Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Today’s sermon text is found in 1 Peter. The basic theme for the sermon today is “In God We Trust.” We’ve already sort of sung that in a couple of the songs. So 1 Peter, and I’m actually going to start reading in verse 9 and go into the first several verses of chapter 3. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

1 Peter beginning at chapter 2:9: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, who once were not a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Beloved, I beg you, as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, 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 as 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, 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 are called because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow 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. Wives, likewise be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear.

Do not let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel. Rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands. As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for Your word. Minister it to us now in the power of the Holy Spirit. Transform us by Your word, Lord God. We thank you for it. Help us to understand a little better fear. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

So we go back to 1 Peter after the resurrection. What’s with that? Well, I’ve been requested by someone who’s very dear to me to preach on fear. And so this is not the end of it. This is sort of the beginning of it. Next Lord’s day, we will launch into Hebrews, reviewing the introduction again and moving into the next section of the epistle. And that will be my series of sermons for a while. Hebrews has a very important verse about Christian sanctification that you’ve heard me talk about before, in terms of fear—that it’s fear of death that controls us often and causes us to sin, and Jesus died so that we’d be relieved from fear of death.

So today I wanted to talk on 1 Peter because it talks about fear. And you know, the last verse we ended with there—the last verse talking directly to women—you know, “you’re not supposed to be fearful with terrifying fear.” And yet, fear is alluded to several times in the text, as you heard as I read it, and we’ll talk about it here in a couple of minutes.

I thought it would be a good place to throw in a short topical sermon on fear because this is, you know, one of the two great messages we talked about last week from Matthew 28. The angels caused the soldiers to quake and to fear and to fall down as dead men. Fear. The angels address the women, “Don’t be fearful.” They leave the angels on their mission with fear. And then when Jesus sees them, He says, “Rejoice.” And then after they worship Him, He says, “Don’t be fearful.”

So I talked last week that a big message of the resurrection is this admonition not to be fearful. And what were those women doing leaving the angels fearfully when they were instructed not to be fearful? Was the Savior reminding them that fear should no longer be part of their lives, or are they leaving with a proper fear? And I think if we look at today’s text, we’ll see that there is sort of a proper fear and an improper fear.

This is not one of those subjects—fear—that falls out nicely with word studies, okay? Usually when you see the word translated “fear” in our text today, for instance—except for the very last phrase—”fear” is *phobos*. You know, phobia. Claustrophobia, fear of small places. Agoraphobia, fear of the marketplace, whatever it might be. Phobia, fear. And sometimes it’s used in a good sense. He tells us here to fear God. Phobia—have a phobia of God—not a sort of fear that doesn’t want us to approach Him, but have a reverential awe is the way commentators talk about it.

But it’s the same word that we’re told, for instance, in 1 John that perfect love casts out fear. Well, that’s the same word. So which is it? Are we supposed to be fearful or are we not? Are the women supposed to not have any fear, or are they supposed to have—are they really exemplifying the right sort of fear as they go on their task? And I sort of think it’s the latter. And we’ll see that as we go through today’s text.

So that’s what I’m trying to do: follow up the resurrection message of “don’t be fearful” and sort of look at it from the relationship now of how we’re to interact, specifically in terms of not horizontal but the vertical relationships, right? So horizontal is on an equal plane. The vertical ones are superior and inferiors—not in terms of essence, but in terms of function or role. And so I want to talk about that a little today.

The text I’m using is pretty controversial. As it turns out, you know, it talks about obeying Caesar, and then it talks about obeying a master if you’re a slave who beat you and is a horrible guy. And then it talks about obeying your husband who’s not a Christian. So, you know, this is pretty—this is the sort of text that when you come to it and you’re reading, a lot of us at least, we immediately start acting like W.C. Fields.

You know, they said that W.C. was on his deathbed and he was reading his Bible and somebody came in and said, “Bill, you’re reading the Bible. What are you doing looking for loopholes?” He said, “Well, that’s what we’re sort of about.” You know, we sort of look at this text and we want to find all the loopholes that help us to avoid the plain application of it, which seems pretty plain.

Now there is a balance to what I’m going to say here, particularly about magistrates. We are—this is an epistle of Peter, and we remember as we read his admonition to obey the government that this is the same Peter who told the governing officials, “It’s better we have to obey God rather than men. We cannot—we will stop—we’ll stop preaching the gospel. We’re not going to do that.” So Peter understood the other side of this: that we cannot obey the civil magistrate, our husbands, civil or employers, servants, or masters rather—you want to think of it as—if they would have us sin.

So, you know, that’s kind of a needed corrective. Nonetheless, it’s a tough text for us. F.F. Bruce was a famous evangelical writer and commentator, and just before his death, he wrote an article about the implications of texts like this, particularly the stuff about women obeying their husbands. And, well, does that still apply in America today or not? And, you know, these sort of texts that are sort of—they sound so odd to us.

