Submission in Honor to Authority

Well, good morning, everyone. I want to greet you in the name of Jesus. We're glad to be here this morning, and I've been encouraged already by what has been shared. You can turn to the book of First Peter. I'm going to be looking at chapter two.

He was only 17 when he became emperor. The year was 54 AD. The power went to his head. His reign was marked by extravagance and cruel tyranny. He executed his own mother and adopted brother. In 64 AD, a great fire of Rome, the Great Fire of Rome, broke out and destroyed four of the 14 districts in Rome.

Facing a political nightmare and a huge backlash, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus needed a scapegoat. Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite torture on a class hated for their abominations called Christians. This is according to the Roman historian Tacitus. Accordingly, an immense multitude was convicted. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs or were nailed to crosses or were doomed to the flames to serve as nightly illumination. And you probably heard the stories of what Nero did to people. He covered them in tar and lit them on fire.

What's really ironic is it was under this ruler that Peter penned the words that we're going to read here this morning. So you can turn to First Peter two, and we're going to begin reading at verse 11 and read through verse to the end of the chapter.

Peter says this, "Beloved, I beg you, as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lust, which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. Therefore, submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether to the King as supreme or to governors or to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good, you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God.

Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the King. Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. For this is commendable. If because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully, for what credit is it when you are beaten for your faults? If when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently. But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow in his steps, who committed no sin nor was deceit found in his mouth, who, when he was reviled, did not revile in return.

When he suffered, he did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously, who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness, by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls."

Someone has said that the book of First Peter is sort of like a handbook for Christian living. And I just want to back up a little bit and just review a little bit of what we've already looked at in this book.

Unfortunately, statistics say that most people don't remember most of what you say. So hopefully this will refresh your memories a little bit. So the first thing we looked at in this book was the fact that Peter was marveling over the fact that someone like him that had his background could be salvaged.

And it was already mentioned this morning, some of the things that Peter, I mean, if we look at his life, it was sort of one failure after another and sort of ended there at the crucifixion with Peter denying Jesus not once, not twice, but three times.

And yet Peter begins this book and he's just marveling about the fact that we can have a living hope and that we can have an incorruptible inheritance. And it says it's the kind of thing that's it's such an amazing thing that the picture he gives is sort of the angels in heaven sort of looking down over the parapets of heaven and just marveling that someone like Peter could be restored. And I mentioned at the time that we as human beings, we love to see that. People love to see old things being restored and brought back to life. And Peter just marvels at that wonderful living hope and that inheritance that we can have that's incorruptible.

The second message we looked at, because we live for eternity and not for the here and now, we're not supposed to settle in here. This is not to be our home. We're supposed to live like we're strangers and pilgrims and sojourners living here as the faithful in the Bible has.

The third message then we looked at, as followers of Jesus, were to desire the sincere milk of the Word of God in the same way that a newborn baby desires milk so that we can grow and were to taste and see that the Lord is good.

And then he talks about us being a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. And we talked about the church and how Jesus is the chief cornerstone and that we're all living stones, part of that building. And then the last time we looked at the book of First Peter, we talked a little bit about if Jesus is the chief cornerstone, then it's imperative that we submit to him, that we have a full surrender to his lordship. And it's going to be characterized by a humble spirit.

And the verse was already read this morning, First Peter 5:6, "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time." And so it's really only as and the reason I wanted to look at that last time was because it's really only as that surrender to Christ is a part of our life that we're able to surrender and submit to the other authorities that God has given to us.

We're only going to we're not going to be able to submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake if we're not surrendered to God. And just think again, I just want to emphasize the importance of humility. And when we think I'm just thinking about this as I was studying, we think about relationships and problems and so on. And it's just incongruous to have a person who's really humble that is rebellious. The two don't go the two don't go together.

It's really unusual to have someone that struggles in relationships that is truly humble. And so humility is very, very important. So he tells us here that we're supposed to submit ourselves to every ordinance of man. And the New American Standard translates that to every human institution. And if we think about it, submission is part of all that. It's part of government it has listed here. It's part of the employee-employee relationship. It's part of family life. It's part of church life. So the question that comes to us is, if we're this holy nation, this royal priesthood, this set apart people, it would have been a fair question for the people that lived in Paul's time to have some questions about, "Well, then how should we live?"

I'm indebted to someone by the name of Brian Suave. I have no idea who he is, but he had written some on this passage, and I was really impressed. He says, "A very reasonable response for Christians hearing this soaring rhetoric, say a Christian in Asia Minor, the original recipient of this letter might be, what is a holy nation to do in the midst of a wicked empire? What is a chosen race to do in subjection as citizens of Rome under delusional, tyrannical, wicked Nero who claims to be the Son of God?"

