Romans 13:5–7Scripture
Turn your Bibles this morning to Romans 13. A month or so ago, probably a couple months ago now at this point, we sat down and we looked at a three-week time frame of when Pastor Shawn was going to be out of town and the texts that would need to be covered while he was gone. And we had three weeks to cover, and the three weeks were two weeks ago. You got to hear a good friend of mine and of pastor Shawn's, Pastor Dan Cogan, came and he shared a word that I know benefited you, because that man is an anointed preacher. I don't like, I don't like that we invite Pastor Dan to be here whenever I'm going to be gone. Like, that's typically when we bring Dan in, is on weeks that I won't be here, and he either leads worship or he preaches. But Dan is a great man of God, and he covered the end of chapter 12, which, in all transparency, was the text I wanted to cover. And when we sat down to talk about it, I said, I want the end of chapter 12. I want to talk about heaping coals on people's heads and that vengeance is the Lord's, that we should repay no one evil for evil. Like, I want that text. And then we looked at my calendar and realized that I was going to be gone for three weeks, too, and that when I came back from a short sabbatical, I would get to talk about taxes. And I was like, cool. But I'll tell you what, I'm pretty stoked for this sermon today. Unless you just want to come up here? No? Going once, going twice, no, you're good. Okay, all right. Open your bibles up to Romans 13. We're going to start in verse 5 and we're going to read through 7. It says this: Therefore. Everybody say, "Therefore." Therefore, we're going to talk about the significance of that word in just a moment. I heard Jeff Compton, he's downstairs in Rock City today, he said something that made me laugh during small group. He said, anytime you see
Introduction
"Therefore" in Scripture, you have to ask the question, what is the "therefore" there for? I thought it was hilarious. I thought it was hilarious. Thank you, Bruce, I appreciate the pity laugh. It wasn't my joke, I just thought it was funny. All right, here we go. Therefore one must be in subjection. Oh, we love that word too, 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 are 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. In 1787, being the oldest member of the Constitutional Convention and helping debate and draft the US Constitution, benjamin Franklin, who's on the $100 bill, right? That's why we call him "Benjamins." Benjamin Franklin was quoted saying this: "Our new Constitution is now established and has an appearance that promises permanency, but in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes." So I thought it fitting today that that would be what I would name this sermon: Death and Taxes. It's the only two things in this life that you can count on with certainty. And how fitting, I thought, I chuckled a little bit, that I get to talk about being in submission to government and paying the government taxes and revenue and giving government our respect and our honor during tax season and during an election year. That's just fantastic. It's like the stars aligned perfectly for this text. And I don't know about the rest of you, but some of us sat in our small group on Thursday night, and this wasn't the exact quote that was shared, but I'll summarize what was shared with this quote that my mom said to me many times as a kid: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. And to some of the questions, some people in our small group had admitted that they were just going to be quiet, because this was a challenging text in the culture and in the time that we live in, with the temperature of our society. Sometimes the way that you can show the most respect and honor is just be quiet. Don't say anything if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. But so we're going to start this morning with that word "therefore." And for the smart people in the room, I had to look up this term myself. "Therefore" is a conjunctive adverb. I didn't know that, a conjunctive adverb. That means for that reason or cause, thus or consequently. And you have to be careful.
We talk about this, none of you should be this new in your approach to studying God's Word, but maybe some of you. You have to watch out when you're reading the Bible and you're studying God's Word, you've got to look out for words like "therefore," and you've got to look out for words like "howevers," or even words just like "but," because those are words that are connecting one statement or one thought process to another thought process. And so I get to bring you a "therefore" this morning, and then the following text. But that "therefore" connects everything that I'm about to share with you to what was shared last week when Cameron came and shared a word. So before I do that, I just want to show some love and honor for Cameron. Let's give God some praise for the word that Cameron brought us last week. It was good stuff. If you missed it, you need to go watch it online. And I'll say this, I'm humbled every time I get to hear Cameron share, and it's a little hard for me because I was his youth pastor, not that many years, like less than a decade ago, and he was the quiet kid who sat exactly where he's sitting this morning in the media booth.
