Governing Authorities

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

My name's Dan Hay, I'm a deacon here at South Burleson, so glad you're all here. I'm gonna be talking today about Romans chapter 13. Let's do something that I like to do. I'm gonna read the whole chapter, but as we do, I'd like us to stand as we read God's word. So let's all stand, and we'll read Romans chapter 13. It will also be on the screen for you. Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities that there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one and authority? Then do what is right, and you will be commended.

For one and authority is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. There are God's servants, agents of wrath, to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities not only because of possible punishment, but also as a matter of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants who give their full time to governing. If to everyone what you owe them, if you owe taxes, pay taxes. If revenue, then revenue. If respect, then respect. If honor, then honor. Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another. For whoever loves others has filled the law. The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and whatever other command there be, may be, are summed up in this one command.

You will not give up your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over, the day is almost here, so thus put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. Father, we thank you for the reading of your word, God. May we always hold it in high regard. I pray that each time we open the scriptures or hear someone talk about your word, that we are forever changed, Lord.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Oh, y'all can have a seat. Well, you know, sometimes when you're reading through the Bible, you just come across passages that are completely irrelevant, that have nothing to do with what we're going through on a daily basis, right? Amen. I mean, Romans 13 is, no, I'm kidding. Very, very applicable, talking about authority. Right, but this can be hard for us because we are all part of a Western culture. In Westerners, we value individualism and the American dream, okay? Let's think about the American dream for a moment here. You know, your dream is a retirement, okay? I'm not speaking for you specifically, but I'm gonna just paint a general American dream picture. You retire early with enough money to do whatever you want.

There it is, right there. Now, most people think of the American dream as money and material things, but really, what is underlying there? When you retire, what is the underlying thing that you no longer have to answer to? Someone telling you what to do, a boss, right? So the American dream is really at its core, not having anybody tell you what to do, okay? Now, I can relate to this. I come from a long line of self-employed people, okay? Golly, all my uncles, my uncles, my dad, my grandfather,

my great, two of my great uncles, yeah. The Hay men cannot be told what to do. Let's just be fair, okay? I'm one of the only people that actually works for someone else in my family, and I understand that. I get that. Being under authority can be difficult, but we're gonna talk through that in a minute, and the Lord really uses that. It's hard to understand that because the early church had a very communal culture, and those authority structures were in place, and they were very highly revered. And so, we're here 2,000 years later removed, thinking of it from our very Western, individualized, do-it-ourself culture when the early church is very communal, and authority structures were important and revered.

We're at a place now where we see the need of government authorities, whether it be our actual government or church government, but let's be honest. Don't we kind of, because of the cultural milieu, don't we carry a little bit of a suspicion when it comes to leaders? We know a little too much, don't we? Every day in the media, we hear stories of theft, you know, lies, immoral acts from people in power, pastors falling into sin, and what that does is it brings suspicion, and it brings, yeah, it takes away from the validity of those leaders.

As Christians, sometimes we feel that we can have cause not to follow corrupt people, or, if I don't agree with what the authority is telling me, I don't have to do it, that's very common. We work in a Christian school, and there are rules in our school. Do we have rules in our school, guys? Yeah, yeah, sorry, I'm putting them on the spot. And there is a common conception in our community, not everybody, but even in parents, that if I don't agree with that thing that you're telling us to do, I'm just not gonna do it. Okay, that's really common. And knowing what we know about our leaders, it makes it easier to do this. These people are not walking the Lord, you know, I'm just not gonna follow that.

Let's look at Romans 13, and it talks about authority, we just read the passage up there, but before we get to Romans 13, let's just kinda review Romans 1 through 12. Now, I'm not gonna review it in depth, but what you have is a shift in Romans 13, okay? So Romans 1 through 12 is talking about living by faith and not by works, living by faith and not by works, living by faith and not by works. And then you come to Romans 13, and there's a shift, and all of a sudden, Paul is talking about, you know, obey your authority, do this, do that, fall under them. And I could see someone in Rome in the early church reading this and be like, wait, didn't you just sell us to walk by faith and not by works? I'm giving this a list of works. That would be an initial reaction, but what's actually happening here is he's making a shift and explaining that living by faith also means living with gratitude,

and living with gratitude means you change the way you live, okay? So if you think about this in context of the whole letter of Romans, he's talking about living by faith and not by works. He's not talking out of both sides of his mouth here. He's saying you live by faith, not by works, but your faith will have evidence, and that evidence is gratitude for what the Lord has done. And so he's a practical guy. I mean, he's very theological, as you can see in the first few chapters, but now he's a practical guy. Here's some examples of what it means to live a life of gratitude for what Jesus Christ has done for you. You're not doing these things to earn your salvation. We've covered that. You're doing these things because you wanna live a different life, a life of gratitude for what the Lord has done for you. All right, so specifically Romans 13.

