Romans 13:1-7 Matthew 22:15-22

A man by the name of David Meyer wrote these words recently in a magazine. “America was once known as a nation of goodness. From the days of the American Revolution to the mid-Twentieth Century, people around the world saw America as a city on a hill  a shining light in a world of darkness, a place where righteousness reigned. Our country was and still is based on Judeo-Christian principles. There was a different level of respect among Americans back then. People had a firmer sense of right and wrong. But today, Americans have fallen so far morally that they now call evil 'good' and good now 'evil'. Why did this happen? How did our nation get to this point?”

As you know, we have been discussing the answer to that the last three weeks. As I see it, the answer is&we are idolaters. Our nation has become guilty of the sin of idolatry. We defined idolatry as a sin of the heart where the heart and mind focuses on other things besides God, places other things as more worthy of our attention, perhaps obsessed with other things rather than having the divine obsession and focusing on God. Because of that, our country is no longer what it needs to be.

Today, we want to address the fact that some people expect our government to replace God. Some people expect our government to be the solution to every problem. It isn't going to happen. This is an age-old difficulty with people. If we go back as far as we can go, we notice that the Pharaoh's of Egypt were deified. They were made into gods and thought of themselves that way. What ego trips! They would build enormous pyramids and Sphinx in their own honor and require a worshiping audience. Rome did the same thing with the Caesars and the other emperors of Rome. They deified themselves, expected worship and honor, and punished those persons who wouldn't bow down before them. So there seems to be an innate desire in humans to deify people. I realized how old I was the other day when I counted all the presidents of the United States that I've lived through. Whew! I've had twelve different presidents in my lifetime. Some of them I thought were extremely good and some of them I didn't think did a very good job at all. But none of the twelve of them was worthy of worship. So I would like to urge all of you to keep things in perspective. We as Christians are not citizens of this world. You and I are citizens of God's kingdom. We are citizens of Heaven. Yes, we need to be concerned and care about the problems of this world but we should not deify leaders. We should realize that leaders are, after all, only human and there is only so much that they can accomplish. We will never find that government solves all of our problems and we can't expect it to solve all of our problems. It is simply not going to happen.

Biblical scholars reflecting on the passage in Romans (Romans 13:1-2) we read this morning indicate that leaders of countries are God-appointed. We in the United States may elect them but according to Paul, they would not be elected if they didn't serve God's purposes in some way. So how should we react to leaders that come from God's providence? Are they sometimes a punishment for our sins? Are they sometimes a reward for our good behavior? Leaders can take on all those traits. It gives me pause as I think about the awesome responsibility that they must have. One Biblical commentator wrote about how we should react to the government summarizing Biblical principles. He writes, “As believers, we have the weighty responsibility of living out the Christian faith with consistency and integrity. Our allegiance and submission to the Lord should motivate us to be exemplary citizens. We should never garner a reputation for trouble-making or for demeaning those who are in authority. Though we are to boldly denounce unrighteousness and immorality, we must also give honor and respect to those whom God has placed over us. This Biblical pattern applies to every Christian living at any time and any place. We are actually called to submit to those in authority.”

The history of America has been the history of rebellious people starting with the American Revolution until now. We don't take authority easily in our country yet the Biblical instruction is that we should value authority. So what should we do? The first thing that we should do is focus on the things above. We are to focus on our job as Christians in this world which is to save souls. We need to be out there not working for the improvement of governments so much as we are working to gather people in to the house of God and getting people to worship Him, adore Him and love Him. We lead others to a personal relationship with God and that is more clearly the responsibility of Christians than anything else.