But that was all I could get him to do. And so to see him now stand in this position and bring the Word of God to our church family is nothing short of awesome to me, and how the Lord works and how he's working in and through Cameron's life. But last week Cameron covered two hard truths. One thing that he shared with us was that God instituted government and those who serve in government. God didn't just, God didn't just institute the office of President over the United states. God also instituted that Joseph R. Biden would be our current president, and there's no way around that. The previous president, his predecessor, see what I did there? Maybe not. Anyway, the previous president, Donald Trump, was also instituted by God to be the president of the United States, and whomever gets elected this coming November is also instituted by God. God's in control of all of this. It doesn't matter whether or not you like the president or whether or not you agree or affirm his policies or not. Everything that we're talking about today needs to be represented in our relationship to our government, whether we like them or not. And this even can come all the way down. I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder in our local government a year or two ago, when locally they passed a measure. It was on a ballot. Some of you may have voted for it, some of you may have even voted for it and didn't really know what you were voting for, because they're really good at wording things in a way that we don't even know what it is that we're voting on. But the city of Pleasant Hill passed a measure on a ballot to allow the city council to fill a vacancy on the council, or even the position of the office of mayor. If a council member resigns or the mayor resigns, the council themselves can just hold a special meeting and the council can appoint a new council member or a new mayor. They don't have to have a special election, because special elections cost too much. And that bugged me. I'm like, no, that just makes our city government a good old boys club, where then they can appoint whomever they want. Well, guess what? The majority of the people in Pleasant Hill voted for it, and so it's a city ordinance now. And so we had for a short while an appointed mayor and not an elected mayor. And I even found myself guilty of feeling a little jaded in my own perception of him, because he was just appointed, he wasn't duly elected by the citizens of Pleasant Hill. And I'm studying this Scripture and I'm like, huh. Well, guess what? He was instituted by God to be the mayor of Pleasant Hill, because God is sovereignly in charge of all of this. There's nothing that catches God off guard. And there's also, this has nothing to do with today's Scripture, but there's also nothing that you can do in secret that God doesn't know about. I'm just saying. Cameron covered: God instituted government, and the second thing, this was rough, this was rough, Cameron: resistance to the government is ultimately resistance to God. And I sat right there and went, "oh, okay." Because you know, there was a president in the recent past, current or past, I'm not going to share my political opinions with you, but there was a president that I didn't agree with, and I committed to myself that I was not going to speak negatively about this president to my kids, that in my home I was not going to speak negatively and degrade and trash the person who served in the office of President, because then I'm giving my kids a jaded view of government, and I'm not teaching them how to honor. And as I'm studying this Scripture out over the last three weeks, I got real convicted one night, as I wasn't saying anything, but the YouTube videos that I was watching out loud in my house were saying everything. And I went, "Oh, well, this isn't really any different." If they're sitting here watching their dad listen to somebody else badmouth somebody, how is that any different than if I'm doing it myself? Interesting. Resistance to the government is ultimately resistance to God.
We don't have to agree with everything government does in order to submit to the government. It's that plain and simple.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 10:59
We're going to get into that a little bit more. I love how Paul's instruction, this week's text, completely contradicts how I feel, and I'm going to use the word "feel" because this is 2024, so it's about our feelings, how I feel most Christians in our culture view their relationship to the government. Paul completely contradicts this, how most Christians approach government. Last week Cameron shared those two things that I shared with you, but then he also shared two things that the government does for us. And it's interesting, government has two roles really, one that affects us, and then we have several that we're going to talk about today. He says the government's primary role is to control chaos by punishing wrongdoers. That's the primary role of government. Now, in our government, from the President of the United States down to our local mayor, they do a lot more than that, obviously. There's a lot more things that take place within government than just those primary roles. But that doesn't change or negate Scripture's mandate for how we should view and respond and respect and honor and pay our taxes to our government. Because check this out: nowhere in Scripture does it say, "While God instituted government," nowhere in Scripture does it say that they have to be Christians in order to be serving God. They are fulfilling the role that God intended them to fulfill, whether they're Christians or not, whether their policies that they push have a biblical agenda or a pagan agenda. God instituted them there and they are fulfilling his plan. Born again or bound for hell, we're all part of God's plan. Born again or bound for hell. Historically we can look back at our government and see that they do a lot more, however, than just punish wrongdoers. But I find this to be interesting: if you look at all of the different roles, all of the different functions that our government has, not every government across the world, but just our government, look at all of the different things, especially all the things that pertain to how they spend tax money, all right? All of these different roles, all of these different functions, all these different programs that the government oversees, historically used to be the role of the church: taking care of homeless people, taking care of orphans and widows, that's straight out of Scripture, welfare, feeding the hungry, helping veterans. All of this was the role of the church. So I find this ironic, that church people today want to stand in resistance and judgment to how the government spends our tax dollars, when it was the role of the church before the government ever saw a reason to step in. Because from everything I can learn and understand, the church wasn't fulfilling the obligation. So how can we stand in objection and in judgment to how government officials spend our tax money when it was originally the role of the church? Look through Scripture, all the things that we're called to do and to be for our communities, for people around us, but yet we want to stand in resistance to the government because we don't think that they should spend our tax dollars on certain things that we may or may not agree with. So we're going to look today at verses 5 through 7, and I'm going to pull out five different commands that the Scripture gives us in our relationship to the government. So we're going to take
Point 1Submit to government for God's sake and conscience
A look. First is a continuation from last week. Number one is submission. If you're taking notes, number one is submission. And the Bible gives us in verse 5 two reasons why we should submit, be in subjection, the text says, to the government. And the first is to avoid God's wrath. I find this interesting. Well, if we're standing in resistance to the government, and that means, from what we learned last week, that we're really standing in resistance or in opposition to God, oppose God, you're going to incur what? Some wrath from him. You disobey your dad, there are some consequences. It's as simple as that. And Paul's saying, listen, you need to be in subjection to government: one, to avoid the wrath of God; two, for your own conscience. Now I found this interesting, that our conscience, our inner man, inner woman, that Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio that tells us, "Nah, you're not supposed to be doing that." For conscience' sake, he says, be in subjection to government. God designed us in such a way, in such a beautiful way, to inherently know wrong from right. And in that, computer programming, I just, like, in 2024 it's easy to view God as like an IT guy, and, you know, part of Curtis's job is to just write code. And when Pastor Shawn and I work on the website, he does all the code work. I don't know what any of those letters and symbols mean, but I know that if I copy and paste them into the next page and I change the sections that he tells me to change, everything still looks pretty. But God is there writing code in our lives, and in that code we are designed in such a way that our inner man, our inner conscience, desires to be obedient, desires to honor government. One, because we don't want to get in trouble, but two, we know right from wrong. That conscience man inside of you is that feeling when your stomach kind of jumps up into your throat a little bit when you know you're speeding and you come over a hill and there's a patrolman sitting on the side of the road and you go, "Oh," because you know you were doing something wrong and now you're in fear, afraid, a different fear than what we're going to talk about in a few minutes. You're afraid, am I about to get fined? Conscience is the look on my son's face when he tells his mom one thing and then I come from around the corner and get to call him out on the fact that I heard exactly what he just said, and he knows he's lying. And conscience is what puts that look on Jackson's face, because he knows he's been had. He knew what he was doing was wrong, and now he's been caught. Paul says you should be in subjection to the government, submission to the government, to avoid God's wrath but also for conscience' sake. Pastor Steven lawson, he says this: guilt is to the soul as pain is to the body. Now this is fitting, because I almost cut my thumb off last night while I was cutting peppers, and when I took that chef knife and it went through the top of my thumbnail and just started to go into my thumb, I felt it and I went, "!" And then I freaked out, because man, if I cut the top of my thumb off, I'm not playing guitar for a couple months. And I looked, thank God for my thumbnail, because if it wasn't there slowing that blade down, I'd have been in deep trouble. But my brain felt the tip of that blade just barely nick my skin and my brain said "ow," which then told my hand, get that knife away from your thumb, dummy, you're about to chop it off.