He's talking about submitting to government authorities. Well, this was not welcome news for the Jews. The Jews in the early church were hated even more than other people who followed Christ because they were pious and religious, and they got persecuted even more than the Gentiles. And remember, too, the Jews were expecting a political savior. Okay, when they thought about the Messiah coming to save them, they were thinking of, you know, like, the comeuppance in an action movie. When the hero comes in and it's like, ah, hee, hee, whoo! And they defeat all their enemies and they walk out triumphantly with things exploding behind them or something like that. I don't know. But that's what the Jews were expecting, and when Jesus comes and says, no, I'm bringing salvation, spiritual salvation for eternity, and it's not coming yet, so you have to stay in your current situation.

That was not a fun message for a lot of the Jews, and I think that's one of the reasons many of the Jews decided that he wasn't the Messiah because he did not fit the idea of what they thought the Messiah would be. But even the Jews who did follow Jesus as Messiah really, really struggled because they were expecting this political redeemer, and he's saying, I'm here to save you from your sins, and you still need to endure all the hardships that you're enduring. You still need to submit to this ungodly authority.

I also read in researching this that Paul was probably addressing certain groups of people who believed they could not elevate Christ fully in authority, and the liberty given by him could not be fully enjoyed until they could shake off any yoke of human subjection. So basically saying, there were groups of people that Paul was probably specifically addressing in this letter that thought by submitting to these local authorities, it was hindering, or even completely disallowing them from even submitting to Christ, that they couldn't do both. And so here he is specifically addressing this. No, you need to submit to your governing authorities.

So how does God use authority? So Paul is saying to submit to authority, and we read, when we read the scriptures, all authority is from God, okay? So how does God use authority, and how does God use these people and authority over us? Well, the first way is to keep order. Anybody ever speed, you know, go like 66 in a 65, you know what I'm talking about? Just go a little lower speed limit, nobody? All right, just me, great, all right. Even though you may break that one once in a while, aren't you glad that it's there? Aren't you glad that there's a speed limit and it's enforced? Maybe not when it's enforced on you, but aren't you generally glad that there is a speed limit and you can't just go 100 miles an hour down the Chisholm Trail Parkway or something like that? Yes, of course, that's to keep order, to keep you safe. A lot of the rules bring us inconvenience,

but we are giving up some of our freedom for the sake of community and for the sake of order. So God uses authority to keep order. God also uses authority to punish the wicked. Punishment, we've seen in the Bible lots of times that punishment can turn a life around, that accountability, that chastisement from God can turn a life around, or at a minimum, it can keep the rest of us safe. So if somebody is just an absolute dangerous person, locking them up keeps the rest of us safe. So God uses authority to keep order and to punish the wicked. He also uses authority to reward the good. You know, I was pulled over the other day and I was like, man, what am I doing? And the cop comes up to the window and says, I was like, what was I doing, officer? And he says, I just wanted to pull you over and tell you that you are the most amazing driver I've ever seen, man. I mean, you nailed, just,

that thing was right in the middle of the lane and you signaled like 100 yards before the turn, which is the law, and it was absolutely beautiful. And because you're such a great driver, I've got this certificate from the city of Burleson and a Chick-fil-A gift card. And have a great day. Do you believe that actually happened? No, that didn't happen. I just made that up. Believable, no. We're not always gonna just be literally rewarded for doing good, okay? You know, there's not certificates for good driving they're handing out, right? How are we rewarded for doing good? How does God use authority to reward us for doing good? Let me tell you, the most freest you can be and the most rewarded you can be for doing good is living with a guilt-free conscience. Going about your day without having to worry about someone coming after you because you're not doing right, okay?

People that break the law live a life constantly licking over their shoulders. And I have a relative who broke the law. We're gonna talk about him in a minute, and a little bit later, but. A reward for doing the good is basically the fact that you are doing what you're supposed to be doing and you don't have to worry about being punished, being caught. And that freedom brings peace, and that is a great reward. Our children, as they grow up, begin to realize, some sooner than others, that if you do what mom and dad says, you just live a happy, peaceful life. And it's a lot more fun. But if you do what you wanna do, then life is hard.

