Sunday 06 • 23 • 19

We're looking at the book of First Peter over the summer. If you will turn with your worship guide or follow on the screen behind me as we read God's word aloud.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 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. For this is the will of God, that by doing good, you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But when you do good and suffer for it, you endure. This is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the wearing of gold and pearls and expensive clothes—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. — 1 Peter 2:11-3:7

Let's pray together. Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. Amen.

The Muscle of Submission

I remember the first time I went snow skiing. I haven't done it much since because I have a terrible sense of balance and it's not good for me, but here's what I noticed after skiing. The next morning, I was sore in places I did not know I had muscles. You might have had that experience before, waking up and thinking, "Ow," and you didn't even know there were muscles there.

Peter is urging us in this passage to use a muscle that you may not know you even have—probably one you don't use much. And it's encapsulated in this word: be subject, or submit. Three times in this passage we see this word repeated. Verse 13: "be subject to every human institution." Verse 18: "servants, be subject to your masters with all respect." And Chapter 3, verse 1: "likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands."

Here's the big principle: Christians are to submit to earthly institutions as to God, for the sake of unbelievers.

Now, I know exactly how that sounds to modern ears. This is incredibly unpopular, and I can almost give a guarantee this morning that there's probably no other church in Raleigh that's talking about submitting today. This just doesn't play well with us. Who wants to be subject? Who's excited about submitting? Nobody wants this. We love our freedom. We love to do what we want to do. This passage is probably the hardest out of the book of First Peter in our context.

You know, just a little inside preacher tip: there are two kinds of passages that are hard to preach. The ones where you really don't know what it's saying, and the ones where you really do know what it's saying, and you wish it didn't. This is one of those.

But see, being subject, submitting ourselves—this is a major piece of furniture in Christian discipleship. This is a big deal.

This is a big deal. It's an essential piece because being a Christian means that I submit my life to God. I subject myself to him. He is in charge of my life. I had a friend who said recently that there is an unholy trinity at work in the United States right now: autonomy, self sufficiency, and self focus.

Here's the unholy trinity. Autonomy says, "I have the right to do what I want to do when I want to do it." Self sufficiency says, "I have everything I need in myself. I don't need anybody to depend on or submit to anyone." Self focus says, "I am the center of my world. It's right to live for myself and to do only what brings me happiness." That's the unholy trinity.

By contrast, the Christian trinity says: submit your life to God. Come and die. Come and make Jesus your king. Make him in charge of your life. I belong to him. I'm not my own anymore.

Submitting is a muscle you may not know you have, and when you use it, it feels sore—because we don't use it. Christians really alone exercise this muscle, and it's a muscle that we need according to Peter to develop.

Now, this is by no means some kind of random statement of Peter, like he missed his coffee one morning and wrote most of chapter two and chapter three sounding really grumpy. No, no, no. This word—this phrase about being subject, submitting—is used 38 times in the New Testament. This is a major theme of Christian discipleship. There is a first submitting that we are all called to do, and without doing that first submitting, you'll never make sense of this passage, which is about a secondary submitting.

The first submitting is what we just saw that young man do this morning: "I am Jesus's and he is mine, and I'm going to follow him and live for him." That's the first submitting that all of us do. To be a Christian is to submit yourself. All of us are called to do that. The second submitting flows from that, and it only makes sense if you've done the first one.

The second submitting is this: you submit yourself to human institutions because you love Jesus. You're honoring him. You're submitting for his sake.

This whole passage is under the banner of verse 12:

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles—meaning here in context, unbelievers—honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visitation.

Living in the Fishbowl

Here's the radical concept that Peter's holding out for us. Welcome to the fishbowl. Have you ever heard the phrase "living in a fishbowl"? You know what that means? Just like the fish that you bring home from the pet store—a little glass bowl with a beta fish, a goldfish on the counter—everybody can see what's happening in the fishbowl. The fishbowl is transparent to everyone all the way around.

This is what Peter's holding out for us. Your identity as a Christian means that you are a sojourner, an exile, a stranger in the land you were born in. As such, you are called to live fishbowl lives so that people can look in from every angle and say, "That is what your God is like. I look at you and I know what your God is like."

This is common in the Bible. We see Jesus doing this. Jesus submitted himself to living in a home with two sinful parents who didn't always understand what he was there to do and what he was about. Jesus called his disciples and taught them, "Don't imitate the way of life of those Pharisees, but submit yourself to their teaching." I mean, that's crazy. Jesus who was critiquing them, yet says: life in the fishbowl, submit yourself.

Addressing the Objections

If you were listening at all to this passage as we read it aloud today, I know that your inner lawyer started shouting objections. "Your honor, objection."

