Abstain from Fleshly Passions

Chapter 2, starting in verse 11. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil, and to praise those who do good.

For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. You may be seated. So it's been a couple weeks since we looked at 1 Peter together. I think it's been three weeks, because two weeks ago I did Psalm 84.

Last week, Brother Paul did 2 Timothy 2, verse 8. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. and so we're back in 1st Peter and for some of you this may be what you've been anticipating is that in this day and age it's November 22 right now 2020 it's like the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's death tomorrow I think that's something we should think about once in a while but we're in the middle of this COVID-19 thing going on in the United States.

And so this text has become extremely relevant to a specific application. Yet it's our conviction here that we're going to preach verse by verse through the Bible and we're not going to divert more than maybe four or five times a year to preach something that would be utterly topical. But this is the text we're on. And so we get a chance to see what Peter is telling us about submission to authorities and then it's my obligation and it's my privilege to try to apply that to our lives.

And so I'm going to apply that to the way we are living right now. It's not an abstract concept tonight as much as it sometimes is where I have to manufacture examples of how to deal with authorities. We are literally living in a situation where texts like Romans 13 and texts like first Peter two have been debated and preached on since like March 13.

And whenever a lot of this stuff started. And so some of you already have had your fill of all these things as well. And you don't want to hear one more guy try to tell you what it says, but I will assure you that, that my, one of the things I think I might do is I may make it a little more personal for you than anybody has ever been able to do on a podcast or a radio show.

And I will do the thing that I think preachers are tasked to do. And I will actually try to cut you to the heart with God's law in such a way that you would be led to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Or if you already have faith in Jesus Christ, you'll be led to repentance and further trust in him. So let's start at the beginning of the context here.

The context we said several weeks ago of the entire book of Peter the rest of it is you be holy as I am holy that was from first Peter chapter one and so everything that Peter's telling us to do for the rest of the book for the rest of the book of first Peter is about how to be holy so we never want to forget the context and then in the context of chapter two Peter comes to us and he says in verse nine we're a chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation, a people for his own possession. And so we have these concepts that we are living in this world, and we went over this at the very beginning, I think the first verse, where we talked about what it means to be exiles, what it means to be sojourners in a foreign land. And we look in Philippians, we know in chapter 3 of Philippians, Paul talks about how we have a citizenship in heaven. and so then the question naturally becomes well do we have a citizenship here as well you know what does it mean that i have a citizenship in heaven does that mean that nothing i do here on this earth matters because i'm because i'm in exile because the jews when they were in babylon and we read it from jeremiah 29 to read about being in exile did they have obligations while they were while they were uh under nebuchadnezzar's rule did they have ways that God wanted them to live and there are other ways that we're supposed to live even while we're under a different authority right now while we're sojourners and travelers and so we want to investigate these things and try to understand how God wants us to live in this world and and it I want to remind you that although a lot of these things are very practical and and you might be thinking hey where's my set of rules like here's what I should do here's what I shouldn't do everything is utterly theological.

Your theology is going to drive how you live your life. So what you believe God has said, what you believe God has commanded is going to decide those things. And so we have to work out what God has really said. So I want to start by looking at verse 11, which is unrelated to the submission to authority part. So this might be the part that people are less interested in.

But Peter tells us, he first starts with beloved. And he reminds us that the Christian brotherhood is a brotherhood of love. And that includes sisterhood too. That we're to love one another. And that actually how Jesus said we would be marked as different to other people And loving one another has a lot of implications to it And it doesn always mean just being really nice and smiling and patting people on the back But it also sometimes means being a little more gentle with people and being a little kinder with people and having a less harsher corrupt word with people than sometimes is a little natural to our flesh.

And so we need to watch out for that in a day and age when there's so much wrong in the world. There's so much wrong in the church. I mean, if you want to sit down afterwards, we can make a list of everything wrong in the church. We should probably all put our own names at the top, but we can put a bunch more stuff. I mean, it's not hard to identify some problems out there, but there's a love that we're to have with one another that encompasses more than, hey, I told somebody truth, because that's what they needed.

There's a way that we can approach people that actually helps them to want to be in fellowship with us. But Peter reminds them that they're sojourners and exiles, and he tells them to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against their souls. And so the first thing I want to point out is that when you abstain from something, you don't do it at all.