Remember, folks, that you know when he says here “obey the king,” all commentators that I’ve ever read believe this to be a reference to the Caesars—the ultimate power as supreme. Now we don’t know when 1 Peter was written. We, you know, anywhere from the very early 40s up to the 60s. So we don’t know which particular Caesar he was talking about at that particular time. But of course, this is not tempered by the sort of Caesar it is.

The text, as we’ll look at again in a minute here, is tempered by the fact that God puts him there, no matter who he is. If it was written in the very early 40s, we’ve got Caligula. Caligula was assassinated because he was such a monster in 41 A.D. Now, Caligula was the worst of the worst from one perspective. I mean, the Diocletian persecutions much later were far worse and more widespread, but Caligula was just nuts. He would kill people and then try to raise them from the dead, and he did all kinds of mean, nasty, wicked things. He thought he was God and was truly insane. Complete moral reprobate.

Now that could have been the guy that Peter is saying “obey.” If it wasn’t Caligula, the next one—if it’s written in the early 40s to the 50s—is Claudius. You know, most of his book, *I, Claudius*, PBS series *Claudius*. Well, Claudius was a lot better. He still didn’t like Christians much and would persecute them occasionally. But Claudius became emperor after they assassinated Caligula. The Praetorian Guard—the army, the tough guys—said, “We want Claudius ‘cuz we can control him.” He was thought to be kind of feeble-minded, maybe a little nuts, infantile, whatever it was. Some say he pretended that because he didn’t want to be killed by Caligula and he escaped Caligula for that reason, but who knows?

But anyway, the Senate was trying to figure out who should be Caesar next. And the Praetorian Guard says, “Well, he’s our guy. Put him in.” And the Senate didn’t want to be killed. So that’s how Claudius gets to be Caesar, right? No vote, no constitutional means that the Romans had set up. Or the Senate electing the next Caesar—uh-uh. Army says, “Here he is.”

So it could have been that guy. If not Claudius—if it’s written in the 60s—then we’re probably talking Nero. Agrippina, Claudius’s wife, convinced Claudius that Nero, his nephew, should be made the heir to the throne. And so Claudius said, “Okay.” And then shortly thereafter, his wife poisons him to get Nero on the throne. Nero, we know about Nero. You know, he would light up Christians as candles in his garden, blame them for the great fire that destroyed much of Rome. Tremendous persecutor of Christians.

So we don’t know who it was, but it was a bad guy under any definition. So we read this and we want to kind of redefine it, or we read it in light of modern day views of womanhood. And I’m going to correct this a little bit—what this text actually says when we get to that part of it. And it sort of say, “Well, women are supposed to submit to their husbands without a word, yada.” We don’t like it.

Well, F.F. Bruce wrote this toward the end of his life: “Whatever in Paul’s teaching—we could add Peter—promotes true freedom is of universal and permanent validity. Whatever seems to impose restrictions on true freedom has regard to local and temporary conditions.” Well, that’s nice. We can kind of decide. Well, does that part of Peter—was that to obey the civil government? Well, here’s a big loophole: “Well, F.F. Bruce says, well, you know, if it doesn’t really increase freedom, and that would seem not to increase freedom, then maybe it was a temporary and local condition that’s being described.”

You see, F.F. Bruce left a loophole the size of all Nevada or something in the book of the scriptures. Horrible, horrible statement. And so this is the sort of text though that kind of raises these statements in our mind. We want to say no. You know, it’s interesting—the Supreme Court, you know, changing its mind on execution of minors. They acted like F.F. Bruce. Well, you know, what are the popular mores and conditions? Yeah, we used to do it, but different times and conditions, and we have this unchanging constitution, but not really. If our feelings, you know, if we just don’t feel like this is really a good thing and if the world says it’s not a particularly good thing, then we should get rid of it.

Well, be careful as you approach texts like this one that you don’t do the same thing. We can be highly critical, and we should be, of F.F. Bruce or of the Supreme Court, but watch out because your criticism could be criticism of you.

Verse 20 of the text says—and specifically the reference is to—”do good and suffer as a slave, get beaten by a bad master. If you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.” So what Peter is doing in various circumstances here is telling us what is commendable before God.

One comment, one translator puts it this way: “This is a fine thing in the sight of God. If you suffer unjustly, this is a fine thing in the sight of God.” Well, that’s what we want, right? We want to know what is the will of God. How do we please God? What would be a fine thing, a commendable thing from the perspective of God, the one with whom we have to do. And this text will tell us that. It explicitly tells us that this is a thing. Now, it’s not going to be an easy thing. It’s going to be a hard thing. Easy to understand, hard to do.

Several years ago, Richard John Neuhaus wrote in *First Things* about some books being published in an evangelical publishing house. He said this: “I think I understand what you’re trying to do, aside from trying to sell books, but I am uneasy by a new series from Hendrickson Publishers. *The Bible Made Easy. Bible Prophecy Made Easy. Bible Study Made Easy.* And Neuhaus says, presumably Bible study is part of the Christian life. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be hard. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in *The Cost of Discipleship*, continue my quote from Neuhaus here: ‘When God calls a man, he calls him to come and die.’

