09-06-09 Finding Freedom Where We Never Expected It

1PE 2:15-16 For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.

For the past several weeks

we have been looking closely at those two verses,

and at several others that come before them,

trying to gain a clear grasp

on what Peter is doing in this section of his letter

and why he’s doing it.

And already there have been some surprises along the way.

We are studying a letter written to us by Peter

for the purpose of equipping the people of God

with the tools we need

for effective living during the hard times of life,

and especially during those times in life

when we are under attack from those around us

because of our commitment to Christ.

We spent several months in the first two chapters

looking closely at the tools he gives us there

for this life we are called to live.

Then, a few weeks ago,

we entered Peter’s how-to section of his letter,

that section in which he takes the principles he’s been giving us

and applies them in very practical ways

to the lives we live each day.

And what we’ve found here so far

is not what we may have expected.

In the context of his letter

Peter makes it abundantly clear

that his intention in the final section of this letter

is to show us how we can most effectively communicate Christ

to a culture that’s hostile both to us and to our message.

He tells us that, if we follow his instructions,

it will do more to silence the ignorance of foolish men than anything else we could do.

But then, what he offers us

is not some blueprint for communicating the Christian social agenda in our society,

or techniques that will allow us to gain greater military, or political, or social power.

What he offers us

is a call to each Christian

to live a life of personal moral integrity

in a world that views us as fools

and our value system as impractical and utterly out of touch with the real world.

From the very beginning of Satan’s attacks on the human race

his strategy has rested on convincing us

that the moral boundaries established by God

are both unreasonable and arbitrary.

Not only is God not protecting us from unnecessary pain and suffering,

but He is obviously attempting to wall us off

from the things we must have if our needs are truly going to be met.

But once the will battle between our spirit

and the Spirit of God is ended through our submission to Him as our God,

He is then able to begin freeing us from those lies

that have kept us in bondage.

And as He rebuilds the moral foundations of our lives

we discover a growing freedom to love without fear

and to find the security of His leadership in our lives each day.

So, what we move into now in our study

is Peter’s revelation of the life that will both give us tremendous personal freedom

and also communicate the reality of Christ to the world around us

as nothing else can do.

And I think we are probably fine with all of that in theory

until we get to the first item on Peter’s list of how-to’s.

Because immediately following his call to us to keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles,

Peter says this:

1PE 2:13-15 Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.

And before we go any farther with this

I will tell you that there is no principle given to us by our God

that has both irritated and helped me more in life than this one.

These words of Peter’s are all the more remarkable

when we remember the governmental structures

that were in place during his lifetime.

There was no one person - one vote,

let’s-all-go-to-the-poles-and-elect-our-leaders system in ancient Rome.

This was a government that was, at best grudgingly tolerant of these Christians,

and at times openly committed to their destruction.

This is the government that would,

in a very short period of time,

crucify Peter upside down because of his commitment to his Lord Jesus Christ.

And yet here, at the very top of Peter’s how-to list,

is his call to us that we Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him...

How could that be?

For us to understand what’s happening here and why

we need to see why God established human authority structures,

how He views them,

and most of all what He accomplishes in the Christian’s life through them.

There are few things in most of our lives

that cause us more irritation,

more frustration,

more anger at times

than do the actions and attitudes of those who hold authority over us.

There are five specific sources of human authority mentioned in Scripture,

and through them

the foundation is laid for a multitude of others.

The five that are mentioned are a child’s submission to his or her parents,

the mutual submission of the husband and wife to one another within marriage,

a slave’s submission to his master (which is the most extreme form of the employee/employer relationship),

a citizen’s submission to the governmental structure under which he or she lives,

and then, finally, though with several crucial differences,

the human authority structure established within the local church.

But for this to make any sense

I need to back up one step

and make just a few comments about where and when and why

God introduced human authority structures into the human race.

In the beginning,

before Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God,

there were no human authority structures of any kind,

apart from Adam and Eve’s absolute authority over the rest of the physical creation.

The only authority Adam and Eve were under

was the authority of God Himself.

And it wasn’t simply because there were no other people at the time.

It was because, as long as there was clear communication between God and His creation,

and their willingness to trust and submit to His rule in their lives,

there was no need for anything else.

But once man rebelled against God,

once that trust/submission relationship was destroyed,

once sin entered into the world

God put in place two key new tools

that were essential if the human race would be preserved long enough

for His redemptive plan for mankind to be fulfilled.

