Sermon Tone Analysis

Twisted

A Tangle at the Top

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

September 7~/9, 2007

 

“When I fight authority, authority always wins…” That’s true, but it has been a while sense I’ve heard that song.

Most of us have to learn that the hard way, so today we are talking about authority.

We are right in the middle of our /Twisted/ series, where we are looking at different ways our thinking gets twisted that God desires to twist back around to truth, to reality.

When it comes to authority, especially submitting to authority, we in this culture are twisted.

None of us mind authority when we are the authority, when we are the boss or the parent, but authority is not so great when we are not the one in it.

Really what we are talking about today is submitting to authority, and that is a tough concept.

As human beings, we naturally recoil at the idea of it.

Who are you to boss me around?

We don’t like bossy people, and submitting to anyone can be hard.

As Americans, that is even more true than in other cultures.

We are, after all, a country born from rebellion.

I saw proof of that a few years ago on a flight to the Philippines.

It was on an Asian airline, and I was one of the few non-Asians on this particular flight.

This was a long flight, and when morning came, they woke everyone up for morning exercise.

I couldn’t believe what happened next, because this video came on the screens and everyone was expected to do all these little exercises—actually a great idea, but it was wild because everyone on the airplane except the few gringos like me were doing it very obediently.

I felt like I was on another planet.

The gringos were looking around in utter disbelief, and the rest of the flight was falling in step with the instructions, all of them in unison, doing what they were asked.

Culturally, even when something is good we resist it if someone else is trying to make us do it.

It is very American to see ourselves as our own boss, as the one to determine what we will do and won’t do and nobody is going to tell us what to do.

It is not that most of are anarchists or out and out rebels, like those old motorcycle movies with James Dean, but we selectively obey.

We stay in control.

We selectively obey what makes sense to us and reject what does not, especially when the consequences are non-existent or minimal.

We all do this.

Let’s start small with some examples then get bigger.

Speed limit.

Anyone selectively obey speed limits?

Of course!

40 miles an hour on this road, should be 50!

60 mph on I-75, are you kidding?

Maybe in the right lane, the slow lane, but it should be 80 in the fast lane.

Why have a left lane if you can’t go 80? Or at work, there are always these little dumb policies floating around the workplace, and why should I worry about complying with all of those?

They are so arbitrary and outdated.

No good company worries about that stuff any more.

The IRS? Ridiculous…everyone knows that should be a deduction.

Teenagers, your parents sometimes seem like such bozos don’t they with some of their rules.

Who else has an 11:00 curfew on weekends?

Who does that?

Or let’s get a little more serious and talk about underage drinking.

Why do you have to wait until 21 to drink?

Makes no sense!

I can serve in the military but can’t drink a beer.

Forget it!

And driving while a little buzzed…is that really that big of a deal?

Or as Christians, we know what the Bible says about lust, but does a little porn here and there really hurt anyone?

We are selective obeyers, thinking this: If we disagree, we are free to disregard—especially if the consequences are slight or non-existent or we won’t get caught anyway.

We are the ones who get to decide what we do, and if we disagree, if something is stupid or arbitrary, then we are free to disregard.

As you might guess, the Bible has a very different twist on this authority thing, than if we disagree we are free to disregard.

God has a very different view of authority, and what we will see today is that how you and I deal with the issue has huge consequences in our lives and toward our impact as Christians in this world.

This whole issue of submission and authority is a deeply spiritual issue that affects God’s way of dealing with us.

The Bible twists this one back around so far that today is probably going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people in this room.

You are free to disagree, but think twice before you disregard what God is going to say in his Word today…because it has huge implications for your life.

Obedience to God in this authority area of life opens up our lives to increased blessing, peace, freedom, and maturity—all good things.

Here is the Bible twist in a few verses, and then we are going to look at a biblical example of a guy who got it right to twist us back around.

The verses are in

 

Slide: ______________) Romans 13:1-5

 

and there the Bible says, /“Everyone must submit to governing authorities.

For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.

So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished.

For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong.

Would you like to live without fear of the authorities?

Do what is right, and they will honor you.

The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good.

But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you.

They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong.

So you must submit to them, not only to avoid punishment, but also to keep a clear conscience.”

/There is a lot in these verses, and I’m going to talk about the Romans passage by illustrating with an Old Testament example, the way Daniel handled a really tough submission challenge thousands of years ago.

He did it well, and God honored him greatly for it.

If you have your Bibles, you can turn back to the book of Daniel.

Daniel is a great example to look at because he had a big authority challenge.

You have probably had some yourself, in may have right now, a bad boss or a mis-guided parent or a governmental leader you don’t like.

As bad as you think you have it, Daniel had one up on you.

His boss and leader was about as bad as it gets.

His name was Nebuchadnezzar, who was the King of Babylon that wiped out Daniel’s home country and brought Daniel and his friends to Babylon to train them to be good Babylonians.

Nebuchadnezzar was a tyrant.

He never read all that stuff about servant-leadership or how to get the most out of your organization.

He was an egotistical, evil, ruthless ruler who made Idi Amin look like Mother Theresa.

He was an ungodly, bad guy, who wanted to turn Daniel from a Hebrew to a Babylonian.

Let’s read

 

Slide: ______________) Daniel 1:3-7

 

/Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility--young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace.

He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians.

The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table.

They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king's service.

Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.

The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego./

So, Daniel has a big challenge, following a boss and leader who is not a good one and who wants to change his whole way of life.

Neb’s goal was to take these bright young men from Judah and indoctrinate them in the way of the Babylonians.

So, he changes their names from names having to do with God to Babylonian names, all of which honored Babylonian gods.

He is placed in a training program to learn things that he has no interest in learning himself in order to do a job he doesn’t want to do.

Everything in his life is expected to change, and for Daniel it had to be difficult to submit to it.

Like it would with any of us, submitting to a leader like Neb to learn things he didn’t want to learn to be able to do a job he didn’t want to do was a struggle…but he did it, which brings me to my first point to twist us back around in our struggles with authority:

Slide: ______________) *Submit, because God has placed the leader over you.*

Why was Daniel able to handle this tough situation and submit?

Because he understood a very important biblical concept that we tend to lose, that God works through human authority, and he is the one who is sovereign and places leaders over us.

What did

Slide: ______________) Romans 13:1