Guilt is to the soul as pain is to the body.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 19:31
Your conscience is programmed to throw guilt, to feed guilt into your brain when you know you're doing something that you're not supposed to do. And obeying the government, honoring the government, unfortunately God programmed into the list of things that we have to do. And how many times do we see God give us a say in the commands that he gives us? God didn't sit with Moses, and Moses go down to the Israelites and say, "Who's in favor of no murder?" No, it wasn't a democratic process.
God lays out his commands as he wills, because he's sovereign and I'm not, and that's the end of the discussion.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 20:20
I think God was the first father to ever say, "Because I said so." But, Pastor JR, wait, how do we submit to a government that doesn't obey God? How do we submit to a government that outwardly disobeys and dishonors the Bible? How are we supposed to do that? Your submission to authority, my submission to authority, has nothing to do, listen to me, has nothing to do with whether or not that authority is in submission to God.
Your submission to authority only pertains to your submission to God.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 21:08
Well, what do you mean by that? That means, we'll get to taxes in three little paragraphs, that means when it comes to paying your taxes, when I stand before God's not going to judge me on what my tax money went to, but he will judge me on whether or not I paid my taxes, because I'm commanded to do so. God won't judge me on how Pastor Shawn leads our church, because that's his job, that's not my job, but he will judge me on how I honored him as my authority figure in the organization of our church. Not meaning if Pastor Shawn decided to start teaching heresy and I'm like, "Hey y'all, come with me, we'll go find another building to meet in, this dude's nuts," he's not going to judge me for that, because the Bible commands us to out heretical preaching. But if I'm going around because I don't like the way he runs our office and I'm going around talking bad about him, or I'm going around, "Well, this new job that he has, he was just gone for three weeks," it's not how I feel, it's hypothetical, it's hypothetical, and I'm dishonoring him, you better bet that I'm going to stand in judgment for that, because he is my authority. But God's not going to judge me on how he runs our church. God's not going to judge you on how we use your tithe money to run our church, but he will judge you on whether or not you give generously into the kingdom of God through your local church, because the Bible commands you to. I just brought tithing into the sermon, I didn't even mean to do that. The exception, the exception to this would be, as Cameron mentioned last week, Cameron, you did an awesome job last week, the exception would be what he mentioned last week: we are called as believers to be obedient to God before we're called to be obedient to our government. So if the government begins to mandate that we as Christians stand in opposition to God's Word, then we have a conundrum. Now we have a pickle in our hands that we have to figure out how to navigate. I'm going to get to this at the end of the message, you're going to have to wait, it's good stuff. But there is the exception of when your government mandates, commands by law or any decree, that we stand in disobedience to God's Word, then we don't obey the government anymore. But that's the only, that's the only exception. Doesn't matter if you don't like the laws, doesn't matter if you don't like how they spend the money, doesn't matter if you don't like the color tone of their skin. Doesn't matter. God does not care about our opinions, and if that offends you, take it up with Paul, because it's not my... I didn't like this text either. Remember, I wanted to preach on not repaying evil for evil and heaping coals. That was what I wanted to preach on. First thing that we're called to in Scripture in our relationship with the
Point 2Pay your taxes and revenue with a good attitude
Government is to be in submission, subjection. The second thing we're called to, gulp, speaking of gulp, I'm going to take a drink real quick, is to pay taxes. Now I find this interesting, I actually thought about this just this morning, this was a thought that occurred to me today: in submission to government we're called to pay taxes. Jesus even reiterates this in the book of Matthew, I'm going to read that in just a second. But I find it interesting that if you look at any topic that Jesus talked on in all of the Gospels, he talked about money more than anything, more than any one topic. Money was talked about. So I find it interesting that Paul, in his writing, to try to hone in on how am I going to get these Christians in Rome, under the Emperor nero, to understand what it means to honor government: get out your wallets and pay your taxes. Taxes are instituted by God, so pay tax. Man, that's the one thing that cuts deepest in all of our hearts is our money. He says pay taxes to whom taxes are owed. In Matthew 22, verses 15 through 22, we looked at this Scripture in our small groups, it says, "Then the Pharisees," starting in verse 15, "Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words." They literally sought out how to get Jesus tripped up in his own words, make him trip up, stutter over himself, trip over his own feet. "Then they sent their disciples along with the Herodians, saying, 'Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully.'" We know, Jesus, that you wouldn't lie to us, that's what they're saying. "And you do not care about anyone's opinion." It's right there, he doesn't care about anyone's opinion. I just want to be like Jesus. But JR, I don't care. But Dad, how come? I don't care how come. "You don't care," Jesus didn't care. "We know that you don't care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us then what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax." Lost my spot. "Show me the coin for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said, "Caesar's." Then he said to them, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and they went away. Listen, it doesn't matter what your money is used for.