I do not hope there is a book in the works titled *Discipleship Made Easy*,” Neuhaus said. “But I’m sure there already is such a book.” So this is a hard text. It’s not easy. But if we attend to it, we are promised by the text itself that if we do this, this is a fine thing in the sight of God.

Now, let’s look at what’s a fine thing in the sight of God. I read—I really wanted to stress beginning at verse 13—these relationships. And overall, this is the text. What he says is: you know, obey the horrible Caesar. Obey the horrible master who beat you for no good reason. Submit to him, you know, with not just with a grudging obedience, but—we talked before—submissiveness is a desire to follow him. Do that. And you know, you’re a wife, you got some lousy pagan idolatrous husband. Submit to him. Be respectful and reverential of him so that he might—who is called to obey Christ, as all men are—might be won by your conduct.

Okay? So he uses—from my perspective—three worst-case examples. Worst kind of governor: Caligula. Worst kind of master: somebody who actually beats his employees or his servants when they do what’s right. And the worst kind of husband would be a husband who is not obedient to Christ at all. And you can imagine what an idolatrous pagan husband would look like. He uses the worst-case examples. And in every case, he tells us that the thing that is a fine thing to do before God is to be submissive to these people.

And he even tells us, in terms of the master and the disobedient husband, right—who will not obey God’s command that you ought to have a proper fear of these individuals in your life. He tells the wives that, and he tells the servants that as well.

So that’s in general what’s going on. It begins, however, in the King James Version in verse 13 with a “therefore.” So we want to take these directions and commands about a proper fear and an improper fear. That’s kind of, you know, we’ll get to toward the end. We’re to take these commands—very practical, easy to understand commands, difficult to obey. We’re to take them as a result of something else.

Well, he’s told us—and this is why up to verse 9—he’s told us about: “We’re the people. We’re the holy nation. We’re, you know, priesthood of kings. We are great stuff. We rule the world. We are the conquerors.” You know, he tells us that, and on the basis of that, in verse 11, he says, “Now I beg you,” okay? So it’s like: “Our children, you are princes and princesses, your royal blood, so to speak. But we beg you not to fall into the lust of the flesh, not to use that position of prominence that you been given by God. Don’t use that to engage your flesh.”

I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lust. You see, if we take this as what the “therefore” is going back to, it is—it is an exercise of the flesh more often than not to be critical of authorities in the state, the workplace, and the family. He’s saying, “Be careful, because you can—the flesh so easily—and I’ve just given you a potential stumbling block.”

“You are sons of the king. The kingdom belongs to you. But now you know your flesh is going to take that and chafe against Caesar and say, ‘What a jerk he is. Now I don’t want to pay his laws and I don’t want to pay his taxes.’ And the flesh is going to tell you: ‘That employer doesn’t know anything about the Bible. What a goofball. And you may grudgingly do what he does so you don’t get fired. But you’re not going to have the sort of reverence and submission to him that’s called for in this text.’

And the flesh is going to say: ‘That lousy husband of mine who won’t obey Christ. How can I really respect him?’”

See, so I think that’s the setup: “Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable—a fine thing to God—among the Gentiles. The way you will win—as we said forever—the way you’ll win this war is ultimately not through swords loud clashing, but with deeds of love and kindness to heavenly kingdoms come.”

Right? Heavenly kingdom comes. So you’re to have your conduct honorable to Caesar, to the unchristian boss, and to the unchristian husband, “that when they speak against you as evildoers”—you are being submissive to evildoers, okay?—”and they will speak against you as evildoers at some point in time. You may, by your good works which they observe, they may rather by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.”

So, you know, your submission is always to sinful people. We were at Doug H.’s house yesterday, a few men, and he wanted to sort of give some, you know, manly advice to David as he became a man at biblically speaking. And our church has decided age 20 is when we’re going to, you know, apply Paul’s admonition to put away childish things and take up adult things. And Chris W. gave a little—his advice came from the life of Robert E. Lee.

And one of his four points, you know, was that Lee understood the depravity of man, the fallen nature. And so, whoever you’re going to serve and submit to, it’s always going to be to a fallen guy, okay? It’s always going to be to a sinful person. And in the context of these specific worst-case examples that Peter gives us, these are really sinful people because they’re not regenerate, okay?

So, in the light of that, he says, “I want your conduct to be honorable. I want it to be a fine thing in the eyes of God. And I want it to be a fine thing to Caesar, Pilate, Herod, your slave master, and your wicked pagan husband. They may still revile you and beat you, but you know, something’s going to get through.” He says they’re going to observe your conduct and maybe even they will glorify God in the day of visitation. They’ll be converted. And again, that’s repeated at the end of these relationships—these relationships to functional superiors.

You know, “be submissive to your godless husband so that he may—without a word on your part, but by your chaste behavior—be won, become obedient to Jesus.” So that’s that “wherefore.”