And let me keep this in perspective here.

You do remember, don’t you,

what this whole thing is about -

I mean this WHOLE thing...the creation, the human race, man’s rebellion, God’s purpose.

From the very beginning

it has always been about God creating a framework

in which we would be able to understand how much He loves us

with the hope that we would respond to that love by loving Him in return.

And the only way we could ever even begin to understand the true nature of His love

is when we see His response to us

in the face of our rebellion against Him.

ROM 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

But there are two huge problems with sin beyond the obvious problem that it separates us from our God,

two problems we try very hard to hide from,

but can never escape.

Sin is highly contagious, and it is always self-destructive.

And left unchecked

once it entered the human race

it would have quickly and utterly destroyed the human race

long before God could have completed His revelation of His love for us through Christ.

And so, to restrain and help contain the destructive powers of sin,

He did two things.

He introduced authority structures into the human race,

and, to help reduce the contagious nature of sin,

He isolated the human race into thousands of self-contained groups

through the introduction of separate languages,

and through them, separate cultures.

There are more than 6000 separate spoken languages in the world today,

and each one provides a protective barrier against the contagious nature of evil in our world.

But it’s God’s purpose for human authority structures

that I want to talk about this morning.

And what God tells us about human authority structures

is remarkable to the extreme.

Now, I’ll share the heart of what He’s saying to us

through a principle I’ll give you in a few minutes,

but first let me take you to the source.

There are two key passages

in which God communicates this principle to us,

one of them is right here in 1^st Peter,

these few verses that brought us into this study this morning.

The second is in the writings of Paul

in the first six verses of Romans chapter 13.

If you remember our study of the book of Romans,

you’ll remember that Paul uses the final five chapters of that letter

to reveal to the Christian

the basic operating principles of life within the family of God.

And it is early in this section, in 13:1-6 that he says,

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.

These are the words Paul wrote

about the same governmental structure

that kept him imprisoned for months

because of his activities as a Christian.

And as we see here in 1^st Peter,

Paul is not alone in his instructions to us

about our submission to the human authorities in our lives.

So what in the world is going on?

Why would our God call us into submission

to authority structures that don’t even recognize Him as the Creator God?

The truly disturbing thing about these passages

is the clarity with which they speak.

We as Christians are being told

that part of our moral obligation to our God

is to choose submission to the human authorities in our lives,

knowing that those authorities have been established over us by God Himself.

Now, before I give you the principle involved in all of this,

let me offer just a few more comments.

First, it is both God’s design and God’s intention

that all of us live

under some form of human authority

from the day we are born until the day we die.

None of us are exempt from the need for human authorities,

and not only does our submission to Christ not free us from that need,

but in fact it intensifies it.

Second, God assumes that all human authority is corrupt.

He is in no way naive about the heart attitudes

of those who hold positions of authority.

He’s the one who has told us

that (ROM 3:23) ...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

and that there is no righteous, not even one (Rom. 310).

Those who hold authority over us

do so not because they are in some way inherently better human beings,

or more virtuous than us,

but because God has allowed them to hold those positions.

Some measure of corruption both in motives and performance is an assumed fact

in all those who hold positions of authority

because some measure of corruption continues to exist

in even the most godly people who have ever walked this earth.

So here’s the principle I want to share with you concerning human authority.

God has committed Himself to accomplishing His will in our lives

through the human authority structures He has placed us under.

Human authorities in our lives

serve as God’s tool with which He literally accomplishes His perfect work within us.

To which we just naturally respond,

“I don’t think so!”

“Do you have any idea what an idiot my Boss is?”

“Do you know what our government does with our tax dollars?”

“Don’t you realize that my parents haven’t got a clue about my life,

and what I really need?”

“Are you really trying to tell me that I’m suppose to trust and submit to that decision that the board made?”

And from a strictly human point of view,

our evaluation of the motives and judgment of those who hold authority over us

may be right on.

Just recently I was a close observer to an authority confrontation

in which those who held authority were absolutely wrong in the conclusions they had reached

and they were even more wrong in the actions that followed from those conclusions.

And those actions

had potentially devastating consequences

in the lives of a number of people.

And at the time I felt tremendous anger,

and frustration,

and fear,

and a sense of helplessness.

And I told the Lord that I could make no sense whatsoever

out of what was happening or why.

And right here is the first great problem we run into

when it comes to our relationship to the human authority structures in our lives.