Our command is to pay taxes. The government will be held responsible, listen to me, they will be held responsible for how they dishonor God with our money.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 28:02
They will be held responsible. You won't. But you will be held responsible for whether or not you pay what the Bible says we're to pay. And I believe you'll be held responsible for the attitude in which you do it, because the Bible says God loves a cheerful giver. And that's pertaining to giving to the church. But I find it interesting in this Scripture, I believe that our giving to our church, I'm avoiding the word "tithe"
Because tithe is more of an Old Testament word, in the New Testament we're told to be cheerful and generous givers, but I believe that our giving to the kingdom, to the church, should be the firstfruits. The Bible says that. But I find it interesting that Jesus, in this question of should we pay taxes to caesar or not, that Jesus' position: give to Caesar what is Caesar's before he says give to God what is God's. I believe that Jesus is illustrating here that it is of kingdom significance that we're obedient with our taxes. Now, I heard one pastor in a message I was listening to go down a long rabbit trail, I won't go down a long rabbit trail. So does that mean, Pastor, that we shouldn't take advantage of government loopholes for tax deductions? I'm not saying that. If the United States government offers you a loophole to have a tax deduction, by all means take that loophole. I pay as little in taxes as I have to, but what I have to pay, I pay. I take every deduction that I can take, and I pay a good accountant who's very good with doing taxes for ministers, because she saves me and gets me back every dollar that she can, and I'm thankful for that. But I pay what the government requires me to pay, and I do so with a good attitude. I do so knowing that I sure could have used that money for a whole lot of other things. The third thing he says give your submission, give your taxes. The third thing he says is give your revenue, which is in and of itself like a second layer of taxes. So again we see Paul doubling, and he does this all throughout his writings, but we see Paul doubling down on a point. Don't just pay your taxes, pay your revenue too. Give your taxes to who? They'll come after you for some taxes, but you can find some way to maybe skirt around paying some of that revenue. What's that revenue? Here's my take on it. I'm hoping today, I don't know, I just got some new information, I may not be buying a new car today, but I was hoping today to buy a new car. When you buy a car in the great state of Missouri, you have to pay sales tax for that vehicle. When we recently, a little over a year ago, bought our minivan, it was the most expensive vehicle that I have ever purchased, and I gulped. That was a burp, sorry. I meant to gulp and I burped instead. I'm going to turn the volume down on the audio and the video for that part. Gulp. I'll just say the word "gulp." That was gross. Oh man, when I went to pay those sales taxes I gulped. It was a few thousand dollars for sales tax, and I thought, well, I could have bought another cheap car for that price. I could have bought a really nice guitar. That's how I equate things that I don't want to have to spend money on, is that would have been a nice guitar, or I could have got two tattoos with that money. You know, that's why, like, I have Lacy's name tattooed on my arm, and then I have Kayle's name, and then I have Jackson's name. I don't have Melody's name yet, she's three. I don't have Josie's name yet anywhere. And a little while back one of my kids was like, "When are you going to get a tattoo for Melody?" And I'm like, "As soon as I stop having other things to spend money on," because every time I spend... Well, there's my tattoo money. But you've got to buy that car. To buy a car you've got to pay sales tax. Then in the great state of Missouri, annually we get to pay something called property taxes, and they charge you taxes again because you still own the car. It's not good enough to just pay sales tax on it, but we've got to pay annual taxes just because we own it still. Then on top of that, every two to four years, depending on how willy-nilly you are with your money, when you go to the DMV, Cameron talked about that last week too, you get to go to the DMV and you get to pay a nice chunk of money to just renew the license plates on your car. Do you see where I'm going with the idea of revenue? Government looks for every opportunity they can to get some money out of you. Now, I have a guy, he's the new director at Life Change Camp, where we do our family camp and where we take our kids, and he just moved here from Minnesota over the last year, and I was visiting with him a couple weekends ago when Lacy and I were down there for a few nights, and he said, "What are personal property taxes?" And I was like, "Welcome to Missouri." Welcome to Missouri, where they charge you money just because you still own said car. Where does it end? Where does the bleeding stop? Do you feel like this sometimes when you're just looking at your money go? As I was reading this and studying, I was just like, man, this is rough. Paul, let's go talk about predestination again. I don't want to talk about taxes and revenue. I don't want to do it. Paul, you stinker. Really, but it brought this Scripture to my mind where Jesus says, in Matthew 5, "If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles." Paul is mirroring the attitude and the posture of the Christian heart that Jesus gives us in the Gospels.