So “therefore,” on the basis of this stuff, “submit yourselves to every ordinance of man.” Now this is a little tough translation. I don’t know what your Bible says, but most of the people that I trust—and if you look at the Greek grammar here—this phrase “ordinance” actually means “creation.” So it’s usually—it is always, apparently, in the New Testament—reused of the creation itself. And so probably a better translation of verse 13 is: “submit yourselves to every created thing” or “man.” So it’s a general call for submission to every man.

And what he’s going to give them here now—these are fallen men, right, post the Fall. So now what he’s going to do—it’s a summary statement—and he’s going to apply it now out to specific kinds of creatures or creaturely men, and he’s going to do it in terms of those that have authority over you.

So it’s a general statement: “Whether to the king as to supreme or to governors or to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, praise of those who do good.” Well, Pilate, right—he was the one sent by Caesar, by Augustus Caesar, to rule—and so he’s one of those governors. And again, it’s kind of worst-case example. He’s using a term here that immediately applied to the Roman governor who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus, even though he stated in his verbal statements that he knew the guy was innocent.

So worst-case examples. And as I said, the king here are the emperors, the Roman emperors, “as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good.”

Now, you know, again, there’s a counterweight to this. We could take this same sermon and legitimately preach it to civil magistrates and tell them that the obedience of their subjects is for the Lord’s sake because you’re the Lord’s representative. And so it has implications for how the civil governor is to do what he does. And it specifically tells us—again, as it does in other places in Scripture—what his basic job is: to punish evildoers and, as a result of this, to also praise those who do good.

And then we’re told in verse 16: “This is the will of God, that by doing good, you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.” What he had just said was the introductory sentence here. “You do this, the Lord God will be faithful to use this to bring these guys to conversion. And you should want to do that, or at least shut their mouths.”

And then he goes back to kind of the “wherefore”: “As free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. Wow. You know, bond—this is it. The Christian life is one of kings who rule by service. We’ve said this over and over. You see it in front of you every Lord’s day at the table, where the officers, the governors of the church, are your servants. And this is what we’re called to engage in is servant leadership.

And so he says, “Don’t use your freedom. You’re free, but you’re free to be a bondservant of God. You’re freed not from serving somebody, right?”

John Ewing told me a couple weeks ago, I should have included that Dylan song: “You got to serve somebody.” A couple of our guys did that. I think Richard and some other guys at family camp once, years ago. That was fun. Too bad we don’t have it on video or something. Bob Dylan: “You got to serve somebody. It might be the Lord or it might be the devil, but you got to serve somebody.”

So we’re freed not in the sense of not being a servant. We’re freed from the sinful rebellion against authorities. That seems to be the implication here. And if we use that freedom in our exalted station of being a holy priesthood before God and ruling the earth in some way as a way to complain about authorities, you see, then we’ve completely turned it on its head.

And this is what I’ve been concerned about in watching some of the coverage, some of the Christian involvement—not all of it, some of it—in the Shoyo case and other public policy matters that come up. You know, I went through the 60s. I’ve seen all this before. I’ve seen a self-righteous group pass off the traditions of their parents. And I’d seen the truth of the fact that much of those traditions in the 60s were, you know, several steps removed from Jesus Christ. They were kind of post-Christian traditionalism. And yet I saw the complete arrogance of the counterculture—that destructive generation described by Horowitz, destructive generation, the proverbs. You know, they’re so proud. They’re clean in their own eyes, yet they stink to high heaven.

Well, that’s what we don’t want to do. And for our Christianity today, it’s very easy to get caught back up in the exercise of flesh that was the counterculture: with demonstrations and marches and yelling in the street and speaking very derogatory things about the rulers we have, who are nowhere near Caligula or Nero and the other Roman emperors.

So, you know, we don’t want to use what God has given to us as this cloak for vice. We want to submit. Now I want to quote from John Calvin here, because I am sure that some of us are looking for loopholes right here, particularly here.

Well, I want to read some stuff from Calvin. “Now the meaning is that obedience is due to all who rule because they have been raised to that honor, not by chance but by God’s providence. For many are wont to inquire too scrupulously by what right power has been attained. But we ought to be satisfied with this alone: that power is possessed and exercised.”

Okay? So, you know, you get a lot of this far-right Christian Right stuff. “Well, they’re not obeying the Constitution. Well, they didn’t take the right oath of office. Well, this, well that.” I remember years ago, many of you have heard me give this story. Judge Beer—as we went to see some—at a church, Joe Lutz’s original church actually, before he went through that whole thing. And there was a guy there from the Barristers In group, who were like Christian constitutional guys that said, “Wow, if you just make the right constitutional arguments, we’ll win all these legal battles.”

And Judge Beer—we went home to my house afterwards. We’re having beer and pizza afterwards. And you know, he says, “You know what the problem with that argument is, Dennis? The problem is you’re going to get up there and argue that stuff. The judge will say, ‘Finally, argued legal arguments, great precedents that you cite. Flawless legal reasoning.’ 10 years because the judge doesn’t care. Now whether he should care or not is not what is being talked about, and it’s not Peter’s concern.