He doesn't say, you know, mitigate your passions. He doesn't say, you know, keep them down. He doesn't say, you know, just dip your toe into the water of your passions that wage war against your soul. Peter tells him to abstain. And the reason why he has to tell him to abstain is because when you've been saved by grace through faith alone, when you've been justified in the eyes of the Holy God, something has happened to you where God has regenerated your heart and he's forgiven your soul.

He's given you a new heart that is supposed to love Jesus and love his law and want to do right things. And yet the reason why we have chapters like Romans chapter eight in the Bible is that we have to have a promise that one day our body will be redeemed. So if you are a Christian today, you are still carrying around what is, without any hyperbole, nothing more than just a dead corpse.

You're carrying around dead flesh, but dead flesh that has a lot of strength in a sense. So it's not dead in the sense that it can't do anything, it's dead in the sense that it's completely opposed to God. And so because you have this dead flesh you carry, this sinful body, this shell that you still live in, you have to wage war against it in your soul in order to overcome sin in your life.

It's not as simple as I'm going to wake up in the morning and I'm just going to do what feels natural. Some moments for a Christian, that's going to be a really good thing. I deny the idea that like all we ever do as Christians is still like evil. Some Christians have good desires. You should. Hopefully you all at some point today thought, I want to go sing songs to God.

That was a good desire. God put that there, and we shouldn't think lightly of that. But our flesh also is going to pull us in the wrong direction at times. Our flesh, which really exists, is going to have passions, it's going to have feelings, it's going to have things that it wants to do that wage war against your soul, which is actually just wanting to be with God. and that's why we have to have whole chapters of the Bible like Romans 8 that remind you that even though as a Christian you could fall into pretty gross sin I'm not advocating that you do it but it could happen to people and has happened to people like Brother David King David you can fall into gross sin and you need to be promised that even though you're a Christian you can fall into sin but God will one day deliver you from this body of death.

So whereas Jesus' body had no desire for sin whatsoever, we have these bodies that are always pulling us in the wrong direction because of our fallen Adam. If you look at Galatians 5, we'll just get a quick list of sins of the flesh. We could we've talked about this before in this series already. So one of the advantages of preaching verse by verse is I can I can sort of gloss over something that that maybe could be a whole sermon.

Because I know we've talked about it before already and we have talked about sins of the flesh. But in Galatians 5, Paul says, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. So you have these desires, you know, it's almost like when you're hungry and you eat. Okay? You're gratifying it. And you're thirsty and you drink.

You're quenching your thirst. So there's these desires that your flesh has and you can gratify them. And he's saying if you're walking by the Spirit, you won't. He tells us about the war within. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit. And the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.

For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. so now you have this concept that real Christians should all understand in their heart that there are times in your life where you absolutely want to do the right thing and there's something that's pulling you to do the wrong thing and it's a battle, it's like a real war Paul said he beat his flesh because of this and I'll share a personal testimony I did that, when I was a new Christian there were things in my life that I was pulled so hard toward physically that I had to beat my flesh because I read that Paul did it. I hope it wasn't a metaphor because I did it literally. You've got to be careful.

You don't want to do everything just literally. But I did that because I had to starve my flesh. And at that time I had to make my flesh hurt. And part of how you keep your flesh from growing is by starving it. That's how you keep things from growing. You don't feed them. but Paul says if you're led by the spirit you're not under the law that's a different thing to talk about but he but he says now the works of the flesh are evident so these things are like obvious he's saying these aren't these aren't things where hey we need to sit down and we need to get into the Greek and we need to study like this stuff kind of obvious I think is what he saying to people Let name some of them Sexual immorality impurity sensuality A lot of people think sensuality, I think we talked about this before, just means like when a girl is alluring in a Victoria's Secret ad or something.

But sensuality encompasses more, it's the idea that you're titillated by your senses. So, for example, people who are always looking for a word from God, or trying to speak in tongues, or trying to get those kinds of things, that's a form of sensuality, the charismaticism that people run rampant in the church today. Idolatry, worshipping something other than God as God.

Sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger. rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. What strikes me when I read those lists in Scripture is how many things are grouped together that in my mind I don't group together. Because in my mind it's like, okay, there's the things that all the really bad people do, and they're over there.