Stop looking at how you can get by with doing just the bare minimum, and do what you're asked to do with a good heart.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 34:41
Government is instituted, ordained by God, and you didn't get to say so in it. Jesus doesn't care about your opinion.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 34:54
The fourth thing we've got: submission, taxes, revenue, and now he's getting personal. It's not about money anymore, he covered money, knowing that's what we love most in this
Point 3Give respect, and drop the Christian nationalist mindset
World. The fourth thing he says is give respect to whom respect is owed. And this word "respect" I find really interesting, because you can even just cross translate through your Bible, like just go from one translation, one well-known, we use the ESV Bible at our church, but go just from the New King James, or from the ESV I think to the New King James, and that word "respect" becomes "fear." And I thought that to be interesting, that this word is interchangeable. So I did a little bit of homework, and I found that in Paul's writing in Romans 13, this word "respect" is a Greek word, and the Greek word is, good luck with my pronunciation, phobos, which is a profound respect, an awe or reverence. For phobos. But in another English translation, the word "respect" becomes the word "fear." I thought that to be interesting. In Proverbs 1:7, I looked up where Solomon says to fear the LORD, the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, he says. And here's another instance where this word "fear" and "respect" are interchangeable, but the word that's used in Proverbs is a Hebrew word, I'm going to botch this one, yirah, which means to honor and to show reverence. It's the same definition. One's a Greek word, one's a Hebrew word, but it's the same definition. He says the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. So to fear the LORD is to submit and to obey with the right attitude, to have reverence for, to show honor to. And there's a difference when you're looking at this word "respect" or "fear," there's a difference between a biblical fear, to show reverence to have honor for, to stand in awe under, and to be afraid of. And there's certain times and in certain places throughout history, luckily our government hasn't gotten to this point yet, but there have been many governments where its citizens, especially its Christian citizens, didn't just live in fear or in respect to their government, but they lived afraid of their government. And there's two different meanings there. There's this growing mindset in the Christian culture in the United States, and to be completely honest, not going to point you out, but I've even heard it from some of you, but it's a growing mindset, and the term that we use to identify it is Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism. And this growing Christian nationalist mindset doesn't live in respect and awe and reverence and honor to our government, because as a Christian we can look at our government and we can see many instances, many areas where our government dishonors God and disobeys his Word. A hot topic in the political conversation, in the debate conversation that's going to start up, and it's looking like it's going to be a circus between the Republican nominee and the Democratic nominee. And it was their first presidential debate four years ago, between President Biden and President Trump, was their first debate. That was a circus. I don't know how many of you watched it or if you remember it, but it was a mess. And it was during that debate when Melody, who we later found out had a couple different heart issues, but she had a seizure during that debate, and Jackson mentioned how her arms and her legs were shaking, and Lacy took a video of it, and we ended up taking her to the Children's Mercy emergency room, and they admitted her, and they did almost a week's worth of every test they could think of. And in order to prevent a seizure they diagnosed her with epilepsy, which is a seizure condition, but she's never since had any other seizure. It was just the one. I blame it on the presidential debate. I'm like, even my two-week-old baby couldn't put up with that. Like, stop, that was rude. That was rude. But that's the only time she's ever had a seizure. Family, come on, like, it's not looking like it's going to be good. But this Christian nationalist mindset holds the Bible in between the church and the government and says something has to be done with the government because they're not submitting to God's Word, something has to change, so we're going to stand in opposition. We do remember what standing in opposition to the government really is, right? We remember that, right, according to God's Word. A Christian nationalist is this, look it up, this is from Wikipedia, it's a type of religious nationalism, listen, a type of religious nationalism that's affiliated with Christianity. Even Wikipedia knows that's not christianity. Look at this, even Wikipedia says it's affiliated with Christianity. Now, I have a neighbor that lives across the street from me, I mention him periodically in my sermons, because this man challenges me to my core as a Christian, because he's not a Christian, he does not profess to be a Christian, and he posts stuff regularly on his social media that belittles and makes fun of Christians. And then when I see him out by the street and we're like Tim Allen and Wilson, that's how well we get along. But I'm like, you make fun of me all the time on social media, you know. But we agreed ten years ago to two terms that we were going to have to be in place in our friendship and we would be great neighbors, and one was we wouldn't talk about politics, they were both his terms, we wouldn't talk about politics, and I wouldn't invite him to church. And I've honored those two things. Not that I don't love him, not that I don't offer to pray for him, not that I don't show the love of Jesus, but I don't knock on his door and try to get him to come to church with me, because he told me not to. But this guy posts on his social media, and I called him, I don't even think he would mind me telling you this in the message, I called him. I said, "Your post really intrigued me. Most of your posts don't, but this one really intrigued me, man." He said, "How so?" I said, "Would you tell me, I know you don't profess to be Christian, we've talked about that, he considers himself, calls himself a recovering Catholic, I said, I know you don't profess to be a Christian, but tell me your viewpoint. What is your belief about God?" And he said, "I believe in a Creator, and I believe that Jesus was a good teacher, and I believe a lot of the things in the Bible are good, and that Jesus helps humanity become the best versions of themselves."