Peter’s concern is there is a power that presently rules de facto, not de jure, and because of that, this is the worst-case example again—Caesars who took over through assassination and poisonings. These are the guys that you’re supposed to see as ordained by God. And if we can see them as ordained by God, what are we supposed to do with President Bush and the judges and the justices and all those that rule?

I know, you know that I know and am just as eager to remind the civil magistrates of their responsibility. But Calvin says, “Now, don’t find the loophole of being overly scrupulous about who it is you’re going to be submissive and respectful to. Don’t do that.”

He says: “So Paul cuts off the handle of useless objections.” This is back in Romans 13, when he declares that there is no power but from God. And for this reason, it is that Scripture so often says that it is God who girds kings with the sword, who raises them on high, who transfers kingdoms as He pleases.

“As Peter referred especially to the Roman emperor, it was necessary to add this admonition, for it is certain that the Romans, through unjust means rather than legitimate way, penetrated into Asia and subdued these countries. So you know, they took over Rome through assassination, and they took over Israel through unjust means. There was nothing lawful about their intrusions into Asia, into these countries.

Besides, the Caesars who then reigned had possessed themselves of the monarchy by tyrannical force. I’ve mentioned that. Hence, Peter, as it were, forbids these things to be controverted. Forbids you to find a loophole. For he shows that subjects ought to obey their rulers without hesitation because they are not made eminent unless elevated by God’s hand.”

That’s the way you’re supposed to think of these guys. Elevated by God’s hand.

Calvin goes on: “Were anyone again to object and say that we ought not to obey princes who, as far as they can, pervert the holy ordinances of God and thus become savage wild beasts, while magistrates ought to bear the image of God—” now, this is a common objection that I’ve seen over the years as well. “Well, to the extent that these guys don’t obey the law of God, they don’t really have any law. The only force of law is the law of God. And any magistrate that passes a so-called law that doesn’t conform to God’s law, it doesn’t have to be obeyed. I mean, I’ve seen, you know, preeminent Christian public policy speakers declare this.

Calvin says: “My reply is this: that government established by God ought to be so highly valued by us as to honor even tyrants when in power. There is yet another reply still more evident, that there has never been a tyranny, nor can one be imagined, however cruel and unbridled, in which some portion of equity has not appeared.”

We could call it the workings of common grace. “And further, some kind of government, however deformed and corrupt it may be, is still better and more beneficial than anarchy.”

You see, so let’s remember these things as we evaluate our relationship to the civil magistrate. Now, you know, there is a difference. This was Imperial Rome that was being discussed, and the definition of what Imperial Rome wanted out of you as a citizen was, you know, the salute. Yes. That’s it. And some commentators have noted: we live in different governmental times. We want to avoid the sin of F.F. Bruce—that’s saying it has no relevance to us. But on the other hand, the way we honor the authorities today does look different than the way we honored the Caesars, because the authorities in America are authorities that are based in understanding and serving the people. It’s democratic, representative, whatever you want to call it.

And so, to be a good citizen, another implication of this text is that it would be wrong in modern America to just salute, because the system doesn’t ask for that from you. They ask for your involvement, and you should then vote. You should think about things. You should discuss things. That is being submissive to the governing authorities, which are democratic republics in our day, okay? Just like what we said three or four weeks ago about the church election: the way to be submissive and honoring to the authorities is to vote, to make use of the franchise.

So, and not just to vote, of course, but to make your opinions known. We think so highly in the elders—not that we want everybody to do this, but of men who voted no or abstained and then communicated to us this or that concern about this or that candidate. This is a highly honorable thing to do in our particular system of governance, in this church and in what we think the world is moving toward—that American democracy is a maturation from Roman tyranny and empire.

So, we don’t want to, you know, I’m not trying to, you know, ratchet down your need to honor the civil magistrate. I want to add some stuff to it. Not good enough to just respect, reverence from them. You have to now get positively involved in helping restrain evil in them as well.

I plan on going down to Salem this week, testifying on a bill, and reminding them that one major role of the legislature is to trim or cut back bureaucratic abuses. Bureaucracies are good and necessary things, but they grow like topsy, and they got to be weeded. And the job of the legislature—the primary job in the American Congress when it first met—its primary job was to look at bureaucratic abuses by civil magistrates and judges and roll it back, correct it. And that’s what we’re doing. So it’s a good thing to do.

But all of this, you know, is part of understanding that God works through these men, and we’re to properly respect them.

Now He then gives a little summary statement in verse 17: “Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.”

Now, we, you know, what’s going on here? Is this a distinction or are these corollaries? Are the—I mean, we could say, “Well, he doesn’t want us fearing the king. He wants us fearing God.” And in an ultimate sense, the verse clearly implies that. And it really—it’s quite important to see this: that there is a proper fear—phobia is the word used here. The same one that we’re not supposed to have in other verses.

So, you know, it’s not fear is neither good nor bad. The fear is a proper sense that’s to be applied in a proper, you know, collected way and given to the proper things. We’re not to fear tight spaces. We’re to fear God. And because of our fear of God, we’re supposed to honor, reverence, esteem—not just obey. We’re to honor Caligula. We’re to honor Claudius. We’re to honor Nero. You see, we’re to honor Pilate.

