Government PART 1 - Bible Basics

This morning we're starting a series thinking about politics, government, and nationhood.

Hopefully you've got a handout and a Bible.

Uh in your Bibles, please, would you turn to Psalm two?

We've got two scripture readings.

Let me pray and then we'll hear the word of God.

Father in heaven, we come before you as your subjects, as those who you have created, but wonderfully also whose hearts you have captured, forgiven, and redeemed in and through the Lord Jesus.

We bow before you, we want to submit ourselves to due authority, knowing that you stand above and over it all.

We thank you for your wonderful word, your law, by which you rule us and you show us wonderful things for our good and for your own glory.

Please be our teacher this morning, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So, first of two readings, Psalm two.

Let's listen to God's word.

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

He who sits in the heavens laughs.

The Lord holds them in derision, and he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.

I will tell of the decree.

The Lord said to me, You are my son, today I have begotten you.

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Now therefore, O kings, be wise.

Be warned, O rulers of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

And if you turn secondly to Romans chapter 13, I'll read verses one to seven.

Romans 13 · chapter mention

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those you resist will incur judgment.

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad.

Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority?

Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good.

But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.

Therefore one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience.

For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.

Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honour to whom honour is owed.

Thanks be to God for his word.

What does the Bible say about politics, government, and nationhood?

That's our topic for the next few weeks.

It is what you could call a political theology.

Now I wonder how you respond to that thought.

We live in a society where religion is mainly pushed out of politics and the national life.

Alistair Campbell, 25 years ago, famously said we don't do God.

That works out in various ways.

The state is looked to for all the answers.

Remember back to the COVID days, the nation as a whole looking to the state and its organs to save us.

In the recent assisted suicide debate, arguments from religion are very often dismissed.

At the same time, religion is increasingly obvious in politics.

So not just shoved to the sidelines, but also obvious.

Most obviously, in somewhere like the United States, you'd find the vice president, the defence secretary, there openly praying.

A while back in this country, Muslim MPs and campaigners stopped Israeli football fans attending a match in Birmingham.

There are some voices in the UK advocating a much more obvious place for Christianity in British politics and government.

Now the Bible speaks to these things.

There is not a neutral area here where we are free to believe what we like and to do what we like.

It's not a salvation issue, it's not like the Trinity or atonement, how you get right with God, but it does matter a great deal.

We probably all have different political views, but as Christian people, what we think about politics, government, and nation must be formed by scripture.

Perhaps we face two opposite dangers.

On the one hand, it could be that as a church and as individuals, we could become identified with and defined by a certain flavour of political action and thinking.

And you might then conclude, well, of someone else, you don't fit here because you don't support this particular party or campaign.

And we don't want to be a church like that.

The opposite danger is as a church or as individuals, maybe we see how divisive and divided politics has become.

We don't want to offend those who are different to us in their views and thoughts, and so we shut up and we say nothing.

And maybe that is the pit that the broader evangelical church is more in danger of falling into.

We don't want to be a church like that either.

The danger on both sides is that we don't let the Bible inform what we think about politics, government, and nation.

Instead, we are led by, and we're always led by something, but we're led by other voices.

Hopefully, the the outbox uh week by week as we go through this series is increasingly scriptural thinking, but also increasingly scriptural participation.

What does it mean to be involved in the life and the government of our nation?

Two resources I want to acknowledge.

I'm drawing heavily on these two things.

Uh, firstly, um, some work done by my friend and colleague David Thomas down the road at Christchurch, Romford.

And also this little book uh called King of Kings by James Baird, a reformed guide to Christian Government.

It's very small, only 85 pages long, and it's really excellent.

So, to start with, some key principles.

And at the bottom of page one of the handout, by way of summary, there's uh 23.1 from the Westminster Confession.

We're going to try and unpack this.

God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, has ordained civil authorities to be under him, over the people, for his own glory and the public good.

For this purpose, he has armed them with the power of the sword for the defence and encouragement of those who are good and for the punishment of those who do evil.

Now, question number one.

From where does government come?

Why should anyone have a right to be in authority over someone else?

Now, here is where we must begin.

Government is instituted by God.

The Triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, he is the divine ruler over all things, and he has set in place various authorities in his world to oversee different areas of life.

And in each of those spheres, he has mandated rulers or leaders and invested them with authority.

So we just read Romans 13:1, that every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Romans 13:1

So our Creator rules us, we are all answerable to him, and he appoints some to rule under him over others, and to do so by a divine mandate as God's representative.

And there is no authority except that it has come from God.