Or we, as modern Christians, might have the same questions like, "If we're a royal priesthood, a holy nation, how do we relate to in the midst of a nation with the blood of 60 million aborted babies on our hands?

What is a people for God's own possession to do amidst a people abandoning all moral reason and infected by desperate acts of evil? How should we live?"

It's ironic that since Roe versus Wade was overturned, the amount of abortions have actually gone up. In the year 2023, there were one million abortions in the United States, largely due to a pill now that's just being prescribed.

Together, we might respond, "Peter, we believe we are what you say we are. We believe the gospel, our newness. We believe that we are God's new creation, people amidst the kingdom of darkness. But what do we do with the collision of these kingdoms? What do we do as the values of the kingdom of God, where we anchor our true citizenship, collides with the kingdom of man?"

And I would like to suggest, as Peter does here, that there's two things that we can do. We can live honorably and honor others and submit to the authorities in our life. And that might sound a little simplistic.

In early if we look at history and we look at the history of Islam or the Muslim religion, many times, especially in the early days, Islam spread behind power of the sword. In other words, it was military conquest.

And even today, we see remnants of that with ISIS and the Taliban and so on.

In contrast to this, the church spread rapidly through the Roman Empire, not behind military conquest, but at the other end of the sword. It spread not by killing, but often by dying. It spread through the activity of church planning and missionary work, not through conquest.

What Peter gives us has become the grand war strategy of the ancient church in the conquest of a wicked culture, not by might nor by power, but by God's Spirit, not by violence or by swords, but by love and honor, by radical embodying of a better kingdom in its better way, occupying the very heart and throne of the wicked kingdom in its deathly way, like leaven occupies a lump of dough and transformed it.

And so I need to warn us. We may be tempted to desire better weapons than the ones we're given. We may look to the culture of death we inhabit and say, "Don't you see the power of this beast? Don't you see its weapons and influence? Where is our power?"

And so Peter goes on to say our power is not to revile, but to honor, not to kill, but to love. So what does it mean to live honorably? To live honorably. And he says in verse 12, "Having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation."

Well, I think the answer to that is in verse 11, "I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul."

And again, I quote, "And so as Christians do that very normal, very routine, very mundane, very day-to-day confession, repentance of sin and walking in holiness, we put the better way of God's kingdom into bright neon in the midst of the kingdom of man.

We're tempted often to think that God is looking for you, Jacks, of glorious obedience once a year, Daniel going into the lion's den rather than denying God sort of stuff, when the reality is that most of our honorable kingdom living is mundane and invisible.

Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. It's the tired mom waking up and determining to obey the Lord's commands, to rejoice at all times by the power of the Holy Spirit, to smile over her kids rather than storm over them on a typical Tuesday morning in March. It's the 23-year-old single man determined that he is going to obey Jesus with his eyes. And I'll just add that's all of us doing that.

Second Corinthians 10:3-5.

Second Corinthians 10:3-5. Say this, "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."

So we're to fight this battle. We're to live our lives in this culture around us, not using the world's weapons, but to live honorable. Honorable living means we're free. In verse 16, it says that we're to live as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice.

We're to be bondservants of God. In striking irony, the world shouts about its freedoms. No gods, no rulers, no rules. I am the captain of my destiny. My feelings determine reality. Do what you want and don't let anyone hold you back. You do you. Get your religion out of my bedroom, my house, my world. They shout through chains.

Those who gladly submit as slaves to Christ find themselves free men and free women. Those who shout about their freedoms from all gods and rules are utterly enslaved by sin by their own desires. So we see this thing that happens, that those who think they're free are enslaved. And it's just really ironic here that he says that our freedom is found as bondservants of God, as bondservants of Christ.

Many people use when it comes to submission to authority, they say, "Well, we're part of this other kingdom. We're this holy generation. We're this royal priesthood." And so that gives us a right to sort of ignore the laws around us. And he says that we're not to do that. We're not to we're to be bondservants of Christ. We're to submit ourselves to every institution of man for the Lord's sake.

The other thing that honorable living does is it opens and shuts mouths. See what it says in verse 12, "Having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation." So they open their mouths. They try to speak against you as evildoers, but because of your good works, they glorify God.

And then in verse 15, it says this,

"For this is the will of God, that by doing good, you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men." So it opens mouths and it stops mouths.