And then there's the things that the bad Christians do, and that's over there. And then there's the stuff I do, which is like, this is like the good Christian category in my mind, right? But then you read the list, and Paul doesn't really make a distinction between things like envy and sexual immorality. Rivalries and orgies are in the same list. In one of the non-ESV versions, it actually says murders in there too.

And that's a textual variant, but certainly we would agree, murders is the work of the flesh. And it's the result of rivalries, dissensions, division, and fits of anger. And so Peter's telling his people that are listening to him, abstain from these things completely. Don't dip your toes in them. Don't be sort of like them. And so this is the context that we're in.

It's this command to abstain from the passions of the flesh. And so one of the first things that we understand when we get into be subject for the Lord's sake to every institution, to every human institution, one of the first things that we need to understand is that being subject to human institutions never requires you to sin. Peter just told you, don't do these passions of the flesh.

Don't do them. That's the context. Be holy as I am holy. Then in the next sentence, well, two sentences later, he's going to say, obey every human institution, submit to them. and so we have to reconcile the fact that Peter cannot possibly mean so if they tell you to dive into the passions of your flesh then it's okay alright so that's a backwards teaching it's illogical and it would almost challenge I would be challenged to think you have reading comprehension if you could somehow get to that point where you think well my governor or my husband or my boss told me to do this thing so I did it because you're under the context of abstain from the passions of your flesh.

So that's one of the first lessons we learn about submission to authority in this world is that your submission to authority in this world, which is commanded by God, which we read about in the confession, still falls under a greater umbrella of your submission to the authority of God at all times. When you're at work, you're under God's authority and you're under your boss's authority. when you're in a home and you're a wife you're under your husband's authority but you're also under God's authority children you're under your parents authority and you're under God's authority husbands you guys are under authority when you're in a room like this right now I'm the elder there's an authority there everywhere we go we have some different authority there's police officers there's lots of lots of authorities in our life when you go to Kroger you're on their private property they have some authority over you So understanding how to relate to these things, but also always keeping in mind your obedience to God. You're a child of God, and you're to live like that.

So abstain from the passions of your flesh. Verse 12, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. So the Gentiles here is referring to non-Christians in this sense. somebody could try to argue that Peter was writing the Jews and so it meant Gentiles but at this point the Gentiles are being included in the people of God as Christians so when he calls them Gentiles he's talking about when you're around all the people that you're in exile with when you're living in Pickerington or Columbus or whatever cities are represented here and you're around people that aren't Christian keep your conduct honorable So your freedom in Jesus Christ does not give you any kind of license to do things that are dishonoring to God or even to your neighbor.

Christians, of all people, should be the ones who take most seriously the command, what was it, Matthew 22, 39, and a second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. Christians should be the best citizens. Christians should be the people that your neighbor knows they can trust in a hard time. Christians are the people who your neighbor should be sure you're not stealing from them.

And so we want to be honorable around the Gentiles. And one of the reasons is so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they'll actually see your good deeds. So it doesn't say if they speak against you as evildoers. Now I don't want to make too big a deal out of that, but I think it's promised in Scripture that the world's going to hate you. do not be surprised that the world hates you we told that in 1 John Peter going to say don be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you in a couple chapters And so the world is going to say bad things about us.

The world is going to say the things they said about the first century church. The world accused the first century church of incest. Because husbands and wives started to call themselves brother and sister. because people understood the doctrine of adoption into the family of God. They started to understand that, hey, you're brother and sister in God's family.

And then the people in Rome got to say, well, these people are in the Roman Empire. They could say, well, they're incest, you know, or incestuous. And so they would accuse him of something because of that. And then, you know, incest, you know, being criminal or at least something that would have been looked down upon horribly. And it still should be. It's something that people had to then try to deal with.

And it was dishonoring is what people thought. And people in the first century said that Christians were cannibals. Because they said they ate the body of Christ. And so they talked so much. The things that people talked about in the first century, the things that the Bible talks about, like being in a brotherhood and sisterhood together, and talking about the body of Christ and the blood of Christ on a regular basis, were the types of things that the people around them would pick on.

And sadly, we don't talk about some of those things enough for people to even pick on us. You know what I mean? Maybe we should be a little more bold about those things. But the point is, is Gentiles are going to speak against you. Whether you do something wrong or not, they're going to find something to say. And you sort of get to control whether they have a legitimate thing to say or not.