Everything within us tells us

that submission to authority is only justified

and only required when we believe that those who hold that authority

are using it from pure motives for correct and justifiable ends.

But if their motives are wrong,

or their attitudes are bad,

or the goals they’re seeking are not right

then we feel we have a reasonable and justifiable basis for fighting against them.

In other words,

we tell ourselves that we will submit to the authorities over us

as long as those authorities submit to our evaluation of their motives and actions.

And when we do that

we completely misunderstand

both what God is doing in our lives through human authority

and what kind of commitment He is making to us when He calls us to submit.

And let me start with the first of those two

and then we’ll look at the second.

You see, we do not understand what it is

that God is seeking to accomplish in our lives

through the human authorities He places us under.

Now, as I mentioned earlier,

God certainly uses human authority

to keep the corrupting influence of sin in check within our world.

He literally preserves the human race from self-destruction through human authority

until His redemptive plan for us is completed.

But there is far more going on than just that.

The truth is

human authorities are the greatest tool He has

for bringing our flesh into submission

to the leadership of the new spirit He has created within the Christian.

You see, every one of us enters this world

with spirits in open rebellion against God,

believing that we have both the right and the ability to run our own lives any way we want.

And God uses human authority to keep that self-centered spirit in check

protecting and guarding us from that stubborn flesh rebellion

as we grow in our ability to hear and follow His Spirit within.

The easiest place for us to see this protective nature of authority in action

is in the parenting process.

Picture a child without any parental authority in their life.

Picture them having absolute freedom

to do anything they want, any time they want, any way they want.

Terrifying thought, huh?

The problem is that we allow ourselves to believe

that once we reach our adult years

that rebellious, self-centered flesh within us is no longer an issue.

The truth is that all that’s happened as we get older

is that we have learned how to exercise our self-centered flesh desires

within socially acceptable bounds.

But the basic flesh desires don’t change.

Don’t believe me?

Look at the internet - this huge empire in which there is virtually no authority whatsoever.

And then look at where people go,

and what they say,

and what they do within that world.

That is the human race,

that is us when there are no human authorities in our lives.

Now, the problem we run into as Christians is two-fold.

First, when we come to Christ,

because we are so keenly aware of the presence of Christ within us,

we tend to believe that we can now simply live under His direct authority,

knowing and hearing and following His voice without difficulty.

And second, we can be deceived into believing that all of those old self-centered flesh impulses

just sort of went away when we came to Christ.

But the truth is

our flesh is flesh until the day we die

and it will fight submission to God our entire lives.

Which brings us back to the crucial role

that God has for human authority in our lives.

You see, the real issue,

the great issue,

the critical issue is submission,

bringing our flesh into submission to the Spirit of God within us.

And it is to accomplish that role most of all

that God uses human authority in our lives.

And that is why He tells us that human authority “... is a minister of God to you for good”.

What He is saying

is that He has personally committed Himself to accomplishing His will in our life

through the authorities He has placed us under.

Here’s the thing - we will know the difference between the voice of God

and the voice of Satan,

and the voice of our flesh

through the human authorities God has placed over us.

To trust the voice of authority

is to trust the voice of God,

not because the authority itself is always right in either their motives or their actions,

but because God Himself has committed Himself to working through it in our lives.

And in the most remarkable way

He will use those authorities to accomplish a refining work within our lives

unlike anything He could ever accomplish through any other means.

He uses it to reshape us in remarkable ways,

and to teach us about His commitment to us

and His faithfulness to us

at a level we could never know any other way.

There are still times in my life,

and will be until I die,

when I fight tremendous anger and frustration

when I see authority being misused in our world.

But when that happens

the battle I fight is the battle to turn my eyes

off of those who hold the authority

and onto the One who holds authority over them - my God.

And then I actively choose to trust Him

to do what He promised -

to work for my good through those authorities.

And that is exactly what He does.

But surly there are exceptions to this divine call to submit to authority.

Yep, two are mentioned in Scripture that I’m aware of.

The first is when the authority seeks to force us to worship some God other than the one true God.

The second is if the authority over us

demands immorality from us.

But the truth is,

rarely are those the real issues we face with our human authorities.

Usually the issue we face

is simply the fact that we think we’re right and they are wrong.

In those situations,

assuming we recognize that we have every right to negotiate with and dialog with the authorities over us,

in the end, our calling is to submit,

trusting that God both can and will accomplish His work in our lives through our submission.