Now, the implication there is that they should—the more honorably they act, the more honor they’ll receive. But they should be honored for the very fact that God has by His sovereignty placed them in positions of authority.

So fear here is a proper motivation to lend us—lead us rather—to honor civil governors in that relationship, the worst of them. The context for this is honoring everybody and loving the brother. So there’s a distinction, right? We’re to honor everybody, but have particular love for Christians. And we’re to fear God. And that’s supposed to manifest itself in this honoring of civil magistrates.

Again, quoting Calvin, he said that he’s already said that these clauses are applied by Peter to the subject he was treating. “For he means that honor paid to kings proceeds from the fear of God and the love of man.”

So Calvin takes it as a building kind of a thing. The love of man and the fear of God leads us to honor civil rulers, and that therefore it ought to be connected with them as though he had said: “Whosoever fears God, loves his brethren and the whole human race as he ought, and will also give honor to kings.”

So you say you respect and reverence God. God says, “We’ll see. We’ll see.” Here comes Caligula. Here comes Claudius and his whoring wife, Agrippina, literally. Here comes Nero, who will torch some of you for candles for his garden parties. Do you believe in me or not? He says, “Am I sovereign or am I not? Do you fear and reverence me? Do you believe that I’m the sovereign determiner of empires?”

He says, “If you do, you’ll honor the civil authorities that I, in my providence, using their sin sinlessly, have placed over you for your good.”

So: civil governors, taxes are coming up. Don’t cheat.

He goes on to talk about servants in verse 18. “Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear.” There it is again. Fear. You know, when you hear about fear in the Bible, you used to want to hear about getting rid of all fear. In a way, that’s the problem with us today.

We have some young man going 142 mph down 205—no license, suspended license, no insurance, as I understand it. He goes to pick up his car. Still has no insurance, I think. He tells the police, all the news media, “I’m going to do it again. Sure. I love to do this stuff. It’s safe late at night.” Suspended license. And he drives his car away. He’s got no fear. He has no reverence and respect for God. Well, that’s increasingly what’s happening here.

And we don’t want to add to that by improper speech in the public arena that doesn’t honor the authorities that God has given to us, even while we seek to correct them.

Well, servants, they’re supposed to have fear. Phobia is the word here again, right? You’re to serve. “Be submissive to your masters with all fear.” We could say reverence. You know, it’s another implication of this word. “Not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.” Again, worst-case example.

“For this is commendable if because of conscience toward God”—you know, “for the Lord’s sake, honor the civil magistrate.” Now, it’s commendable for conscience toward God.

Well, you know, the implication of this is that if we do not engage in a proper relationship, have a proper fear of God that leads to submission to the authorities that God has placed over us—the worst of them—then we’re going to have a guilty conscience. You know, what is it worth? I didn’t go to the play. I wish I would have, but you know, it’s kind of hard for me to see things, but *A Man for All Seasons*. Great movie. There’s some sort of line, probably Laura, I think, maybe recited it for us here about, you know, the guy that betrays Sir Thomas Moore—gets Wales, gets a rulership in Wales—and Thomas says, “You know, the Bible says, you know, it’s a bad deal to gain the whole world and lose your soul. But Richard, Wales—you lied. You defiled your conscience for Wales.”

We defile our conscience for $100 of tax money. I think, you know, that’s worse than Esau, because we probably don’t need it. He was famished, and he trades away his birthright and a good conscience for a mess of pottage.

Well, to be submissive to employers—we can make the application—but originally masters of slaves here, even those that are harsh, is commendable if because of conscience toward God, one endures grief, suffering wrongly.

“For what credit is it if when you’re beaten for your faults, you take it patiently?” Well, that’s what we think. “Well, if we get spanked because I sinned against mom or dad, and if I just take it, well, that’s a good thing.” No, it isn’t. He says, “That’s no good. That’s not commendable.” No. He says, “But if you—but when you do good and suffer, if you get spanked for not doing—for doing something you never did—you’re supposed to take your lumps like a man, as a Christian man. The ones you are due. But more than that, he says, ‘Take your lumps that you’re not due as a Christian man. Don’t grumble and dispute. Don’t be a whiner about it.’

If you take it patiently, suffering for good, this is commendable before God. Martyrdom is a good thing. If you have to be a martyr for Jesus Christ, this is commendable to you. To this you were called. He says, “There’s a sense in which this is exactly what the Christian life is.”

And then he gives us the example. “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow in His steps.”

Doug called us together yesterday to be men—a community of men around David as he moves into manhood, and as he works over the next 20, 30 years to make good decisions. He built some counselors around him, good examples, men they could talk to. Jesus is an example here to us as Peter goes through these relationships of how to properly fear God and thus reverence authorities.

“Christ gives us an example that you should follow His steps. Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth. You know, He suffered wrongly. He took the lumps for which He never was due at all. Who when He was reviled did not revile in return. Didn’t call the policeman pigs. When He suffered, He did not threaten.”

