
we are not to take
the other option
that whatever
the government
or the Supreme Court
of Canada says
that we just say amen
and we go along with it.
There's a very awkward
middle place
that the Bible's
calling us to,
which is one of the reasons
why we need the church,
we need each other,
and we need to develop
means of discipleship
and fellowship
and community
whereby we can help
people to figure out
what to do.
Here, could you put up
the third point
please for me?
In light of God's
instruction,
and I say God's
instruction because
all the way through here
when it says the law,
it means the Torah,
and the Torah
means God's instruction.
So in light of God's
instruction,
through his word
written,
I will offer real
but qualified
respect and honor
to rulers.
That's what the text
is trying to get at here.
Real,
but qualified,
qualified by the word
of God.
You see,
I don't remember if you,
some of you might remember,
but I don't know,
was it 10 years ago
that George W. Bush
came to Ottawa?
And just so you get the joke,
I only started wearing
glasses when I was 49.
And so at first,
when I first started
to wear glasses
and preach,
I had a bad habit.
My glasses would start
to go down like this,
and I would do this.
So I had a son
that every Sunday
he said,
Dad,
I'm going to tell you
how many times
every Sunday
you give the whole
congregation the finger.
And I would come home
and Jacob would say,
Dad,
five times,
five times a day
you gave the whole
congregation the finger.
I mean,
I guess it was a pain
of attention
to the sermon,
at least,
right?
And so I eventually
had to stop doing that
and raise my glasses
another way.
Some of you might remember
when George Bush
came to Ottawa
a few years ago,
quite a few years ago,
George Bush said,
Ottawa is such
a friendly city.
Everywhere I go,
people wave at me.
And some of them
even use all five fingers.
And I thought
that was pretty funny
on his part.
Anyway,
here's the thing.
Obviously,
if George W. Bush
comes and you give him
a finger,
you're not showing
him respect.
Right?
You're not showing
him respect.
The interesting thing
about this whole text
is the Bible
could have used
the word obey,
not submit.
But it doesn't use
the word obey.
It uses the word submit.
And submit's a very,
very different word.
Submit is something
that I do voluntarily.
That's why the very,
very early prayer
is that Jesus,
the King of Kings
and Lord of Lords,
he's asking his children
to do something.
He's telling us
to do something.
But I get to choose
and decide
how to submit.
The whole submit word group
doesn't mean
that the Supreme Court
of Canada
or Trudeau
tells me the shape
of how I submit.
That power is not
given to them by God.
I mean,
they have their own
secular powers,
obviously.
And Shadrach,
Meshach,
and Abednego,
they didn't submit
in the way that
Nebuchadnezzar thought
they should submit.
And he gave them
a chance to submit
according to the way
that he thought
they should submit.
And he said,
if you don't submit,
I'm going to throw you
into the fiery furnace.
I'm going to have you dead.
And Shadrach,
Meshach,
and Abednego
said very,
very powerfully
throughout the ages,
we believe
we are not going to do
what you have told us to do.
We believe that God
will deliver us.
But even if he did,
but if not,
even if God
does not deliver us,
we will not do
what you want
because it involves
worshiping idols.
We won't do it.
We'll die
in the fiery furnace.
One of the reasons
that Shadrach,
that beautiful
old Jewish thing,
the sovereign God
that is the creator
of the sun
and the moon
and the stars
and the angels
and everything
in creation
are all to worship God
and Shadrach,
Meshach,
and Abednego
reminds us
as we read
Romans 13
that God is sovereign,
worthy of our praise.
And submission
is something
I do voluntarily
within a context.
And maybe
if we are serving
a boss
and she's the best boss
we've ever had.
She is a spectacular boss.
She's really competent.
She's honest.
She keeps her word.
She listens.
She makes decisions.
She's fair.
She just moves
the whole department full.
Then you know
that your honoring
and respecting her
is going to be really easy.
But maybe you have
a boss
which is completely
and utterly
not only
they're worse
than incompetent,
they're incompetent
and evil.
If something goes wrong,
it goes on you
even if they did it.
And if something goes right
and you did it,
they take the credit.
You know those types
of bosses?
And it's completely
and utterly
how we honor
and respect them
is going to be
very different.
The honor and respect
might be that you're
just silent.
That might be
how it looks.
Right?
It's qualified
by the context
and by God's word.
It's qualified
by the context
and God's word.
So that's why
it says
submit
and not obey.