Now we live in a democracy, a system of government where we the people choose who will rule over us.

But by what right does one person, even in a democracy, rule over another person?

It is not ultimately because we the people give them authority to rule over us.

We do not have the right to do that.

Only God, who has all authority, has the right to institute authority.

The Apostle Paul says all authority is instituted by God.

Take the family.

A child does not have the right to say who will be their parent.

God has given parents the right to authority over their children.

Likewise, God, the creator and the owner of everything, who has got right authority over all that he has created, such that we ought to do what he says, well, he delegates some of his authority to men, to kings, to governments, to be over their people.

It's a gift, it's a gift from God.

His by right, he institutes civil authority, civil government, kings, presidents, prime ministers, to have a right to authority over us.

And that means a right to enforce that we live together in certain ways.

Think about the Garden of Eden and how it worked back in Eden.

Why is it that man was to rule over the animals?

Was it that Adam was simply quicker to realize that it would be best for him to lead?

So he used his power and his cunning to get mastery of the rest of the animals?

Was there a vote?

Did the animals decide that the guy on two legs looks like he'll be the best kind of leader?

No, Adam was given authority by the God who has all authority, delegated authority by God to ensure that his authority over creation is upheld.

Now God institutes different spheres of authority among his image-bearers in three different places in the church, in civil government, and in the family.

So the family, that's the place where each man and woman are to carry out the dominion that God has given to humanity in general, family governance.

The man has authority and is responsible for his own family.

Civil authority, state authority, which is intended to ensure that men are good subjects, so that we live together in society securely.

God made us as social creatures, and so we need an orderly government to regulate our life together.

And religious or church authority to ensure that men are good saints so that people can follow Christ securely.

So we've got family, we've got church, and we've got the state, each given by God, and they're not meant to compete with each other.

When that happens, it's disastrous, but meant to support each other.

And it is God who says in his word what family, state, and church must look like.

Now, everything that follows is implications of this great, one great big point.

And we're looking at implications for the realm of civil government.

So, big point number two.

Therefore, all rulers owe allegiance to the one true God.

Now be clear, not saying here that every state and its rulers actually recognize that their authority has been delegated to them from the triune god, not saying that.

The pagan empires of the distant past, they did know that the king's authority came from the gods, but from the wrong gods.

It's as a result of the enlightenment here in the West that most people now think that our rulers rule simply by the will of the people.

It's not just that we choose the identity of our rulers, but that they get their authority from us.

Democracy, as a form of government, it says nothing about where authority comes from.

So for example, if we elect a government because we want them to permit the killing of millions of unborn children, does the government really have the right to do that?

Well, if the authority comes from we the people, then yes, they do have that right, but that's false.

Authority does not come from the people any more than powerful rulers have their own intrinsic right to rule.

So all authority, whether acknowledged or not, comes from the one true God, and therefore all rulers should and must acknowledge the one true God.

They owe allegiance to him.

And so the scripture tells us this of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is the head of all government.

He's the ruler of kings on earth, he's the Lord of lords, and he's the king of kings.

On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

And it is an express command of Scripture for kings, as kings, that they serve the Lord with fear, that they kiss the Son.

That's what we read in Psalm 2.

If they are going to be wise, if they are not going to come under the destructive judgment of the Son, they must serve him with fear and trembling, bow before him, acknowledge their allegiance to him.

Third, therefore, rulers must seek the public good.

It follows on from the last point.

Servants must obey their masters, they must serve.

Kings on earth must serve the Lord.

Psalm 2, verse 11.

Psalms 2:11

They're commanded to do so.

Government is not neutral, it cannot be neutral.

Where human rulers can go off and do their own thing.

It does not exist from itself or for itself.

And God in his word he tells us what is his will for kings and rulers.

That is, he's put civil government over the people for the public good.

That's what we read in Romans 13, 4.

For he is God's servant for your good.

And God defines what is good.

And so rulers must do what God defines as good.

Not serving themselves, not serving their own pleasure, but doing what God says is good.

So that is how they are to serve the Lord.

Now, obviously, just pause and reflect on our own situation.

And we see grievingly, grievously, how far short of that we fall.

We see little uh pinpricks of light, don't we?

Where perhaps unwittingly or by common grace, you know, the will of God and the true good is protected or promoted in some way.

Certainly, this gives us much to pray about, doesn't it?

Next week, Lord willing, we're going to dig into what is the good.

And specifically, I'm going to try and show next week from Scripture that civil authorities must maintain piety, peace, and justice.