By being honorable. And you know in God's eyes, whether your heart's right or not. You want your church to be able to see that you're pure and holy. You know, if somebody accused somebody in this room of something tomorrow, and we read about it in the paper, I like to believe we'd start getting to know each other well enough that we'd know, no, that's a lie about that guy.

That's my brother. He didn't do that. You know what I'm saying? So we want to live lives where, even if your neighbor was asked, your neighbor who disagrees with you about Christian things, if your neighbor was asked, well, is Jeremy a terrible guy? That your neighbor would be able to think, well, I disagree with his theology. I don't like his beliefs about Jesus being the exclusive way to heaven.

I don't like some of the implications of that. But the neighbor, you'd hope, would be able to say, but he's really a good neighbor still. That's one of the goals here. and it says glorify God on the day of visitation at the end of verse 12 and that's an interesting phrase that I'm not sure anybody knows for sure what it means there's some theories out there one of them meant that when the government came to get people somebody thought that the Gentile neighbors would defend their neighbors but I think the idea here is that when somebody speaks evil against you and it's a lie and Jesus said blessed are you and others speak evil against you and utter false things about you and persecute you, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.

On the day that God visits, on the day that Jesus returns and he punishes evildoers, he'll be glorified in his punishment of people who treated you wickedly for your Christian beliefs. Thessalonians, I don't remember which one of the letters. I think it's the second one, where Paul promises the Thessalonians that vengeance is coming, and the vengeance is coming from God.

It's one of the reasons you don't need to have vengeance on evildoers. So Peter says, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution. And then he lists some different human institutions. He says whether it's the supreme emperor. So if you live in an empire with an emperor, which, you know, I'm not a prophet, but I have a feeling we're actually approaching one. so anyway I think we'll have an empress though actually I think that's part of the thing that's going to happen in America feminist people but anyway if you live in a place with an emperor he's a supreme authority you're to be subject to him he's actually put there by God and so we have this theology sometimes it says well the good things that happen they're all from God and then the bad things some people think well that must have been Satan or somehow that was outside of God's control and things like that, but God is the one who actually institutes all the authorities in your life.

Romans 13, verses 1-7, it's going to reiterate that same concept. It's almost the same thing as what we see in 1 Peter, so I'm not going to go there right now. He also says, or the governors are sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. And so within the authority structures that God gives you, there's sometimes vice regents, we'll say.

So you may have an emperor, but the emperor's not going around to people's houses, collecting taxes, and knocking on their door, and arresting them, and putting them in prison. There's all sorts of layers that occur. If anybody here has ever worked at the state of Ohio like I did, you know there's some layers out there in government, right? But there's layers of things.

So when you have a deputy sheriff that wants to talk to you about something, he's representing the sheriff. He's as much an authority at that moment as the sheriff being sent by the sheriff. And so it's something that we need to understand is that when there's authorities in your life, they're allowed to send like sub-authorities. So a good example is if your parents want to go out for a date, and they have a babysitter for your kids, and they say you need to listen to the babysitter.

At that moment that they said that, and I hate the word babies there because nobody, well there's a couple babies but at the moment that they say that you need to listen to them you're actually under that person's authority In the same way that I would be under someone's authority at work if my boss was leaving for two weeks and he said, this guy here is in charge for two weeks. And so authorities have ways that they can appoint other authorities at the different levels. And that happens in government a lot more than a lot of other places.

You don't see it in the home as much. But there's a lot of different layers of authorities in our government. so when we when we read Peter what we see is that submission to authority is not just related to our government Peter says you're to be subject to the Lord's sake to every human institution and then he immediately talks about the government the state will say but then Peter also talks about wives being subject to their husbands husbands loving their wives in an understanding way. And then in verse 8 of chapter 3, he tells everybody to have certain unity of mind and sympathy and brotherly love for one another.

And so when Peter's talking about submission to authority, it's a general concept that has many specific applications. And one of them is how we relate to our government. Now, Jesus Christ is the example we'll see later in the chapter who submitted himself to the government at the time. He submitted himself to the point of death. He was falsely accused of evil.

People lied about him. And then he was delivered up to death. And Jesus Christ submitted to it. He didn't form a rebellion. He didn't get a bunch of people together and say, hey, let's get our weapons and let's defend ourselves. There was a time that Jesus knew the right time of when he was to submit to that evil authority because he knew the result was going to be the resurrection that he was going to have, and he was going to proclaim eternal life to people.