That's why
in light of God's instruction
through his word written,
I will offer real
but qualified
respect
and honor
to rulers.
And it's also
why
you can't
this whole thing,
you know,
it's very interesting
that the Bible
puts
the
do not steal,
do not commit murder,
do not commit adultery
right after,
as part of this
whole
thing
in Romans 13
and in the power
of government
because in a sense
it's looking down
the ages
to when Christians
are in positions
of power
and it's saying
that any politician
who's in power
cannot say
I'm going to vote
for this
even though
I'm personally
opposed to it.
I'm going to
vote
for abortion
funding
even though
I'm personally
opposed to it.
The Bible doesn't
leave that option.
I mean,
it might be
that the MP
has to sacrifice
his career.
It might be
that in some
of these cases
you have to move
into other types
of law
or other types
of work
in the government
or where you
can do good.
but this
personally
opposed thing
is removed
by this text.
So,
if you could
put the next
point,
please.
I have to look
at my time.
Lord,
please help me
to be a disciple
of Jesus
gripped by the gospel
who builds my life
on your eternal truths
and not transient
legislative
and judicial
decisions.
see,
that's why
this text
is talking
about
things in
the Ten Commandments
at the same time
that it's helping
to try to give people
a sense of how
we're going to serve
both good governments
and bad governments,
both good rulers
and evil rulers.
It might be
that if Canada
was to become
a really oppressive
militaristic place
and there's the draft
then Christians,
I would urge
Christians to volunteer
to work as medics.
we're stretcher bearers.
I mean,
I don't know what it is.
I'm just telling you
that it's an awkward
middle place
but the heart of it
is that we want
to pray that God
will help us
to be gripped
by the gospel
and build our lives
on eternal truths
and not on transient
legislative
and judicial decisions.
The court looking
at the same laws
20 years later
reversing itself
on doctor-assisted
suicide and euthanasia
from the same documents
it just reverses itself.
Governments,
do what governments do,
judges do what judges do.
Sometimes they're
very, very wise,
they're very, very insightful
and sometimes
they're just merely willful
and that's what life is like
and we're to honor them
and respect them
and we're to pray
for the good of our city.
Now, I just want to
I have to wrap it up now.
Could you look at
verses 11 to 14?
I want to leave
those of you who are here
and you might be wondering
that if this,
what I've just said
is really hurtful
about abortion
and about doctor-assisted suicide
and same-sex marriage
and it just sounds legalistic
and cold.
There's something here
which is really important
that I have to look at
very briefly before we leave.
Look at verses 11 to 14 again.
Besides this,
you know the time
that the hour has come
for you to wake from sleep
for salvation is nearer to us now
than when we first believed.
The night is far gone,
the day is at hand,
so then let us cast off
the works of darkness
and put on the armor of light.
Let us walk properly
as in the daytime,
not in orgies and drunkenness,
not in sexual immorality
and sensuality,
not in quarreling and jealousy.
But here's this wonderful verse,
but put on the Lord Jesus Christ
and make no provision
for the flesh
to gratify its desires.
Could you put up
the final point please, Andrew?
Lord, please make me
a disciple of Jesus
gripped by the gospel
who daily clothes myself
with the Lord Jesus Christ
and also turns away
from all that is within me
which is in rebellion against you.
That's what the flesh means.
The flesh in this particular case
means that there's things within me
even after I've come to faith in Jesus
that are in rebellion against God.
And so that's what verse 14 is saying.
In a sense it's saying
that every morning when I wake up,
like I can almost envision this
because you know how clothes
affect how you live the day.
You know, if you get up
and you're just going to spend
the whole day
in your grimiest working things,
that's not how you're going to go
to meet the prime minister, right?
On the other hand,
you don't, you know,
you don't, if you want to meet
the prime minister,
you dress one way,
you don't dress that way
then go work in the government, right?
And I mean work in the garden.
And so if you just in a sense
when you wake up
as you're a Christian,
you imagine that you're putting on
the Lord Jesus Christ
at the same time
you're just going to say,
Father, help me to turn away
from everything within me
that's in rebellion against you.
I want to live my day that way.
But here's the thing about it.
This is a text to ask us
to be shaped by the gospel.
You see, here's the wonderful thing
about the gospel.
Dick Gregory, who was an anti-war comedian
in the 60s and the 70s
against the Vietnam War,
he said that he had no problem
with sending his son
to go fight on the front lines.