Now, He did call Herod a fox. I think that’s a reference to Herod’s shrewdness. And because the King of Kings, Herod’s king, feels like it’s all right to refer to Herod’s shrewdness by using a term that also implies he’s lost his humanity—he’s a fox now and not a man—does not give us the right to do that kind of stuff.

You see, again, we have to properly understand Jesus’s Kingship. But don’t use the truth as an excuse to exercise your flesh the next time an authority does something wrong to you. And do you want to give into the flesh and think bad thoughts or say bad words about him to yourself or your kids or your friends?

So Jesus, when He was reviled, didn’t revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten. Here it is. Here’s the key to this entire section from my perspective.

“But committed Himself to Him who judges righteously.”

Now this means that what we are saying today is not some sort of gnostic stoic suffering—because suffering in and of itself is the end of the matter and good. No, that’s not what I’m saying. Jesus is the example. He entrusted Himself to God.

Now, we could stop there, enough, right? God trusts us. God loves us. Or we trust Him because He loves us. We entrust ourselves to God. Therefore, we can submit. But no, he says he entrusted Himself to one who judges righteously.

Christian suffering has behind it the knowledge that the guy beating you because you’re a Christian will be judged by God. Not immediately, and we don’t know in what way. We don’t know if it’ll be to salvation or to destruction. But Christian suffering, Christian submission has a proper fear of God, who knows that God brings all things to recompense. The wheels of justice may grind exceedingly slow, but they grind exceedingly fine as well.

So to underpin our obedience to bad rulers, we’re not saying, “Well, it’s okay. They can just be like that.” And no, we know that they will get judged by the one who always judges righteously, God, who sets up and brings down civil magistrates, men, etc.

That’s the key to have the example of Jesus, who commits Himself to the one who judges righteously. That’s why the sermon is called “In God We Trust.”

We trust Him to be overseeing what’s happening to us in the hands of ungodly people. And we trust that He will bring His judgments in His time for His purposes. And so, it’s “In God We Trust.” In God the Father, the one who judges righteously.

“Jesus trusted, 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. You were healed from your rebellion, from not trusting the one who judges righteously.”

Therefore, that redemption is played out here in the context of submission to authority. “You are like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseers of your souls. Fear not, oh little flock.” We’ll be singing that later in the service.

And then he moves to wives. “Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, even if some do not obey the word. They’re supposed to. There’s a good proof text. All men are supposed to obey Christ. It’s not as if just those who have been baptized have to obey the word. Everybody’s got called to obey the word. They are not obeying the word, which means they are supposed to be obeying it.

“That they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives, and they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. There it is again. See, proper fear. You’re supposed to be fearful of your husband, or fill in the blanks. You know, your fear of God should lead to a fear—the representation of God by your husband—even if he’s completely disobedient to the word.

“Do not let your adornment be merely outward. You know, hair is great, golden is great, nice clothes are great, but your primary adornment is the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. This is a phrase, of course, that’s well known in homeschool circles.

This is kind of interesting though, because “gentle and quiet spirit”—you know, we think of that as those are the feminine virtues. But of course, they’re not. You know, when we talked about 1 Timothy 2, the very purpose of praying for and seeing the civil governance become more obedient to God is so that we might lead a quiet and peaceable life. That word “quiet” is the same as “gentle” here.

I’m sorry. No, it’s the same as the word “quiet” here. Quiet spirit. So all of us are to be able to have these quiet spirits, and “gentle” is the same word that we’re to be: “Blessed are the meek.” It’s that word meek. “Blessed are the meek.” Men are to be gentle and quiet spirits as well.

But the point is here is that the wise, by their submission, by their fear of God, which results in fear of their husbands and a submission to them in actions—showing them respect, showing them reverence as God’s appointed men for them—by this, men are moved.

Last yesterday afternoon, David’s grandfather, Wayne H., his advice had more to do with marriage, and he took that famous verse from Ephesians about husbands loving your wives and wives respecting your husbands. And you know, here it seems to tie into this: as wives, you know, by their gracious spirit of respect and reverence—the fearfulness, the reverence for their husbands—you see, this is what causes a husband to move into action and take his role more seriously. He responds in love for the wife typically.

Now, I’m not saying if a husband doesn’t love you, it’s your fault. But I’m saying that if you have a tool to help him love you, you should use it. And that tool is to treat him with reverence and respect. It energizes men. And Wayne did a good job of giving advice yesterday to David.

“In this manner, in former times, the holy women were trusted in God. Well, let me just say here in passing—I know I’m going a little long—but say here in passing that Peter has no problem saying that we’re going to look at some basic continuity here. Yeah, there’s some discontinuity with the Old Testament. He goes right to the Old Testament for his example.

I’m amazed that there’s so much controversy brewing over covenant renewal, high liturgical churches, high churches, and low churches. I don’t get all of that. The basic hermeneutic that we’ve had for 21, 22 years is: we’re to have—whatever we do in civil government, family, relationships—wisdom informed by the Old Testament. And we’re being told by some people today that the worst thing we ever want to do about worship is think a little bit about how they did it in the Old Testament. What is that?