Everybody has an inner child, right? I think that everybody also has an inner lawyer. He's always shouting objections. This starts when you're a little kid on the playground. Everybody knows this phrase in every game: "That's not fair, right?" That's your inner lawyer. As an adult, that comes out in pointing out hypocrisy everywhere you see it, inconsistencies and injustices.

Your inner lawyer probably started shouting objections as we read this passage. Because this passage has been abused and misused. Let's be honest. So verses 13 through 17, your inner lawyer starts shouting about abusive government. Really? What about Corrie ten Boom? What about Martin Luther King Jr.? What about Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Those who opposed evil governments.

And then in verses 18 to 25, about slavery. Why isn't Peter saying slavery is wrong in every situation?

Why isn't this being expressed? And then verses one through seven about oppression of women. What about women in abusive situations? Did anybody's inner lawyer go off? No, just me. Just me this morning. Okay, everybody else, alright.

So y'all gonna sit tight and I'm just gonna talk right now to your inner lawyer. So y'all just wait while I do this part.

Addressing Concerns About Submission

First, verses 13 through 17. Look, there are limits to all forms of subjection. There are limits. Peter doesn't call us to blind obedience. He doesn't call us to stupidity. Of course, there are instances when it is right to peacefully oppose the state, right? Civil disobedience. Peter himself did not sacrifice to the emperor. Martin Luther King Jr. and his letters from a Birmingham jail explained how the civil rights movement in this country worked hard to obey the laws where they could, but peaceably demonstrated and resisted when God's law was in conflict with civil laws. There are limits to these things, and so don't discount this passage just because of the way it's been abused.

Second, verses 18 through 25. I know about slavery. This passage was used in this country to justify slavery. It was. It was abused to do so. But first century slavery was not the chattel slavery of the American South. It was indentured servanthood, a type of servanthood to allow people to pay off financial debts. Of course, it was not a great system, and I wish, just like many people do, that Peter right here was like, "Time out. Slavery is always wrong in every context." And yet the Bible's work in this, and the way the Bible teaches on this doesn't do that, because if Peter had done that, the message of salvation would have been obscured. Instead, the Bible plants seeds that later flower and bloom into the undoing of lots of evil in society.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female—you are all one in Jesus Christ. — Galatians 3:28

Scripture's filled with all kinds of admonitions about the kind treatment of servants, hospitality to foreigners. And so while this passage has been ripped out of context and abused, and I would agree with anybody who says so, can we not dismiss this passage out of hand just because of that? And listen to what it has to say.

Finally, oppression of women. I know that 1 Peter 3 has also been used to make women stay in marriages that were abusive, where someone is physically or emotionally abusing them. And again, there are limits—wise limits—and we'll come to those in a moment. Love and forgiveness do not require you to stay in a situation where you allow someone to heap up sin by continuing to hurt you. So don't discount the passage because of this.

But let's be honest, okay? While you have an inner lawyer, most of us are not facing any of those situations. What really irks us about a passage like this is we hate authority figures. Can I just say it? I don't like authority figures. I don't like someone who can tell me what to do, and I have a problem with authority in general, and probably you do too. So can we tell the inner lawyer to be quiet for a little bit for the rest of the sermon? And we're going to unpack these passages and listen to what Peter's actually saying.

Three Playing Fields of Submission

He calls us to apply submission on three playing fields. This submission to God for the sake of unbelievers in three playing fields, and we're going to look at them together: the government, your workplace, and marriage. Let's look at these together.

The governing authorities, verses 13 through 17. Peter calls for us to exercise submission to the government, and it's a very comprehensive statement. Do you see what he said there? "To every human institution." I mean, that's pretty broad. You could say, "Well, Peter, how serious are you about this? How far do you want us to go?" And his first example is to the emperor, and listen to his language. I mean, this is bold. "As supreme," and then in verse 17, "honor the emperor." Honor. I mean, listen to how deep that is. He could have just said, "Hey, begrudgingly pay your taxes, and in the quiet of your own home, you could tear the emperor apart." He says, "Honor the emperor."

Now, we may look at this and be like, "Peter is so naive. I mean, he can't imagine the kind of world that we live in with the kind of leadership that we have at the city, state, national level. How could he imagine?" And yet be careful if you do that, because scholars look back at this and they say one of the best scholars says the emperor—when it says "honor the emperor"—the name there would be Nero. Nero was so evil a leader that I almost have to use bad words to describe him. He kicked one of his pregnant wives to death. Brutal person.

For entertainment, entertaining friends, he would cover Christians in pitch, have them hung up in his garden, and light them on fire so at nighttime, you could still see the beautiful gardens. So we can't say, Peter, you're being so naive. This is a level of evil in leadership that I don't think we can really imagine. And that Peter says honor anyway. Now, why in the world would we do that?