Because all people are obliged to use whatever power they have to help other people live godly lives.

And if you've got lots of power, then you have lots of responsibility to do that within your sphere.

And you do that by setting a godly example.

If you're a ruler, by explicitly recognizing God as the nation's true ruler, by enacting laws that conform with Scripture, and by protecting and promoting the church.

Now, I'm not going to say any more about that now.

My guess is that many of our questions will be around that.

But I just wanted to put on the table now that good is not defined by us, it's not wafty or broad, it's defined by God in his word.

And to that end, God has armed the civil authorities with the power of coercion.

So Romans 13, 4, the sword to protect and also to terrorize wrongdoers.

And because all authority is gifted by God, because rulers are God's servants under God and over the people, therefore, heading number four, we are to submit to the authorities who are over us.

That's what we read in Romans 13, wasn't it?

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.

1 Peter 2, 13 and 14, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.

So whether the authorities themselves realize it, we are to obey human authorities of whatever kind, be they parents or kings or governments or church elders, for God's sake.

In the realm of civil government, whether our leaders are Christian or a pagan Roman Emperor, a secular atheist, a Buddhist, a Muslim, this institution of civil authority over a society is by the hand of God.

In the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 1.17, the Lord instructed human judges in this way.

He said, You shall not be partial in judgment, you shall hear the small and the great alike.

You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God's.

So judge fairly, judge justly.

Why?

Because the judgment belongs to God.

It's God's judgment.

So think of the judge in the courtroom, or the policeman making the arrest, or the lawmaker in parliament.

Whose justice are they carrying out?

God's.

Now they may be doing it wickedly or wrongly or unjustly.

They may be falsely representing the justice of the triune God, and they will be held accountable for that.

But it is God's justice that they are meeting out.

So the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Peter, New Testament is saying that every king, ruler, government, prime minister, however good or wicked, loving or oppressive, has been appointed by God and therefore must be obeyed.

Now there are huge mysteries here, aren't there?

Sovereignly, God raises up both good and wicked leaders.

There is no authority except from God.

Nebuchadnezzar, Herod, Nero, Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler, Stalin.

They could not have ruled without God having given them authority to rule.

There are huge mysteries here.

Sometimes the word of God gives us clues as to why the Lord inflicts such men on a people.

Sometimes it is judgments.

Actually, time and time again in the Bible we read things like that.

So, for example, uh Isaiah 3 verse 4, God says, I will make boys their princes, and infants shall rule over them.

Isaiah 3:4

So one judgment on a whole people is to give them an ungodly or an inadequate leader.

Rulers who don't care about their people's welfare, or who commit hideous acts of violence, who set their faces totally against what God wants of them.

Immoral and incompetent leaders who ought to promote and preserve life, yet who murder and maim.

And in it all, we are called to be in rightful subjection and obedience to them.

Now, in a democracy like ours, it's not wrong to vote for someone else to change things.

It's not wrong to seek change, to use our MPs, for example, to try and restrain and influence the government.

God appoints lesser authorities for that purpose.

But our basic stance towards authority is that we do not resist it because we do not want to resist the God who put it there.

We don't want to experience God's judgment via jail time or a fine.

We don't want to hurt our consciences by sinning, it's Romans 13 5.

So we go a long distance even under unjust rulers who take away rightful liberties, who make our lives harder.

And yet, God does not call us to blind obedience of our leaders.

That's our fifth heading.

There are times when we must disobey the authorities.

Now that may seem at odds with what we've just said, but it actually follows on, even if the actual practical nitty-gritty application of it is sometimes very difficult and painful indeed.

There is no authority except from God, so there are times when we must disobey the civil authorities.

It does follow, if God has absolute authority, so that there is no authority apart from what he has given, then subjection to civil authority must never lead us away from subjection and obedience to God.

So we must make sure we listen to his voice before we hear any other lesser authority.

Here's how John Calvin put it.

How absurd would it be that in satisfying men, and subjecting yourself to their authority, you should incur the displeasure of him for whose sake you obey men themselves.

So if rulers use God-given authority to lead us in or towards what God forbids, or they forbid of us what God commands, but it's not that we may disobey them, we must disobey them.

Governors are servants, they are deputies of God the King, and they do not possess ultimate authority.

Think of Daniel in Babylon, disobeying the king's demand that no prayer be made to any God or any man except Darius himself.

He disobeys the king and he obeys God the king.

So God does not give kings or governments authority to do what they please.

God's people are condemned by God in Scripture when they listen to rulers rather than to him.