If that’s the hermeneutic that people are being called upon to embrace, I have never embraced it before I was Reformed or after. I never bought dispensationalism. It was always the one word of God to me. And that’s why I responded, you know, with great joy when we found men like Rushdoony and James B. Jordan, and then beyond them Reformed theologians, because that seemed to me to be the core of what it was all about. That’s what Van Til taught. It’s one word.

And Peter here goes back to the Old Testament patriarchal times, you know, as an example of the way wives are supposed to be. And he says, “Look at these women. Again, what Doug did yesterday with David. Have models around you. If you want to be a man, look at men. And in our day and age, that’s a little tough, because most of us aren’t very manly. So read biographies. Read about men of the past. Read about men with chests, as C.S. Lewis said.

And here, you know, these women are being asked to look at a model—a woman who in her demeanor shows us what this is to be like. They adorn themselves in this way, being submissive to their husbands—not just obeying, but respectfully, with reverence and fear.

“Obeying. Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror. Okay. Okay. So now we have a corrective to blind, unreasoning fear. The “don’t be afraid.” Don’t have a phobia with great terror. And this is a different word.

So fear that is causing terror in you—you’re to put away. Perfect love casts out fear. That’s the sort of fear that’s being cast out when we apprehend and believe and trust that God is governing all things. So whether it’s that servant of Caligula or the slave master or the ungodly husband, again, what they’re being called to do is: don’t be fearful with terror. You know, Sarah—don’t be afraid what’s going to happen to me if I pretend not to be his wife. Trust in God. Trust in God in this matter. Don’t be terrified.

So that’s the balance to the proper use of fear in submission. Our fear ultimately is in God and in knowing that He is superintending every detail of our lives, and therefore we don’t have to be terrified.

Let me just mention also here that, you know, it’s kind of hard to get outside of our context. You know, we read the Bible and it’s so much linked to our culture. And so these verses are regularly attacked as being anti-feminist. And from one perspective, they are. But from another perspective, they’re sort of like the Song of Solomon. Remember I’ve talked about that remarkable book, to indicate that it was okay for wives to initiate conjugal relationships. But it went counterculture to the pagan culture of male—an improper chauvinism or male masculine overbearingness toward women and degradation of them.

This verse does the same thing. It is pretty remarkable in the context of the society that Peter writes to address the wives apart from their husbands, because the wife was seen as just an appendage to the husband. But Peter exalts the status of women as equal heirs, joint heirs of the gracious gift of life. And he does it by addressing them on their own, apart from speaking to their husbands.

You know, we’ve always—I’ve always kind of pastorally, I’m never sure if I should do that or not. I’ve gotten in trouble for doing it before, talking to women without going to their husbands. But, you know, that’s what God does here. And God does it all the time. And it’s an exultation of the state of womanhood over what pagan cultures see—that you can talk to women without having to talk through their husbands. They’re joint heirs of the gracious gift of life.

And so this text tells us that, and it puts them, as I said, in the same status as servants. They can be addressed without going through master. The Christian is not just a product of the Roman emperor. He’s not just a servant of Caligula. He’s not even primarily that anymore. The wife is not primarily a wife. They are primarily image-bearers of Jesus Christ. They are primarily that holy priesthood, the royal nation, the ones who govern the future. That’s what they are primarily.

And in each of their functional relationships, they’re reminded to have a proper fear—not an improper one—being terrified. A proper fear of God that then leads to an honor and reverencing of God’s authority figures in the state, the workplace, we could say, and the family.

So fear—you got to serve somebody. Don’t use your freedom that Christ has given you as a cloak for vice, either through a fearfulness or a fearlessness. Either side, you see, the kind of terror that Paul or Peter tells women to avoid, as well as the sort of fearlessness of men, are both spoken against by Peter. We’re to have a proper fear as we go with the message of the resurrection into each of our areas of life.

We’re to be proper servants of the governing authorities in the church—well, no—in the state, the workplace, and the home. And the end result of this is that the Lord God, His kingdom will be expanded as people behold your wonderful behavior. This is them seeing the message of the gospel played out in life.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the principal part”—is another way to put that verse from Proverbs—”of the knowledge of God.”

May God grant us a proper fear and a casting off of improper fear, but having a proper fear that causes us to reverence, be thankful for, and submissive to the images of God that He has given us in the state, the workplace, and family.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you, Lord God, and we do honor and reverence and fear Your judgments, Lord God. And help us, Father, to believe that You are sovereign. Help us not to look for loopholes as we think of how we’re going to apply these texts of obedience in the state, in the workplace, and home. Help us rather to embrace the role of the suffering servant, if that’s what we’re called to be, looking to Jesus as our example, who entrusted Himself to You, knowing that You will indeed judge righteously.

Help us, Father, to live our lives with this motto: “In God We Trust.” And in Your name we ask it. Amen.