And I was like, okay, that helps me understand you a little bit better. Because his post on Facebook said, "Christian nationalism is not apostolic christianity." And I commented on it and I said, "I couldn't agree with you more. Christian nationalism is far from a biblical representation of christianity." Even this guy gets it. If Wikipedia gets it, if my neighbor, who outwardly professes not to be a Christian, if he gets it, how in the world do we have a growing number of professing Christians within local churches in our culture going down the toilet bowl of Christian nationalism? It's a plague in the church. It's a plague, and I feel it's rising, it's a rising level of importance, because it doesn't teach the gospel. You ought to call it out as quickly as you would call out Pastor Shawn or myself or Cameron or anybody else teaching heresy from this platform, because it's not the Word of God. I didn't even finish my definition. It's a type of religious nationalism that is affiliated with Christianity. Here we go. It primarily focuses on the internal politics of society, such as legislating civil and criminal laws that reflect their view of Christianity and the role of religion in political and social life. Oh, legislating civil and criminal laws that reflect their view of Christianity. How many opinions does Jesus care about? One, the Father's. Even Jesus said, "I only speak what the Father tells me to speak. I only do what the Father tells me to do. I only do that." Is that the right word? Right?
Yeah. It's a problem in the church. You cannot possess a biblical respect or fear for the government if you constantly think you know better and you have all the answers. You can't do it. Nor can my daughter possess a... She's like, "Great, he's talking about me again." Nor can my daughter possess a biblical fear and respect for me as her father if she constantly thinks she knows better and has better judgment over the decisions that I make, because whose opinion do I ultimately care about? Mine, ultimately. It is what I believe God is telling me and how to lead our family.
It's my opinion of God's Word, it's my opinion of how to punish my children, it's my opinion on how to set boundaries and set responsibilities, that you don't get to go for sleepovers if your chores aren't done. Only my opinion rules in that.
You cannot possess a biblical fear and respect for our government if you constantly think you know better.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 46:47
As followers of Jesus, I love this came from Pastor Lawson too, as followers of Jesus we are here to expand
Point 4Show honor because we ourselves are honorable
The kingdom of God, not take over the government. Right? Which leads me to the fifth thing. You got submission, you got taxes, you got revenue, you got respect, the fifth thing is honor. As followers of Jesus we're called to be people of honor. Romans 12:10, last chapter, said this: "Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." What is honor? To place high value or price or esteem on someone. Romans 12 is instruction on how the church should function amongst ourselves. Paul's saying love one another with brotherly affection. This is how Pastor Shawn and I should love one another. We should outdo one another in showing honor. I should always be trying to one-up Shawn in showing honor. Then you get to Romans 13. Romans 13, we're called to place the same value and esteem on our government. For real? But Pastor JR, what if we disagree with them? What if they don't obey God's Word? What if they're against us? Some governments, many governments throughout history, have been against the local church. FYI, Paul's writing to one. If you think it's bad in America, if you think it's bad in America, I shared this Wednesday night with Reverb, if you think we have it bad because during a pandemic the government says bars can stay open but churches have to close their doors, that happened in multiple states across the country, places selling alcohol could stay open and that was okay, but church gatherings were dangerous. If you think that's bad, you haven't seen nothing compared to what the Roman Christians had to endure under Nero. He hated Christians. He carried the same gauntlet that Paul carried before he became the Apostle Paul, when he was still known as saul of Tarsus, and he hunted Christians down to persecute them and often put them to death. That was Nero's perspective of the church. In 1 Peter, one of the apostles, Peter being the apostle who told Jesus, "I'll never deny you," and then he did, three times before a rooster crowed, just like Jesus said. Peter also the same apostle who, when Jesus asked, "Who do you say that I am?" Responded with, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus, marveling in his answer, said, "Upon this rock I will build my church." Peter is the symbol of the cornerstone foundation that the apostles built for the church. Peter, historically we know, it's not mentioned in the Bible but it's mentioned in Jewish history, historically we know when he was crucified, because he would not stop preaching the gospel, he requested from the men who were getting ready to kill him, to crucify him, upside down, because he did not feel worthy of dying in the same manner that his Lord died. This guy, who sat under this kind of rule from the Roman government, said this: "honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor." What? And you think the church in America has it bad? The only reason, the only reason that a Christian in the United States of America could ever look at our situation and think, "We sure have it bad," is because we are spoiled brats. We are God's children, we are his sons and his daughters, we are coheirs with Jesus Christ, coheirs to the kingdom, just like believers in Pakistan are today. But we're the bratty kids, right? If you think you have it bad, I love Cameron shared last week, because somebody may ridicule you or poke fun of you because of your faith. And I was that teenager, all the students in the room. Man, I walked into high school my sophomore year, which was my first year of public high school, because I was homeschooled my freshman year, I walked into my high school with my Bible in my hand. There's a photo of me standing in front of the school, because my mom took a lot of pictures, all you picture-taking moms, and she lost all of them too. But there was a picture of me somewhere with a backpack on and a Bible in my hand, and I went into my high school thinking, I'm going to go save some souls. You know how many teenagers it took to make fun of me before I put my Bible back in my locker and I never got it out again inside that high school? One. One teenager made fun of me. Today that teenager is a pastor at renovation Church in St. Joseph, Missouri, because God's sovereignly in control, we're not. I stood by on the Sunday morning that he was baptized, stood next to the baptismal, went on a mission trip with him, we went to Bible college together. But he made fun of me once. And you know, he's never brought that up in the history of our friendship. He's a pastor. He's never called me and been like, "Brother, I made fun of you one time and you tucked tail and ran." But I did.