So there are times when we must disobey and be ready to suffer gladly any consequences that follow.

So, for example, should our civil authorities compel the use of false pronouns, or participation in euthanasia or abortion, or restrictions on public Christian prayer and worship, or compel ungodly parenting?

Well, we must disobey.

Nor is it wrong to pray for a godly revolution and for the overthrow of tyranny.

Think of the English Civil War and the Puritans.

In great measure, that was a response by lower magistrates, lower rulers, to the false worship and the tyranny of the king.

Think of the American Revolution, a response by lower magistrates to the false worship and the exploitation of the crown.

Now, some big principles.

I'm going to pause there.

Can I suggest, just turn to a neighbour for a minute and discuss for three or four minutes?

Have you got any questions based on what we've just been saying?

And have you got any other questions that you would love us to cover over the next few weeks as we think about politics, government, and nationhood?

So go for it.

Talk to your neighbour for a few moments.

Does anyone have any questions prompted by uh what I've been talking about this morning, these sort of Bible basics on civil government?

Not a question, more observation than one for future weeks.

I was thinking about I think you mentioned the sort of emergence of Christianity more into the public discourse.

And I've been working for a book on the Highway Catholicism.

I've just picked the commandment and using the Lord's name as well.

And I think there are all sorts of ways in which now Christianity across the Lord needs are being thrown around the public path.

Um and yeah, what and it might be tempting to run toward public path.

But do we need to be wary of the way the Lord's name is used, given how precious the name is?

I'm not expecting an answer right now, but maybe we want to think about it.

I just write it down into more of a quite thinking about Christian naturalism.

Doubling that will be our last one or two sessions on what does it mean to be in and have a theology and practice of nationhood.

Right.

So we get lots of moral standards from the Bible, then other perhaps secondary we don't know um environmental standards or other things that aren't, like you say, salvation issue, where we're new Christians, maybe we have a naive, not naive because that sounds pejorative, but as in we don't know as much.

How do we then live that out, I suppose?

Yeah.

That's a great question.

So how do you understand how different bits of scriptural teaching, some of which are obviously more important than others, how firstly do you understand what is the most important?

What do you do with that?

How do you understand and apply quite important things?

And then lesser important again, how do you even work all of that out?

It's really hard, isn't it?

So I think one answer to that is you've got to answer those questions in the company of the church.

So if you if you come to if you come to saving faith in Christ, there are many reasons why you need to be in a church, but one of them is actually it's in the company of God's people, um, through the pastoral ministry of hopefully faithful church elders that you'll begin to you know disentangle all of the complexities of life under the Lordship of Christ through his word.

Because God's word does speak to everything, but obviously it's it's much more important you get certain things sorted out on day one of the Christian life than others, and you'll you'll only work that out faithfully in the company of the church.

Um Matt mentioned the the Heidelberg Catechism.

So what one of the tools that the church historically has used is catechisms.

So we're we're a Presbyterian church, the Westminster standards are part of our, hopefully, over time will become part of our DNA.

So the Westminster shorter and longer catechisms were designed exactly for what you have just designed, you have just described.

Someone becomes a Christian or it's a child growing up in the faith.

Well, let's work through a catechism many times over the course of your Christian life.

And it starts obviously with God, sin, salvation, but then it goes on to talk about other things like right, the Christian life, marriage.

It talks about things like state and your submission to the state and how you relate to ungodly rulers.

So all of life is there, but it's arranged thoughtfully and a particular order.

So there, I guess there are there are tools and churchly tools to help one make uh sense of it all.

Any other questions?

Um again, not a question, but we're more of a reflection.

We were discussing about um being obedient to this day.

And actually, like there's lots of um big ways that we need to be obedient to day, and also there are absolute um very small ways that we need to be obedient to daily life, and absolutely private ways that are really hard.

So one trouble of mine is that I'm very often late for days, and in a 30-mile-an hour zone, I'll probably do 35.

And I'm in the car on my own and nobody else can see, but actually that's our private obedience, isn't it?

So we would just think about that.

It's a great example, yeah.

Not just big obediences but little ones.

Lord sees, doesn't he?

Yeah, go on, James.

How do you not become cynical and express cynical or wrongly cynical views about politics and politicians?

I guess affirm what is good.

You know, you want where there where there is good and where there is conformity with the word of God, even perhaps small or unwitting, I guess you want to affirm that and be thankful for it.

And we do have such a lot to be thankful for compared to most of this globe and most of the people on it, and actually, and just expressing that.