What does this mean? Our honorable living, on one hand, serves to undermine the critics when they call us evildoers, when they call us bigots and hate-mongers and hypocrites. What more powerfully sweeps the rug out from under their criticism than kingdom of God, brotherly love, care for widows and orphans, honorable uprightness? It shuts mouths. And on the other hand, it will open mouths in praise of the glory of God when God arrives on the day of God's visitation. And I love that. I love the fact that just by simply living honorably, it can shut people up or it can cause them to burst forth in praise.

So how should we live as God's chosen people? We live honorably. Then the second part of that is that we not only live honorably, but we're supposed to honor and submit to authority. I'm going to read Romans 13:1-7. "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. And the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God. And those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good.

But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore, you must be subject not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience's sake. For because of this, you also pay taxes. For they are God's ministers, attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor."

So just because we're exiles and sojourners and citizens of another homeland doesn't mean we can live as lawless anarchists. God is not a God of anarchy. And it's as much as possible, within God's parameters as Christian, we should be exemplary citizens of the world in which we live. And notice he says here, "It's for the Lord's sake."

We do this because it's for the Lord. Did you ever think about the fact that obeying the authorities is a form of worship, a form of giving glory and honor to God? I'm free. I don't have to abide by the civil laws.

And so how is it when we come up against maybe a township ordinance? We want to put a shed somewhere, and there's an ordinance against it, and it's like, "Nope, you can't do it there." What is our response?

What about building permits? This is just where the rubber hits the road when it talks about submitting ourselves to ordinances of God, paying our taxes. There's a group of people out there that say, "We're Christians. We don't have any allegiance to this world, and so therefore we're not going to pay our taxes." That's not what Peter is calling us to here.

I'm going to touch a little bit closer. What about wearing masks when the government says we're supposed to? I mean, we were faced with that.

We could paraphrase verses 13 and 14 like this: "In order to show that you are a people who love and trust and submit to the ultimate authority of God, his absolute crown rights over all his creation, gladly, joyfully, and willingly submit to those lesser authorities to whom he has given sword-bearing authority." So in a sense, our submission to the authorities that God has put in our life is bringing him honor and glory.

And then Peter says that citizens of the household of heaven should be characterized by four things. In verse 17, he says, "Honor all people." So are we known as people who honor everyone? There have been times in our culture, in our background maybe, where things maybe weren't what they should be. My wife was just reading about some of the racial prejudice that was present in the Mennonite church here pretty close home, Chambersburg, where certain people of certain skin color were not able to be buried in the cemetery and so on.

I recently saw a video about the drug problem in Kensington, Philadelphia. And it's horrendous when you see the humanity like that. And in some ways, I find myself being in some ways disgusted by it. I mean, it's like, "How could you let yourself get to that point?" And I was really impressed by the there's a pastor there who has a program right in the middle of all that. And it was very evident that he deeply cared. He loved these people in spite of their problems and especially had a burden for the children and so on.

Are we known as a people, a people who love everyone? We don't discriminate. How do we relate to people who it's pretty evident that they're trying to be some kind of transgender person or whatever?

We don't love what they're doing, but do we love them as people? Do we look on them the same way that Jesus looked on all humanity and saying, "There's a soul that really, really needs help"? And I was really convicted by that. We had taken Colin to Baltimore this week. And while he was having his treatment, we went to Lexington Market. And on the restroom doors there, it said, "Women or non-binary?" And in the men, it said, "Men or non-binary." It was the first time I ever really saw that. And my first impulse is disgust.

But do we have a love honor all people? The second thing he says should characterize us is a love for the brotherhood. Are we known as people who love the church, who love God's people, who just love to be around? And we love to build one another up. When people listen to me talk, do they detect that I have a love for the brotherhood, or do they hear a lot of criticism of my brothers and sisters and so on?

Again, very challenging. The third thing that should characterize us is a fear of God. Do I have a posture of reverence and all? Would I be known as a God-fearer, the people that know me? He's a person who fears God.

And then he says again, "Honor the King." Do we honor President Biden? President Biden was an old man who was suffering from senility. And it was very I found it very easy to ridicule, to mock, to sort of feel disdain.

But that's not what Peter says here. He says that part of our pushback against the culture that we live in is to honor the King, to honor the authorities in our life. Do you think Peter would have struggled with honoring Nero? After all, it was Nero, in a sense, that was responsible for Peter's own death and Paul's. Both lost their life at the hands of Rome.

Why does this matter? Because honor, love, and righteousness and uprightness are powerful weapons for the sake of our witness. Honor, godly submission is truly a weapon for reform. And this was kind of a new thought to me, that godly submission is actually a way by which we can push back against our culture around us.