But so when we deal with our authorities, we have a few things we have to think about. Now, this is where it gets a little bit contextual, because we're in the United States of America. So I'm not going to talk to you about a king. I'm not going to talk to you about an emperor. What we can think through in our context is, what does it mean in our context to be subject to our civil magistrates, to our civil authorities that we have?

And so one of the questions that I would ask you is this. What's the lady's name in England? Queen Elizabeth? Is that still the queen? Like 100 years from now, she'll still be queen and will be dead. If Queen Elizabeth walked in here right now and told you to do something, would you do it?

Because she's authoritative, I'll say. I mean, I might do it just to be kind. Well, no, you wouldn't, would you? If the governor of California came in and said, you guys can't have church or sing today, would we stop? That's a different context, because we wouldn't do that if it was the governor of Ohio, I guess. But the point is this.

You have to be able to figure out who the authorities are if you're going to submit to authorities. If I walked into Brother Jason's house and started commanding Lindsay, Lindsay would rightfully ignore me. She'd probably go talk to her husband and say, hey, can you work on this guy? But the point is, I don't have the authority over someone else's wife that he has.

The governor of California doesn't have authority over people in Ohio. The Queen of England, no matter how high an authority she is, has no authority over a single citizen of the United States. so the fact that somebody is an authority in some jurisdiction doesn't necessarily mean they're your authority in your jurisdiction if you live in Canal Winchester you don't pay taxes to Pickerington do you you pay a lot of taxes in Pickerington it's on my mind once in a while so first we have to determine what's our authority and then we can talk about where is their jurisdiction So we're in the United States of America. The United States of America is an extremely unique place.

It is the greatest country that was ever founded. And the reason why it's the greatest country that was ever founded, maybe other than believing Israel at some point, is that the United States of America was founded upon a number of biblical presuppositions. And one of the main ones that it was founded upon was the idea that men are ultimately evil in their hearts.

And that men who have power will wield that power over others, and they will do it in a way that's tyrannical. And so the United States of America, the slowest moving government that you could imagine, like it is so hard to make any change in our government, is because there's a healthy fear that if individuals ever got as much power as guys like King George had, they would do wicked things. They would prohibit people from worshipping the one true God.

They would punish them for doing it. They would tax them in unjust ways. They would require licenses to preach the gospel, and then they could take them away if they wanted. And so one of the reasons, one of the things about our country is that we have a constitutional republic, right? It's a representative republic. So instead of a, we don't have a democracy, right?

A democracy is when everybody just votes. And the saying about democracy is, a democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. And so a democracy is always going to degrade into a mob rule. And that's what our founding fathers called democracy. And so a true democracy is something It's something that would only work in the kingdom of heaven where we'll already have a perfect king who will obey.

So we don't need a democracy there. But in our republic we have a thing called the Constitution And the Constitution is in fact declared as an authority And all of our governing officials are subject to that Constitution And thus, when Mike DeWine says, you need to do this, and I'll just say, you have to wear a mask. When Mike DeWine says that, Mike DeWine is subject to the state of Ohio's Constitution and ultimately the Constitution of the United States.

And the way, and this is a much longer civics lesson to have someday, but the way to actually challenge a decision that authorities make in the United States is to actually disobey it. And so it's kind of a strange thing when we think about the way Scripture tells us to submit to authorities, is that the way that we actually challenge a false authority in our government is by showing them that we're not going to obey it so that something will happen where either they give up and realize, hey, I shouldn't have done that, or they arrest you and you take it to court and you win in court. And you show that you were right in the first place and you didn't have to obey that authority.

Now, there are a number of things you could be told to do that you decide to disobey. and part of your submission to the authority though is that you may suffer greatly for it. You may end up in jail over something that somebody else thinks well why didn't you just do what they said? There's a good reason to do that once in a while and that's for the protection of others and it's because you care about future generations having some freedom.

So one of the reasons why we have a free country now is because there were people who rebelled against the unjust laws that the English were trying to put over the colonies, right? So there's a lot here. I'm not trying to encourage rebellion, but at the same time, I want you to understand something. You are not rebelling against an authority if that authority either doesn't have jurisdiction over you, or if the thing that they are trying to tell you you have to do is unlawful, either against God or outside of what they're even constrained by their own law to give you.