And so we're still praying for some of our kids so you can do that too. They're still learning that. That's a difficult one. Being guilt-free is a reward for the good. Another way that the Lord uses authority is to train us in righteousness. And this is the one that I think about the most. I was shown this illustration years ago, and let's see if I can explain it to you. Imagine that you are a lump of coal, okay? And what do we know about lumps of coal if they're subjected to great pressure and heat over time? What do they become? Diamonds, yes. But when you're a lump of coal, I mean, you're not worth much, but a diamond is worth great. A lot. So imagine the Lord, he's the Lord, so he's the buffest arms ever, and you are that lump of coal, and those buff arms are putting a lot of pressure on you as that lump of coal. And over time, if you stay in between the Lord's super buff arms, you too can become a diamond.

But, but, is pressure comfortable? Is pressure fun? Does pressure hurt? Does pressure cost you something? Well, absolutely it does. Okay, well here's one story of many in my life how the Lord has, with his buff arms, put pressure around me, a lump of coal. When we moved to Fort Worth in 2007, I got a job working for a guy that I went to church with. Not this church, not any church, don't worry about it. I'm not calling anybody out here, okay? You don't know him. I went to work for this guy, and I went to church with him, and so my expectations was that I'm gonna be working for a guy who goes to church, he's a Christian man, this is gonna be great. You know, we're gonna be on the same page with everything because he knows the Lord, he loves the Lord. Well, that was the farthest thing from what actually happened. I'm not trying to paint this man in a bad light, but he definitely lived a compartmentalized life.

And what I mean is, he acted one way at Bible study and at church, and he ran his business a different way. And his businesses ran like anybody else would run their business in the world. He claimed Christ, but there were a lot of things about his business life that weren't redeemed yet, okay? And so I come into this job, and I realize this very quickly. And I'm like, this isn't good, this is not good. He was very hard to work for, very angry,

not encouraging at all, so I'm like, I don't think this is gonna work. So I was like, hey, this ain't working out, I need to quit. I'll give you two weeks or whatever, I just need to quit, this is not working out. What? You made a commitment to me. And I was like, well, I guess I did, but what does that mean? This is Texas, it's a right to work state. I mean, I don't wanna work anymore. Well, we go to church together, if you quit this job, I'm taking you to pastor. And if you don't do that, I'm taking you before the church, because you are sinning against me. And I was like, whoa, that escalated quickly.

Okay, well, and what surprised me about the whole thing is if you would see his reaction to the way I worked, you thought I was a pretty terrible worker, so I didn't know why you wanted to keep me so bad if I was so terrible, but he did. So I went away from that pretty shell-shocked. It was a pretty crazy and awful time in our marriage, Amy will tell you, because I didn't know what to do. So I got a lot of counsel, called on my guys that had invested me over the years and just were like, well, dude, what do I do? And some of them were like, well, just quit, I mean, what can you really do? And then I got a couple of guys that said, I don't think it'd be wrong for you to quit, but I think you should take it before the Lord and pray and ask the Lord what you should do, because yes, yes, 100%, he's being unjust. He's being weird, he's being unjust. He's like, I'm not even really sure

if the pastor would have grounds to even support him. That might be just a dead end. You might be victorious in that whole thing, but you should pray and ask the Lord what you should do. So I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed, and I felt the Lord was saying to honor my commitment to this man. I was like, no, no, no, this is so unjust. He is being such a jerk, threatening to take me before the church and the pastor in a lot.

So I prayed some more to make sure, of course. And the Lord confirmed that I was to stay there. And so I worked for him for two years to the day, okay? And six weeks before my two years was up, I sat him down and said, I'm giving you six weeks notice to be as kind as I can that I'll be leaving at the end of my two-year contract. What? Are you kidding me? And I'm like, oh my gosh, seriously, we're doing this right now because you've been horrible for two years and now. Okay, anyway, but at that end of the two years, I felt like I was released from the commitment. I prayed about it again. Lord, do I need to stay working for this guy? Or can I be released from my commitment? I really felt the Lord was saying, you can be released, you can move on, you've done your duty. And that was really hard to follow the Lord in that because it almost felt like he was winning.