It's very unusual to hear someone go thank God for something the government does, it doesn't come naturally to me.

It really doesn't.

Or your your local council does something good.

It's much more fun to complain about pupholes, isn't it?

So you've got to fight your own nature, don't you, to some extent.

And I guess when you when we do talk about that which is wrong, and we mustn't be mute about it, but I guess do it in godly ways.

You want to be accurate, precise, faithful, you don't want to distort or lie.

Yeah, the Bible says we should pray for kings and people in high places that rule over us.

And if you pray very much for the politicians, it's uh harder to be cynical against those you pray for, isn't it?

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

That's such a good encouragement.

1 Timothy 2, you pray for them.

Mike, I cut you off before.

Talk to us about capital a question about capital punishment.

Does the Bible say we can have is capital punishment allowed under God's authority for certain countries?

Does that mean countries have to have it, not have it?

Those that's the question.

Yeah, okay.

And I guess that does actually come out the passage we were looking at, doesn't it?

So I was unfair and casting you for.

So God's servant wields the sword, Romans 13, and the vast majority of Christians, for the vast majority of Christian history, would have understood that as meaning the right to wage war legitimately and the right to practice capital punishment.

Um that would be understood as a completely normal and appropriate part of the exercise of civil government.

So it's so it is you know biblically absolutely possible to do something which is terrible, but also do it righteously, the death penalty.

Cush, thanks, brother.

Yeah.

In the days of Samuel, the people of Israel wanted a king, and their reason was because all the other nations have got kings.

But God said to them, I am your king, and that is what you've got to follow.

But they chose to have a king instead.

And God said to Samuel, give them their choice, and they had to learn the hard way.

So Kush was just reminding us of you know Israel's desire for a king in the Old Testament, and it was for ungodly reasons, wasn't it?

Yes.

I guess, yeah, we can we can be we might want a different kind of civil government for the wrong kind of reasons.

And a bit like with Israel, maybe God will say, Okay, you can have it, now live with the consequences, judgment, isn't it?

I'm just kind of wondering um where's the line between submitting and disobedience?

I'm thinking, especially along the lines of uh like someone like Hitler or a dictator, like where's the kind of line of like right, you're you're taking it too far.

Yeah.

So so I guess some of those in some senses, that's maybe that's a theoretically easy example.

So here is someone who is absolutely dishonouring God and seeking what is evil.

So we haven't particularly defined yet what is good, but got good is promoting the law of God, promoting piety, justice, and peace.

And if a very powerful person flagrantly does the opposite, well then, yeah, both lower rulers under him and Christian people have an obligation to resist and to concert themselves together, perhaps even in how they do that, and seek people to lead them, seek lower leaders, lower rulers to rule over them in a godly rebellion against tyranny.

Um, I I guess that there are probably there are probably situations somewhere between a benign democracy and Hitler where it's much harder to work out what what you do.

In practice, there are not necessarily easy answers to that.

Last question.

We need to abortion and hard cause, but that's kind of things that the one levels fighting again.

And abortion is happening in our country all the time.

I think if we're allowing it, it would be nothing.

But that's the same thing at the moment.

And when it's actually conditioned, I think abortion's not that bad.

It's not as bad.

It's healthcare, it's all the words that get used.

But the number of souls that are dying is hugely more now than it was in the last year.

We'll think next week about what it means to do good in the fullest sense.

If you've got questions you'd like particularly covered over these weeks, drop drop me a line, uh, send me a message, email, whatever, and we'll try and pick up those questions uh as we go through.

Father in heaven, we have much to thank you for, and we want to bless you for your goodness to us.

We thank you for the uh relative freedoms that we enjoy as Christian people and as the church to lead uh quiet and godly lives and to get about the business of being Christian and being church.

We uh grieve for that in our nation which displeases you, and we've just spoken of such things that are so far away from your uh desire and plan.

Uh we lament them, we grieve them, we sense that in many ways we are uh experiencing your wrath on uh the nation.

We pray for mercy, we pray for leaders uh much better than we deserve, and we pray for our own uh thinking, feeling, responding.

We pray that you would uh educate us in all of those ways.

Know that we are triumphant lacking, we need to make progress.

Thank you that we uh do not uh labour in a fallen and broken world apart from your Holy Spirit or in isolation.

We thank you for one another, we thank you for the church, thank you for most of all our placing the Lord Jesus Christ overall as King of kings and Lord of Lords, and we pray that he be much more honored, uh particularly in our nation than currently he is.

We ask that for Jesus' name's sake.

Amen.