We think we have it bad? We are the spoiled brat children in the body of Christ, and it's sad.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 53:39
It really is sad. Peter says honor the emperor. Our honor towards our government and its officials, and our honor towards our government and its officials should be based on the command given in Scripture, not on how we feel the government honors the church, and not on how we feel, not on how we see people with opposing views show honor. Let me read that again. Our honor toward the government and its officials should be based on the command given in Scripture, not on how we feel the government honors the church, and not on how we see people with opposing views show honor.
That means just because people who disagree with you are nasty to you doesn't mean you get to be nasty to them.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 54:36
That's that whole turn-the-other-cheek thing, where Jesus doubles down on it again. It doesn't matter what's said or what's done, Scripture says Christians should honor their government, period. So I want to ask this question. I've got to hurry up a little bit because I'm already ten minutes behind. Woo. I'm going to ask this question: what's the difference between honor and respect? Why does Paul mention both? And my thought went to this. I remember my dad growing up, he said several things, sometimes he was like a broken record, and some of the things that he said over and over again to me, I now say over and over again to my kids. One time I said one of them to somebody else's kid, that got me in trouble. Don't tell another person's kid you'll pop him in the mouth. That didn't go well. That was a long... She's not even here today, thank God. That didn't go well. It just came out of my mouth. Something my dad always said: "Talk to me like that again, I'll pop you in the mouth." And he would, too. My dad would say this when I was being unruly: "You will show me some respect." And that meant you either correct yourself now or I'm going to take you to the bedroom and I'll correct you, but the choice is yours. You will show me some respect. Now, it may have been 50/50, probably more like 60/40, the majority of the time I didn't correct myself, I ended up having to go to the bedroom. But when I did correct myself, it was regularly artificial correction, and I would normally give him the response that he wanted, and then I would turn around and under my breath, which he only heard a couple times and that went really bad, I would say something like, "Well, maybe if you deserve some respect I might show you some respect." And the couple times he heard me say that, let me just say, I came out of the bedroom and my younger brother was standing out in the hallway crying because of what he had heard from the bedroom. It was bad. But I remember this saying over and over again: you will show me some respect.
My dad had the power and the authority as my dad to enforce that his son would respect him. You'll do it whether you like it or not, because if you don't you're going to get some wrath, and I'll continue to give you some wrath until you decide that you do kind of like it, the respect, not the wrath. What my dad couldn't do, listen to me, what my dad couldn't do ever, what my dad was incapable of doing, was forcing me to honor him. He couldn't do that. But what's the difference? What's the difference? Similar to how Paul mentions taxing and taxes and revenue, he also mentions respect and honor. I believe the difference, where am I at? Got lost, sorry. Honor, on the other hand, isn't about... Okay, so respect is an outward portrayal, is an outward behavior, it's an outward showing. I can show Pastor Shawn respect and him feel respected because of how I interact with him, and I can do that and not actually honor him. Honor, on the other hand, isn't about the outward behavior. Honor is about the esteem that someone places on that person inwardly, and my dad couldn't force me to do that. My dad couldn't force me to esteem him in a higher regard inwardly. All he could enforce is what happened outside of, what came out of my mouth. We don't show honor, listen, I thought this was a quote from somebody. I Googled it. I Googled it for a while. I searched it as many different ways as I could possibly search it and I found nothing, and I was only left with the thought that maybe, JR, this was an original thought that you had, and it's just so good that you attributed it to somebody, you never thought that could have possibly come from your brain.
So if you said this to me, just keep it to yourself, because I like what I currently think. We don't show honor because someone else deserves it. No, there's another coffee stain, Pastor Shawn.
We don't show honor because someone else deserves it. We show honor because we ourselves are honorable.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 59:40
Maybe some of you didn't get that. We don't show honor because the person that we're honoring deserves honor. We show honor, we have honor for people, because we ourselves are honorable. I like the quote that I heard from the previous pastor that I worked for before God brought us to Echo Church. He said, "Hurt people." If you have somebody in your life that constantly is inflicting pain in your life, they're doing so from a place of hurt of themselves.
Just like hurt people, honorable people honor people.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 1:00:31
Somebody who is dishonorable in their character, you're probably not going to see them showing honor. They may show you respect, but that doesn't mean they're honoring you.