He was being very unjust, and he was getting his way, and my sense of justice was very much pricked over that. But I was like, I don't know, I just gotta follow the Lord and I'll take the L, I'll take the loss in this because I need to follow the Lord. That was a really, really hard time in my life. But this is 17 years later, 16 years later, and probably just last week, I've seen the value in it, no, I'm just kidding. But it took a long time to look back at that time and see, wow, you know what? I see now, in retrospect, that the Lord really, really, really used that time to do things that I really, really needed, and I couldn't have gotten those things any other way

unless I was under a man like him. And just to be quite honest with you, I'm a really sensitive guy, okay? Sometimes movies, I cry a little bit. You know, babies on TV, you know, those kinds of things. That guy thickened my skin up a bit, okay? You just could not work for him and be sensitive. So I still have a sensitive heart, but I have a little bit tougher, thicker skin after working for him, which comes in very handy in my current job. I learned a work ethic at a level that I did not know before. I don't think I've ever been a lazy person, but that dude worked me to the bone, and I worked and worked and worked, and me and him, he had children at the time, so that was a little bit easier, but I've come home after dark a lot.

And you know, it taught me that following the Lord is the best policy even when you don't fully understand what's going on. So would I willingly enter into an authority relationship like that again? No, come on, no. However, if the Lord called me to do that and asked me to do that, I would, because I see now how the Lord really used that for my benefit and my good, and he knows the whole plan of your life and what you're gonna need 20 years from now, and he might be giving you what you need now, but you might not need it for 20 years. The Lord sometimes wants us to stand up under unjust circumstances to endure it for our own sake. Another illustration that I heard years ago was that pretend like you are a nail, and you know, you got the head of the nail and the pointy part of the nail, and authority or suffering work both ways, like that hammer coming down right on the top of your head.

Okay, and you have a choice as the nail. You can stand up straight underneath it. You can endure the authority. You can endure the suffering and let it hit you just right on the head, and when you stand up straight and you endure that suffering, then it drives you deeper. It drives you deeper into the Lord. You also have the choice to not stand up under it, to maybe cower or get out from under it, and that hammer's gonna come down, and if you've ever known, if you've hit a nail, not right on the head, what can happen? You bend the nail, the nail flies about 10 feet away. Either way, the nail is not useful anymore. You're like, I'm not even gonna go look for that thing. I'm gonna get another nail, you know? We have that choice. We can hold up, we can stand up under authority. We can hold up and we can stand up under persecution and suffering, and when we do and we stand up under that,

it's gonna drive us deeper with the Lord. When God brings judgment through authority, it is wide sweeping, and we see this in the Old Testament with a group of people called the Faithful Remnant. You'll see this term a lot in the Old Testament. They're called the Faithful Remnant. Basically, the Faithful Remnant were the people that still were following the Lord with all their heart. So when you read through the Scriptures and you read about when the people of Israel are totally turning their back on God and they're bowing down to false idols and doing all these horrible things, there was always a Faithful Remnant. But when God turned his back on the people of Israel and gave them up to their enemies, and they had to leave their homeland for 70 years, the Babylonian exile, the Babylonian captivity,

it's important to know that everybody went, all of Israel went, including the Faithful Remnant. So you had people that loved the Lord and did not turn their back on the Lord and served him and honored him and did not bow down to false idols. And guess what? They had to go to Babylon too. Okay, so when the Lord brings judgment through authority, it is wide sweeping. We might face judgment for the things that our country has done. I don't know. Even if you're still being honoring God and you are faithful to him, that sometimes we all suffer, even if we are the Faithful Remnant. The encouraging thing is that throughout the Old Testament, the Lord is constantly through the prophets bringing encouragement and saying, hey guys, don't worry, it's not gonna be forever. I remember you, I love you, hang in there. You're gonna be delivered. And 70 years, sounds like a long time,

but they finally got to go back to their homeland. So God, God through authority can use it to chastise an entire community, but the Faithful have to endure that too. Now, I'm a biblical worldview teacher at school and the question I get all the time when we have questions about ethics is, what if our leaders required us to go against God? Or when or if can Christians disobey their government?

