Sermon Tone Analysis

Members Experience

“If you are going to be a police officer, you have to carry a gun.

If you carry a gun, you must be willing to point it at someone.

If you point a gun at someone, you must be willing to fire it at them.

You have to be willing to take their life if necessary.

I couldn’t live with myself if I ever had to do that.”

It is not just a personal decision for a police officer.

It is a matter of protocol.

If you are the only officer in a particular part of a district and the bad guy takes you down, you have potentially endangered the lives of community members if the bad guy goes on to commit another homicide.

Submitting to Governments

rom

The purpose of submitting to governments and powers is that a way will found where men

1 tim 2

Just because God sent Cyrus to punish Belshazzar’s Babylon, doesn’t mean that He commissioned His people to be Cyrus’ soldiers.

Just because we should submit to the king or the governor as the Lord’s servant, does not mean we should be one of those.

Our calling is not to be the king, the governor, or his defence or police force.

God has given us our mission, and we should be about the Lord’s business, which He gave us to do.

The moment when governments require us to transgress his law is when we need to unite with the apostle Peter in saying, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”

Christ’s Example

Matthew

The kingdom of God comes not with outward show.

The gospel of the grace of God, with its spirit of self-abnegation, can never be in harmony with the spirit of the world.

The two principles are antagonistic.

“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 1 Corinthians 2:14.

But today in the religious world there are multitudes who, as they believe, are working for the establishment of the kingdom of Christ as an earthly and temporal dominion.

They desire to make our Lord the ruler of the kingdoms of this world, the ruler in its courts and camps, its legislative halls, its palaces and market places.

They expect Him to rule through legal enactments, enforced by human authority.

Since Christ is not now here in person, they themselves will undertake to act in His stead, to execute the laws of His kingdom.

The establishment of such a kingdom is what the Jews desired in the days of Christ.

They would have received Jesus, had He been willing to establish a temporal dominion, to enforce what they regarded as the laws of God, and to make them the expositors of His will and the agents of His authority.

But He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

John 18:36.

He would not accept the earthly throne.

The government under which Jesus lived was corrupt and oppressive; on every hand were crying abuses,—extortion, intolerance, and grinding cruelty.

Yet the Saviour attempted no civil reforms.

He attacked no national abuses, nor condemned the national enemies.

He did not interfere with the authority or administration of those in power.

He who was our example kept aloof from earthly governments.

Not because He was indifferent to the woes of men, but because the remedy did not lie in merely human and external measures.

To be efficient, the cure must reach men individually, and must regenerate the heart.

Not by the decisions of courts or councils or legislative assemblies, not by the patronage of worldly great men, is the kingdom of Christ established, but by the implanting of Christ’s nature in humanity through the work of the Holy Spirit.

“As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:12, 13.

Here is the only power that p 510 can work the uplifting of mankind.

And the human agency for the accomplishment of this work is the teaching and practicing of the word of God.

When the apostle Paul began his ministry in Corinth, that populous, wealthy, and wicked city, polluted by the nameless vices of heathenism, he said, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” 1 Corinthians 2:2.

Writing afterward to some of those who had been corrupted by the foulest sins, he could say, “But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”

“I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 6:11; 1:4.

Now, as in Christ’s day, the work of God’s kingdom lies not with those who are clamoring for recognition and support by earthly rulers and human laws, but with those who are declaring to the people in His name those spiritual truths that will work in the receivers the experience of Paul: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

Galatians 2:20.

Then they will labor as did Paul for the benefit of men.

He said, “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” 2 Corinthians 5:20.

Ambassadors for Christ

Ambassador means:

an official envoy especially: a diplomatic agent of the highest rank accredited to a foreign government or sovereign as the resident representative of his or her own government or sovereign or appointed for a special and often temporary diplomatic assignment

We are also called ambassadors for Christ.

An ambassador lives in a foreign country, on behalf of the nation that sends him.

They have their home there and must live their lives among the people of that country.

However, they do not participate in certain things in the host country – including politics and military service.

That is how I see the Christian in this world – respecting the laws of a nation, but not getting entangled with things which we should not, and maintaining supreme allegiance to God rather than man.

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