So maybe you can know if I honor you or not, because you sure can look at somebody's character and see if they're honorable, see if honor is in their character. So those are the five things: submission, taxes, revenue, respect, and honor. So I want to go back real quick. I said at the beginning that we were going to talk about this idea of disobeying the government, and there were some teens on Wednesday night, when I got back to this point, they were like, "Yeah!" It's not what you think it is. Don't get excited. It's actually quite discomforting for the church. Let's take a look at when and how and what the conditions should look like if the church is going to stand in opposition to the government and it be biblical and it honor God in doing so. This Christian nationalist mindset is growing, and they call themselves evangelical, but I'm just going to give you one pivotal example from Scripture. I could show you many, but this is my
Point 5When told to disobey God, endure with joy
Favorite of what it looks like to live in civil disobedience to a government that is requiring Christians to disobey God's commands. James chapter 1. James says this, he introduces himself: "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." James was a leader over the church. Then he addresses the church: "To the twelve tribes," the entire church, "to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion." I got lost there. It is "in the Dispersion," and we read over that real quick because we're waiting to get into some of the chunkier meat in the book of James, and you can just glaze right by James's introduction. James is writing a letter. He is a spiritual leader, he's a pastor over the church, and he's writing a letter to the twelve tribes, to the church that he says is in the Dispersion. Some translations of the Bible say "scattered abroad." They were dispersed. A lot of people can glaze over that easily and think, well, he was just writing his letter to the global church, the vast church that at this point was in Rome and was in Ephesus and was in Galatia, and, you know, he's just sending a letter out to everybody. That's not the context of James's introduction. James's introduction to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion, the church at the time James was writing this, was suffering under persecution. Not "my high school colleague made fun of me because I brought my Bible to school." It was, "If we find out you're a Christian, we're going to kill you." That kind of persecution. And so they had scattered, they had scattered and were living dispersed, living in hiding. And James wrote this letter, and I kind of illustrated this out a little bit for our students on Wednesday night, and I won't take the time right now because I'm quite late, but he wrote this letter and then somehow it got sent out to the different areas, so there had to have been some kind of organizational structure. If James is, I hadn't ever thought about this with this Scripture until this week, if James is writing this letter and he's writing it to the dispersed, to the scattered church, and then you read the content of the letter, it's clear that James's intention was for this letter to be delivered to the scattered church, which to me leaves no other explanation. There had to be some kind of organization for where the church was scattered to. They didn't just say, "They're going to kill us, this is our last church service today, run for the hills, hope you all stay safe." They said, okay, now I'm going to break it down a little bit, sorry, they said, "Hey, you ten on the south side of town, if you turn west and you go into the woods a little ways, there's a cave there, it'll be perfect cover and shelter for you guys for a while. You go hang out there. You ten, if you go north of town, there's this old abandoned train tunnel, nobody's ever in there, you guys go hang out there for a little while. Hey, you ten..." There had to have been organization to it in order for James's letter to be taken to the scattered, dispersed church. Why were they scattered and dispersed? Because the government had said you cannot profess Christianity, you cannot teach the gospel, you cannot preach the Word of God, and the church said, "Nope, we're doing it anyway." So that means we've got to break up into small groups, and that means we're going to have to go into hiding and disperse ourselves for an unforeseen amount of time. I'm not sure how long it was. What they didn't say was, "Guys, go get your guns, Pleasant Hill government thinks they're going to shut down our church, we'll show them. You ain't going to tell God that we can't meet." That's not what they did. They also didn't go get signs and write ugly sayings on their signs and go protest at City Hall. They said, our government is telling us to disobey God, that means it's time for us to disobey our government, and in doing so, if we're caught, we will have to incur the punishment for breaking the laws that the government has instituted. So to try to avoid that, we're going to go into hiding for a while. Do you really want to disobey? I'm not even, I'm not even pretending to raise my hand. Do you really want to disobey the government in the way that the Bible shows us? It's not Christian nationalism. It's not the church calling the government into correction.
But it is the church saying we will obey God before we obey you, and if you call us to disobey God, our lives just got a lot more complicated.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 1:07:22
Then he says, I'm not going to read the rest of the Scripture up there, I'm just going to read this one line: "Count it all joy." Hey, you guys that went to the cave, you're keeping your joy, right?
Everything's good? Yeah, you had to eat that deer that Kirk hunted for you, but everything's good, right? You guys over in the old train tunnel, the mildew smell from the water is not making you too sick, right? Got your joy, right? "Consider it joy when you meet trials of various kinds." This just, oh man, James.
He's not instructing them to take up arms or plan protests. He's encouraging them to endure persecution, and to do so with joy.
Pastor J.R. Brown · 1:08:26
As we finish out tax season and we endure the rest of this election year, I believe this Scripture falls at a very crucial spot in our calendar. It should give us cause for pause, to stop and think about the things we say about our God-instituted government officials. It should give you cause for pause to stop and think about the videos that you watch where other people badmouth our government officials.
Parents, how can we expect our kids to follow God's commands towards government and authority when they constantly see us living in opposition?
Pastor J.R. Brown · 1:09:02
We're going to close this morning with a time of prayer for our government, but I went 24 minutes over, so I'm not going to do that. This is what I want to encourage you to do, and you students, I want you to hold your parents accountable to this. As you leave here, wherever you're going to eat lunch, I want you to set a timer if you need to. Set a timer, we have to go buy timers in our house. Set a timer for five minutes. Five minutes is longer than you think. And for five minutes before you touch your fork or you pick up your sandwich, I want you to sit as a family and pray over your government. Pray for those that you know are Christians, that they would be encouraged and emboldened in their obedience to God's Word, and for those who clearly aren't, that they would feel convicted from the Lord, that it might be in God's will for the Holy Spirit to call them to conviction of their sin. But I'm going to close with this.
That's my challenge for you over lunch, but I'm going to close with this. As you pray, don't pray from a Christian nationalist mindset that believes that America needs to turn back to its Christian roots. I'm going to blow your minds and then I'm going to release you, because the United States of America doesn't have Christian roots. The United States of America might have some biblical roots, but the majority of our founding fathers weren't professing Christians. Very few were. Most of them were deists. So if anything, America has deist roots. It has some Bible in there, but the same dollar bill that says "In God We Trust" also has this pagan pyramid thing on it with the all-seeing eye at the top. Don't get me started. So don't go all Christian nationalist on your prayer. Okay.
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