That's a good question because right here in Romans 13, it seems pretty unequivocal that we need to obey the government. Well, let's look at the whole picture of scripture. What I want to present to you right now is something that came to be during the Reformation. During the Reformation, you had a group of people called the Protestants who wanted to reform the church and they were protesting against the church, that's why they're Protestants. And they were persecuted heavily. In fact, some of the people that founded the Baptist tradition were drowned because they were killing them in an ironic way because they were for believers' baptism, so they drowned them. So you're talking about a group of heavily persecuted people by the church. And so back then, they came up with something called the Protestant Resistance Theory. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kind of

give you a rundown of the Protestant Resistance Theory. I'm not gonna read it all, but I wanna read enough to give you an idea, not just pick a few things, but I wanna read enough to give you an idea of what it is and how they used it. Now, all of these statements that I'm gonna read to you have scripture references. And I don't have time to get in all that. If you're interested, you can take my copy, but I only have one, so you gotta share. But I can show you where you can get this online. They're backed up by scriptures. That doesn't mean this is Bible, this is not scripture itself, but I feel like it's reasonably supported. Okay, so here we go. Propositions on righteous resistance. Section one is called obedience to magistrates. Christians are to obey lawful commands of the magistrate in a cooperative manner without grumbling or complaining. Christians must seek the good of their magistrate

and commonwealth. Men must be willing to defend them in justified, lawfully conducted armed conflict. Christians are to give thanks for all things, including persecution, in which we are commanded to rejoice. In the case of unjust and unlawful dictates from the magistrate, however, the Christian has numerous rights and duties. Section two is called the principles of resistance. The obedience God commands us, rendered to magistrates, is not absolute for magistrates themselves who frequently disobey God and fail to justly enforce his law. Just as our obedience to magistrates accords with God's word, and just as magistrates are to rule according to his word, so we are to disobey only in ways and means God has prescribed in his word. Thus, when forced to decide between two sinful actions, Christians must make the less sinful choice using the law of God as their standard.

And we're gonna kinda focus on that particular point in just a few minutes. While Christians may seek to avoid punishment for their lawful disobedience, they may not sin in doing so and must be prepared to manfully face the consequences. I like that word manfully. I'm gonna bring that back to my own vocabulary. You need to manfully man up. Christians engaging in lawful disobedience must still sincerely seek the good of the magistrate they're opposing and the commonwealth of which there are members. God blesses this kind of lawful disobedience.

Section three is called unjust commands. Christians can and must disobey the magistrate when required to do something sinful or prevented from fulfilling their positive duties towards God. The manner of disobedience must be in a form proportionate to the sin being required or the sin of omission which would be incurred if the Christian obeyed the magistrate.

We're gonna skip to section five for brevity. Section five is called armed resistance. Okay, I guess I should have told you guys to shut off your phones and maybe not record so the men in black aren't like knocking on my door after the sermon. Okay, this section is called armed resistance. There are situations in which Christians may lawfully take up arms against the magistrate. If a magistrate is posing immediate harm to a private individual's person, family, or church and no recourse to another magistrate may be made, all legal defenses have been exhausted and there is no possibility of fleeing, Christians may defend themselves with violence. Christians may also choose to endure a particular injustice for both the sake of shielding themselves from further injustices or for more glorious display of the gospel. Endurance of injustice in lieu of self defense is an honorable choice that cannot be made

binding on the consciousness of other Christians. The rule of godly wisdom applies here. Okay, so there you go. If you wanna read more about that I can let you know but I wanted to focus specifically on one point here. In section two it said, thus when forced to decide between two sinful actions, Christians must make the less sinful choice using the law of god as their standard. One text they used to prove this point is in Exodus 1, 15 through 22, you don't have to turn there but you might wanna jot it down so you can read it later. This is the story of the Hebrew midwives. Okay, so here's how it goes. We're talking about the time of Pharaoh, okay, the people of the Israelites are still under Pharaoh's rule and Pharaoh commanded the midwives to kill any male children that were being born from the Hebrews. You must kill any males. Females let them live, you must kill the males.

Well, the Hebrew midwives did not do that. They let all the babies live. And Pharaoh, being very angry, brought the Hebrew midwives in and said, what's the deal? And they said, oh man, these Hebrew women are so vigorous they just have their babies like that and they show up before we get there and we're like, ah, yeah. And so they kinda spin this yarn for Pharaoh to why they didn't do it. Well, they sin twice here, didn't they not? He told them to do that thing and they didn't do that thing and then they lied about it. So what do we make of that? In the next verses at the end of the passage in 21 and 22 it said, God honored them and God blessed them for that. What? But they lied. The principle here is it is way worse to kill babies than to lie, okay? And so this idea that when you're faced with two sinful actions, you must choose the less sinful choice, okay? This is heartbreaking but I just read that this week.