And so we are a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, which means that in a very real sense that a lot of people don't like outside of our country when we have these arguments, but even people in our country, is we are all lesser magistrates. We are all part of the government. You are actually obligated by your constitution to stand up for the truth of the constitution. if a government says you can't meet and have church we say well we're obeying a higher authority Jesus Christ and we're going to meet and have church if a government says you shouldn't sing in church because you're going to spread COVID we say well we'll sing in church if we want to which is why it's very important if you're actually sick you stay home we don't want to go so far against something that we do something silly or stupid but the idea becomes that we want to submit to the authorities we're given and we want to suffer like good soldiers in Christ Jesus, but we want to do things that are wise and lawful.

I'm going to give you an example. This is a very story-driven sermon here instead of so much text, but this is contemporary stuff. Canada has much stronger restrictions in their government than we have in the United States. In fact, if you want to frustrate yourself, try to talk to a Canadian about how government works. Like they just they're they have no freedom compared to us.

Like we're really blessed. We're really spoiled in a sense. But we want to keep it. So we do fight for it. But in Canada, they have much stricter restrictions with all this COVID stuff that the government has put down. And there's a blogger.

His name is Tim Challey. Some of you may have heard of him. His son dropped dead a few weeks ago. His son went to, I think, Boyce College or whatever the seminary is in Louisville. and his son just dropped dead. He's like a 20-year-old kid. His name is Nicholas.

And there was no warning. Just boom. He was just playing outside basketball or something. I don't know the story exactly, but he died. And so Tim and his wife come down to the United States to see what's going on, to deal with all of the things you have to deal with in that situation. And they go back to Canada.

And he wrote this blog post, though, about how painful it is that when he goes back to Canada, he has to quarantine for two weeks. Although he has no symptoms, and I think he said he has a negative COVID test. And he and his wife have to stay alone in their house. They're not allowed to go anywhere. They're not allowed to have visitors that would even come and minister to them.

Because that's the rules that they've made there. Now, some people would argue, well, submit to the authority. Do what the authority says and suffer like a good soldier and deal with it, just like Jesus submitted to authorities. But some people would argue that there's no authority given by God to anybody to tell you you aren't allowed to go minister to your friend.

To tell you that you have to stay home for two weeks because you traveled somewhere and you aren't symptomatic of COVID. So the argument becomes, if we would defy more of these unjust orders, if more people would get together and actually nullify unjust orders, maybe people would pull back on them, maybe more people would be emboldened to do the same, and maybe more people would be able to do things like have funerals, for example. My dad died in April.

We couldn't get his little urn for a long time, because urns weren't an essential service. So I don't even know how long we waited until the guy finally said, hey, are you going to pick them up? And we like we didn even know he was ready And we still haven had a funeral or memorial or anything And now we worried it going to get canceled because we scheduled one that after December 5th But there's people that are really hurting out there.

There's people who need care at a physical therapy facility, little children with disabilities. So some of these lockdown things, they need to be thought through a little more. first of all whether they're just and in some cases whether they even make sense. So I didn't want to get into all those details with you. I want to share with you that some of the favorite people of wicked men are clergy that cling to some of these texts.

So Margaret Sanger when she wanted to eliminate or control the Negro population and that's the word she used so if you don't like it, just quoting her but one of the things they did is they enlisted black pastors I should have said that in quotation marks black men who were considered to be leaders of churches and they got them on board to preach some of these things to people, to tell them about submitting to governments that's how you keep people in slavery a lot and so being able to stand up and say as Christians you are to submit to your authority. You should obey the speed limit. I think you probably should.

I think you should do it for conscious sake, as Romans says. I think you should do it because it's not worth the fine and the penalty. And you shouldn't habitually break rules and learn to be a rule breaker. But I think every man in here, especially in women too, you need to start to figure out where's the line where I need to know this is not actually an authority in my life so I don't have to obey it and by obeying an authority that's not actually your authority you make them your authority and you don't want to make people your authority who aren't so we have some guys that came before us John Adams said you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom I hope you will make good use of it so these guys weren't perfect so I'm quoting some founding fathers who all had a Christian worldview and they weren't all Christian Patrick Henry says his life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery you may say you don't mind becoming a slave but you should think about other people as well you should think about future generations and then Patrick Henry of course he says Forbid it, Almighty God.