But he said,
if Nixon had a son,
if you put my son
where Nixon's son is,
then I'm fine to send my son
to fight in Vietnam.
Because what do people in power do?
People in power send young men
and now young women to fight,
but they stay back.
What do they pay taxes?
They take honor.
They take respect,
but they don't give back.
They pass laws that we have to obey,
but often they refuse
to obey them themselves.
But what is the gospel?
The gospel is about
the most remarkable thing
in the world,
that the King of kings
and Lord of lords
that Jesus,
the second person of the Trinity,
that he sets aside
his divine prerogatives,
his right, in a sense,
to be worshipped as God.
He stays God,
but he sets all of his appearances aside.
He looks at human beings
who cannot pay the taxes,
who cannot keep the laws,
who are complete and utter lawbreakers,
and they can't stop it.
And he says,
I will go and pay the punishment
that they deserve.
And I will go and fulfill
and keep the law
that they cannot keep.
I will do that
for people
in rebellion against me.
I,
who am properly
King of kings
and Lord of lords,
I will empty myself.
Sorry,
I'm making kids cry.
We should all be crying
in repentance,
not just because I've been loud
all of a sudden.
I'm sorry.
But that's what the Bible's telling us
the gospel is.
A complete reversal
of our expectations.
And that's how we are made right
with God.
The Christian faith begins
when in a sense,
we call out to Jesus
and say,
Jesus,
clothe me with yourself
and what you've done
on the cross
to take me as your own.
I don't want to be your servant
or your slave in a sense.
I want to be your child
and therefore serve you.
And the Christian life begins
when we're gripped
with what God has done for us,
completely unlike human kings
and queens.
and what he does to die
for us to reconcile him
to himself.
And then the Bible says
we don't just sort of accept that
and then we go on
and live hard-hearted,
cold,
legislative lives
that are consumed
with seeking honor
for ourselves
and respect for ourselves
and money for ourselves
and power for ourselves.
No.
What does the text say?
Every day when I wake up
after I've given my life
to Jesus,
the text is saying
I should say,
Father,
there's things in me
that are incomplete
and utter rebellion
against you.
I don't want to have them
characterize my day.
I want to be clothed
with Jesus.
My Lord
and your Messiah,
my Messiah,
the Messiah and Savior
I need.
I want the gospel
to shape
how I make
every decision,
how I serve,
how I rule,
how I show honor,
how I show respect,
how I bless the city.
I want gospel
to shape that.
Please stand.
Father,
we ask for,
I've mentioned
Justin Trudeau,
I've mentioned
the Supreme Court
of Canada,
we lift them
before you,
Father.
Father,
we ask that you
would pour out
your Holy Spirit
upon them.
We ask,
Father,
that they would
come to a saving
faith in Jesus.
We ask,
Father,
that as well,
that they would
act,
they have their own plans,
they have their own agendas,
they have their own concerns,
but that your Holy Spirit
might move and work
in their lives
so that they will be
a blessing to Canada,
that they will rule
and act in such a way
that Canada will be prosperous,
that we will flourish,
that we will not only flourish
as a nation,
but that we will be a blessing
to all of the nations
on the planet,
that they will seek
laws that are
right with you
and right for us,
that bring harmony
and mercy
to our land.
Father,
we ask for them.
We ask that you'd not
give us the government
we deserve,
but that you would bless us
with great government.
And,
Father,
we ask for ourselves.
You know how,
Father,
if we have a person
that we don't like,
how easy it is
to show disrespect
and dishonor them
and tear them down.
Father,
we ask that you would
help us to repent of that.
Show us appropriate
honor and respect,
even for people
who
all of our contemporaries
in the world might say
don't deserve it,
but help us,
Father,
to show appropriate
respect and honor to them
as a way of honoring you
and bringing you glory.
And,
Father,
we ask that every day
you help us to turn away
from those things within us
that are in rebellion
against you
and help us to clothe
ourselves with Jesus.
Help us,
Father,
to figure out
how to follow you
in Canada
in a way which is
true to you
and is good
for this city
and this land.
Father,
help us to do it.
And if there are any here,
Father,
who today have given
their lives to you
for the first time,
may your Holy Spirit
flood them with might
and power
and deep conviction.
Seal them for yourself.
Seal all of us.
Make us disciples of Jesus
gripped by the gospel
who live for your glory.
This we ask in Jesus' name
and all God's people said,
Amen.