When I was doing my doctorial studies, I was required to study liberation theology. Most of the writers of liberation theology were commentators on the Gospels and the hard sayings of Jesus. By and large, they came from Latin America so the writings were in Spanish. Fortunately, they were translated into English or I wouldn't have known a word that they said! But the gist of it was that we Christians need to be rebellious people when we find things that we don't like going on with our government. The actual Biblical instruction however is that if we don't think things are going well with the government, our first duty is to pray before we ever protest. So I want to encourage all of you this morning to pray for our leaders whether it is the city councilmen on up to the president of the Untied States. Let's pray for these people that they govern with wisdom. Let's pray for these people that they surround themselves with good advisors. Let's pray for these people that they respond to the will of the people as leaders of a democratic republic should do. Let us pray for all the leaders that we may have.

I came across a book that was fascinating to me as I read it during this last election. The name of it was A Time to Fight by one of our senators, Jim Webb. It is a fascinating book. Jim Webb is an ex-marine and a senator from Virginia. In this book, he told a story of one of the colonials who gave a speech after his basic training. The gist of the speech was that if you desire to take a leadership position, then you must take the consequences of your decision-making. Every decision that you make you will have to live with for the rest of your life. He talked about one of the most horrifying decisions he had to make as a marine during the Vietnam War. They came across a village where the Vietcong were hiding in tunnels. Villagers were cooperating with the Vietcong to attack and kill American soldiers. They came across one of the tunnels. They heard voices inside. They just knew it was the Vietcong so he instructed his men to throw a hand grenade down the tunnel. After the explosion, they looked into the tunnel and there they found a grandfather with his body huddled around a five year-old boy. The grandfather was dead. The five year-old was severely injured but still living. He instructed his men to bring the boy out of the tunnel and he immediately called for a Med-Vac helicopter to come take the boy to a place where he could receive medical attention. The helicopter authorities said, “No, we are not coming. We only come to save American soldiers. We won't come to save Vietnamese.” So he said he spent the whole night watching this boy that he had laid beside himself and the boy watched him until his very life ebbed out of him and he died. He said that more than anything, this has haunted and bothered him. He said that he can't go to sleep at night without sometimes still seeing the boy's eyes looking at him pleading for help and him not being able to give it. He said that he took the leadership position. He was a lieutenant. He had commanded that the hand grenade be thrown in the tunnel and he had to take the consequences of his actions. Everyone who desires a leadership position has to take the consequences of their actions - from the president of the United States down to the president of Pilgrim Church. Each and every one of us will make decisions when we aspire to leadership positions. Sometimes these decisions will have dire consequences. Sometimes, these decisions will only have mild consequences. Rarely are our decisions made in our churches of life and death quality but all leaders need prayer. All leaders need wisdom. None of them have it innately. None of them have it just because of their position. None of them need to ever be deified. Leaders are just humans. Sometimes they get in their head that they are more than that and that is a problem, a problem with their egos. Sometimes they get into their head that they are less than what they are and that is also a problem. So we need to be prayerful people praying that the leaders that we elect and the leaders that are appointed and the leaders that we have are persons who first and foremost focus on God, secondly seek God's wisdom, and thirdly, lead knowing that they will have to live with the consequence of their decisions the rest of their lives. It is an awesome responsibility.

I want to urge all of you to encourage our young people to consider taking leadership positions. Many of you have done that in the context of the church and some of you in the context of businesses or in the context of local government and that is a good thing. We need to raise up people, raise up children, who are willing to take on responsibility knowing that they will always need the wisdom of God to fulfill that duty. But it is a noble thing to seek positions of leadership and we of course encourage all of you to step up and be leaders of the church or leaders in your businesses because as Paul says, you are ambassadors of Christ in the world. So if you take leadership positions and you represent Christ well, you will bring people to Him and you will bring glory to God.

These are hard lessons to learn. They are hard facts. But we never need to deify any human being. We are aware that they can only create the possible. Human beings cannot create the impossible. We need to remember these truths as we look to others to be our leaders or when we take leadership positions ourselves. So this morning, more than anything else, I want to encourage you to pray. Prayer for leadership is more important than protests. Yes, there are times when protests are important. But first and foremost is prayer.