I know not what course others may take, but ask for me, give me liberty or give me death. So you've got to respect a guy like Patrick Henry. And it seemed like he actually left room for people that said they didn't want to worry about it. Sam Adams, though, he says, If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility or peace of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, he says, go home from us in peace. we ask not your counsels or your arms.

Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. So he took it a little more seriously even. He didn't have room for the people that weren't on his side. Ben Franklin said, When the people find that they can vote themselves money, they will herald the end of the republic.

I hope you can see that happening around you right now. When the people find that they can vote themselves money, they will herald the end of the republic. So when we talked about democracy, democracy can be a very dangerous thing because it just becomes mob rule. So once 51% of the people realize that there's a smaller percentage that has maybe some wealth that they want, they'll find a way to get it.

Noah Webster, the guy that founded Webster's Dictionary, he said that Christian religion in its purity is the basis, or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government. And I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence. So I'm not a theonomist, but I recognize the fact that there are people in our governments who need to be Christian and have Christian thoughts you cannot have a government that is based solely on natural law for very long although there are people all over the world that have civilizations that have thrived without Christianity but they don't thrive for long because eventually the passions of the flesh take over and the few people that end up with power wield it in an unholy way.

And so some of the exhortations I would have for a group like this is, how do we become involved in our government? How do we have people that we send out, we want to send out missionaries, we want to plant churches, we want homeschool kids that learn the ABCs and all those things and grow up to be Christians someday, and we hope that that's an avenue for that. But what if churches were producing more people who wanted to be senators too, though?

And representatives, or city councilmen, or mayors. We just read in the Confession that it's okay for a Christian to serve in the civil government. We have examples of them in the New Testament as well. And so I want you to think about your involvement. Maybe you don't want to run for county commissioner. but do you know people who maybe they could maybe they be a good voice of reason in the government bringing christian thought into the government I mean if you look around the country and you look at churches that you would consider to be sound churches how many people from those churches are actually the ones that are making the laws?

How many people are the... We have all these Supreme Court justices now that Trump appointed, and in theory we're supposed to be happy that Trump appointed them and not Obama, but one of them goes to an Episcopalian LGBT-friendly church and the other two are just kind of like devout Catholics which is pretty good for a minute until you remember guys like William Tyndale who were burned by Catholics so I'm not sure where we're safer Catholics today aren't quite as fiery and Protestant burning as they once were but in some sense we should have born-again Christians that are trying to bear witness at the government level born and grown Christians should be the ones who are trying to make these changes I want to remind you too if you disagree with some of what I said tonight there's some people out there who will take a lot of exception with some of my encouragement that there are times and I hate to say there's times to disobey because there's actually never a time to disobey there's a time to have the discernment to know that no I'm not actually disobeying I'm actually ignoring an unjust authority right now. I'm nullifying something that's actually wrong.

But there's people who want to really hammer these passages and say, no, we need to be submissive and we need to do what the Bible says. And they get really fired up about being subject to, for the Lord's sake, to every institution and to know that those institutions were put there by God and Jesus submitted the Pontius Pilate and all that stuff. and my challenge for you if in your heart you're feeling that way or if you're hearing people say that is I don't know where have those people been for the last 30 years while sin has been running rampant because I don't hear them hammering that list of sins of the flesh from Galatians 5 non-stop on people saying stop doing this I don't hear them saying abstain from the passions of your flesh I just hear them saying submit to your government, wear the mask, it's easy that's what I hear people saying I hear people saying if the government tells you to lock down then you lock down and you deal with it we can rebuild a civilization financially if it's destroyed but we can't save people's lives if we don't lock down where were you with all the other commands because all of a sudden you're going to say this is a command of God we should obey it and you know what I think I think some people find it awful convenient to not have to go to church on Sunday and praise the Lord you're all here I'm preaching to the choir right now. But I think there's some people who are relieved.

Hey, the government said I can't go to church Sundays, so now I'm staying home. I can watch the pregame and all the NFL games, right? So I think there's some people out there that actually just see arguing for the submission to government as sort of just a convenient way to be conformed to this world. and they don't hammer all these other things quite as hard as they want to hammer that you need to just obey the government right now.