There was a headline that says the UK government, a judge in the UK, required an 11 year old to have an abortion despite the pregnant girl and her mother wanting to keep the baby. That is an overstep if I ever saw one. I would be in full support of those people fleeing the country, hiding, disobeying, whatever. That's ridiculous, okay? Yes, you may civilly disobey to that. Our culture is obsessed with alleviating suffering when sometimes suffering is the most effective tool God has for making us more like him, okay? So as it said in the Protestant resistance theory, and it is a theory, you may choose to stand up and endure the persecution and that is a noble choice if God leads you to do that. But it also said that is what God may be teaching you to do or telling you to do but don't hold that as the standard for everybody. But we as a culture are so obsessed with alleviating suffering

that maybe we just need to stand up under that like the nail. I referred to this earlier so I'll tell you the story. Now my uncle was sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison back in, oh like 98, 99. He served six years and he got out. While he was in prison, he met up with some Christian guys and he turned his life around and in his own interesting way he's following Christ today. The interesting thing about this though is that he's pretty anti-government and is still pretty angry and bitter about his case. It's like one of those things you never wanna, can of worms you never wanna open with him because he'll go off for about an hour about how the government lied and the government did this and the government did that and they're all liars and you can't trust him and he was unjustly locked up.

Well, I'm hoping and praying that someday I might have the opportunity to say, that may all be true. Everything you say may be 100% true, but what happened when you were in prison and where are you now? Okay, you needed to go to prison, dude. You would have kept doing your thing unless you got hit in the head with a two by four which meant six years and locked up.

I think he just still fails to see that the Lord's sovereignty through the authority of the federal government, lying and cheating or whatever they did or not is what he needed to just wake him up. Hopefully someday he'll realize that. All right, I'm gonna refer to verses 11 through 14 if you have your Bibles, if not, I'll just read it again real quick. And to do this, understanding the present time, the hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over, the day is almost here, so let us put aside deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify

the desires of the flesh. The Lord has an eternal perspective, okay? The Lord's timeline has eternity in it. Our timeline has our lives in it. And that perspective can really change how you see things. Our lives in the scope of eternity are like a blip on the radar. James 4:14 says, your life is but a vapor. Here, one moment and gone the next. That means in the scope of eternity, our lives are like your breath this morning. We have the first cold morning in forever here. When you saw your breath this morning and it came out in that vapor and then it disappeared, that is the length of your life in the scope of eternity. It's not much at all, it's nothing. So the Lord is saying through Paul here, yes, Jewish friends, you are holding up and suffering under this authority and it may not always be a godly authority, but really, it's not gonna be long. Hang in. He says, the hour has come for you to wake up

because salvation is nearer than when we first believed. He wrote this 2,000 years ago. He's like, hey, it's not gonna be long. You don't have to do this for very long. Don't worry. And the truth is we're 2,000 years closer to the Lord returning and each day you wake up, we're closer to the Lord returning. And we see this in the scriptures all the time that the time and the day is near. And so Paul's just kinda saying like, do not return to your formal life and do those things in the dark. Live like you do in the daytime and live a life of gratitude. A life of gratitude for salvation and what God has done does not live like this. And the like this is 13 and 14 when he's talking about do not carouse, drunkenness, sexuality, immorality and debauchery. He's like, a life of gratitude does not live like that. Do not live like that. Even though we talked about living by faith,

that is not a life of gratitude. Yes, we are saved by faith and not by works. Don't live like that. Evidence of a life in Christ is a changed life and this is what Paul's trying to say. Whatever hardships you're enduring, under authority, it is only temporary and the end is coming. Our lives are short. Be vigilant, live rightly. And live for the Lord. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much, God, for the authority structures you put on our lives. Help us to understand that they're from you, Lord, and help us to follow them cheerfully and make it a joy for us to be led. Lord, I pray that you would speak to us clearly if there ever times where we need to not follow our authority. God, I pray in the name of Jesus that we would be biblical in doing that and we would understand the potential consequences. But God, ultimately, our lives are short here on earth and God, we pray that we can glorify you,

help people know you, and live a life that is honoring and live a life that shows the gratitude for the salvation you have given us. In Jesus' name, amen.