As we honor rulers, we are really honoring God who sent them. And so our honoring of them shows that we are a people who love justice, love righteousness, a people who love good and hate evil. And what happens as the gospel works through a culture is that it even has the power to transform the culture, the laws, and the rules of the people. And there's an example of this in history, and it's the example of Satii. How many of you know what the practice of Satii is?

Okay. A couple do. Satii was the practice in India where when a man would die, his widow would burn themselves to death on the funeral pyre of their husband. And it was a Hindu practice. They believed it was somehow going to bring them some kind of spiritual favor. I was doing a little reading about it. It was a horrible, horrible practice.

They would actually sort of make a bamboo cage in order to put the woman in there so that she could not escape the fire. When she was being burned, they would bang on drums and do a lot of loud chanting so they couldn't hear the screams.

And William Carey went to India, and he witnessed this. And he just said, "This is not right. This cannot be." And he pleaded and begged with the people to see it as for what it was, its murder. And it didn't happen overnight. But through the influence of William Carey, not by going out and protesting, not by creating a big scene, but by simply submitting and in honor talking to those around him, between him and Wilberforce and others, eventually the practice was outlawed.

And so that's just an example from history where it does matter how we as Christians respond in the world in which we live.

This always brings up a question then, is this submission to authority, is it unlimited? And if our submission is for the Lord's sake, then we need to recognize that the ultimate submission, the ultimate authority is God. And Peter himself, in Acts 5:29, when he was brought before the authorities for preaching the Word of God, he says, "We ought to obey God rather than man."

When obedience to civil authority conflicts or requires disobedience to God, we always obey God. And there are some other examples in Scripture of where this was true. The Hebrew midwives, they did right when they refused to throw all the babies into the Nile.

Daniel did right when he prayed to God, even though he was told by the authorities that he should not do that. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they did right when they refused to bow to the King.

Peter continued to preach the gospel when they told him he should quit. But I'd like to read this last section.

And I've titled this last section, "But it isn't fair." But it isn't fair. "Servants be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. For this is commendable if because of conscience toward God one endures grief suffering wrongfully. For what credit is it if when you are beaten for your fault you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer and you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.

For to this you were called." That phrase stood out to me. That's what we're called to, is to submit even when it's not fair.

God notices it. Twice it says here that it's commendable. God commends us when we do that. And it says, "Christ gave us an example to follow in his steps." The idea there is to trace a pattern. Remember first grade, maybe kindergarten, where you had the little letterbook and their little dots?

When we were sitting around Virginia's bedside, Wesley's little daughter, Addie, was there on Marla's lap. And so she did that. She took a pencil and made Addie's name in little dots. And then she traced that and was all proud because she had written her name.

But that's what Jesus did for us. He traced that path. Talk about not being fair. What's it say here? He committed no sin. There was no deceit found in his mouth. He did nothing wrong, nothing.

Which one of us, who of us can claim that? I know I can't. When he was revowed, he did not revow in return. When he suffered, he didn't threaten. But he committed himself to him who judges righteously. Why did he do that?

For my sake, for your sake. He bore our sins in his own body on the cross so that we can live in righteousness. By his stripes, we are healed. We're like a lost sheep that have been found and returned to the shepherd, and now we're under his care.

He traced it out, and we follow. So when we chafe under what we consider to be unfair treatment, when we're called to submit to the authorities in our life, when submission to authority seems unjust, what's the pattern? The pattern is what Jesus did.

Follow the pattern of Jesus. We have no right to claim that it's not fair.

So I guess to wrap it up here today, how do we today, June 8th, 2025, as a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, how do we live in a society around us? What should be our what should be our way of living?

He says, "To have our conduct honorable, to live honorably." We talked about what that means in honored submission to Christ and the authorities he has established.

And it's really, it's a huge thing. It permeates all areas of our life. And the next time, Lord willing, we'll look at what it means in family relationships between husband and wife. And it communicates very loudly to the world around us.

And I guess I was challenged by the whole idea that the world is looking on. They're seeing how we relate to the authorities in our life. And I think it puts a big blot on Christianity and Christ himself when we as Christians who claim to be Christians and submitted to Christ, and the world looks on and says, "Well, they just don't do very well under the authorities that God has put here." And that's challenging.

People who don't know Jesus will be perplexed. "Your behavior doesn't make sense. Everyone rebels, cuts corners, and grumbles about authority. Why don't you?" It's almost as if you believe God is in control, and he is.