They're not exhorting people to more holiness in a dozen other areas that the church needs it. And so watch your own heart for that too. We should all be thinking about the whole counsel of God. We should all be thinking about bearing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives and not just avoiding murder. but doing all the other bad things. So don't just preach, submit to the government because a couple spots in the Bible tell you to, and ignore the rest of it.

Another thing I'll add, just as a side note, is if... There's a lot of arguing right now about the election results, and whether Trump really should have won or not or whatever. I think it's a good thing to fight for election integrity. So even if we counted every vote and Biden won, I think it's a good goal to say, hey, let's just try to count the legal votes, right?

I think that's a good thing to do. But one of the things I find really interesting, well, I don't apologize, but if you're kind of a Trump fan type of person, is Donald Trump has fought very hard for a few things, and it's been commendable. Like this election stuff, I'm on his side. Like, hey man, use every avenue the law gives you to argue about whether there's been fraud and try to protect future generations from election fraud.

But the effort that Donald Trump's been able to put into that, when compared to the actual effort, not just rhetoric, he's put in toward fighting abortion shows me where his priorities really are sometimes. He's not actually trying to fight abortion. He just says the right things so that the gigantic pro-life lobby basically buys into it. Mike DeWine, you might find Mike DeWine a commendable guy.

You might think he's trying to do the right thing. Bless your heart is what we would say in the South, if that's your case. But anyway, not to be offensive, But if Mike DeWine is able to shut down all the businesses in Pickerington for some random period of time because of a disease that kills like one in every like 10,000 people that actually like catches it.

Then why couldn't he shut down an abortion clinic for even a day? You know what I mean? More people, more people. You realize more people die from abortion in a in like a month than have died from COVID. Like worldwide. I mean it's amazing to me you have to have the discernment to recognize that there are things that are worse than catching a cold there's things that are worse than people who are already aging catching a cold from it.

There's some things that are just expected. People are going to die every day. I don't want to kill people. I don't want to intentionally spread things that are really harming people. I don't want to go into a nursing home and sneeze and cough. Whether I had COVID or not, I don't want to do it.

But I think we have to recognize that there's a lot more things going on right now that are really bad in this world and we're being distracted away from them by some of this garbage and some of this rhetoric and some of these guys that stand up and say they're pro-life And then they shut down every business except abortion clinics. And then when they're challenged on it, he was challenged on it, Mike DeWine. And he said, well, it's not my jurisdiction.

It's a local issue. Well, the local cops stand outside and defend Planned Parenthood. So they're not going to shut them down. They're trying to keep me from being too loud when I'm there. The local police isn't going to do anything about it. So pray for your leaders.

That's the other thing, the final thing I'll say. Pray for your leaders. Leaders can have a big impact on their society. They can make changes that you can't make. One change of heart from some of the leaders in our country could change a lot of people's minds. Maybe not now with the media, the way they control everything, but in the book of Jonah, they had a big wicked country, right?

And that king said, hey, everybody fast. He had a lockdown, you know what I mean? but he was the emperor, he was in charge he was allowed to do that and it had a good impact so pray for your leaders believe that God really has the king's heart in his hand and he'll turn it whichever way that he wishes and pray that God would do some good things for his people and know this which is really the lesson that 1 Peter is trying to teach us the whole time that no matter what happens no matter what suffering God puts you through and yes, I said God puts you through, that it's all ordained for your good as a believer in him. Father, thank you for the word of truth that you've given us. we thank you Lord that you've given us tools to study your scripture and to understand it and to apply it to our lives we pray Lord that we would apply the truth that we've heard today that we would keep our focus on certain things like personal holiness family worship evangelizing our children and our neighborhoods and our local communities that we would have a healthy focus on the things that are really, in a sense, under our jurisdiction.

And that we would also try to have a good impact on the society at large. That we would be helpful to our neighbors and to our neighborhoods, to our communities. That you would raise up men and women, even from this room or in future times in this church, that would be parts of the solution, Lord. That you would protect the Christians that are out there right now, actually doing battle at the forefront of some of these things, that you would keep their minds pure and unstained from the world.

Lord, forgive us for not remembering to pray for our leaders and the people in authority as much as we ought. And so, Father, I pray today that you would bless us as we continue to worship you, Spirit and truth. Amen.