It's a great picture of this in the Old Testament. David, one of the most famous kings of Israel before he was crowned king, had already been anointed king. So he knew, I'm about to become king. And yet there are two instances where before he's crowned and he's just waiting around, he has an opportunity to take out the king at the time. The king at the time, Saul, was a guy who was tall and handsome, and that's about all he had going on. Not a person of character, not a person worthy of following, not a great religious leader in the country, really a pretty terrible king.

Two times, David has an opportunity to take him out. One time, David and his men are hiding back in the very back of this cave and King Saul comes in to relieve himself, to take care of some business. David's men are like cha ching. Saul has been handed to us in a vulnerable position and David doesn't let them touch him. Doesn't let them hurt him and why? He says, because he is the Lord's anointed.

Second situation, King Saul and all his armies are asleep. And in this deep, deep sleep, the scripture tells us the word put them in. David and one of his men crawl into camp, and they come up to where Saul is laying on his cot. And the man with Saul says, Saul, let me grab his spear and I can pin him with it to the dirt. It'll only take one hit. And David says, don't do it. He is the Lord's anointed.

That's a powerful phrase. And that powerful phrase points us to ask this question: Do we look at our governing leadership and say they are the Lord's anointed? Now they may not be great. They may be like King Saul, not a whole lot going on. But we look at them and say, wait, I believe God is sovereignly in control of all things. That's why I pray. Ain't that right people? Ain't that why we pray? God is sovereignly in control of all things. That's what fuels our prayers. He decrees whatsoever comes to pass.

So if I believe that and I apply that to the governing authorities, I look out and then I'm like, that's the Lord's anointed? I mean, that's where our theology hits, the rubber hits the road. Do we really believe that God is wise and in control of all things? Do we really believe that?

I mean, do you think by any stretch that Peter condoned Nero killing his wife? I mean, there is no—condoning and honoring are not the same thing, right? It's not applause. You're not called to condone everything that the governor does or the institutions of our city or national government. But submitting to the leaders of our government is wide-ranging and let me start with the most mundane examples and then go to the highest one.

Submission in Practice

So this is stop signs, people. This is just stop signs. It's red lights. Can I confess coming out of my neighborhood, there's this light that I have to stop at and on Sundays, whatever that doohickey you engineers know about that tells the red light when a car is there, it's turned off on Sundays. And so regularly, I get stuck in this line. I'm like, I'm about to go preach about submitting to authority. Should I run the light? Right?

Like, this is paying taxes. This is blood alcohol levels when you drive. And this is a totally nonpartisan statement when I make it. I would preach this sermon the same way four years ago or twelve years ago. This is the president. This is honoring Donald Trump.

So last month, there's a church in Suburban DC, McLean Bible Church, and the pastor there, David Platt, had just gotten through his sermon. They're transitioning. They've got a transition song. They're about to go to communion, and he gets a message from somebody. Hey, guess what? Donald Trump is on the way to church. This church, right now. Be here in ten minutes.

And Platt has a like, what do I do? And he knows his Bible.

First Timothy 2 tells us you're supposed to pray for those who are leaders over you.

And so you could find it on the internet. He stands up that morning. Donald Trump standing in front of the congregation. He's got his hand on him. He's holding the Bible and he prays for our president.

Now, what's that—it was a surprising thing for that pastor, that congregation. Here's what was no surprise: the amount of flack he got, pastor David Platt got inside his church and outside his church for obeying God's word and honoring the president in that place. He wasn't saying, hey, vote for him. Wasn't saying this is the greatest guy. But what was he doing? He was honoring our president.

To be subject for the Lord's sake is to honor and submit to our president as unto the Lord. It is not naive or stupid. It doesn't mean you have to vote. It doesn't mean you can't have your opinions, but we honor our leaders because we honor God. We're saying to Jesus, "We obey our earthly institutions and authorities as unto Jesus, who is our King." And we do so in this particular weird cultural moment where everybody thinks it's their best idea to get on social media and shout all the ways that they're mad. If we do this, people, we're going to be weird in a good way.

In Your Work

Look at verses 18 to 25. Peter calls servants to submit to their masters. He calls the good ones gentle. The bad ones, he calls unjust. But let me say this: slavery in the United States was chattel slavery. It was owning another person. It's different from what's being described here. This is indentured servitude. This is debtors slavery. This is entering into an institution to pay off your debts.

Let me make a connection to this. About a fourth of the population of the Roman Empire in this day were debt slaves and had chosen to go into this institution to get rid of debt. Let's say we took all the Americans who carried balances on their credit cards month to month. How big of a percentage of our population would be in this institution? A huge number. Now, it doesn't mean it was a good institution. He talked about being beaten here, but this passage isn't talking about tearing down the institution of slavery. It's talking about how do you relate to a person who's over you, who's oppressive? And the best connection I think for you this morning is your boss.

I wasn't prepared for this. Maybe you weren't prepared for this. Nobody—somebody should have told me—sometime in your life, you're going to have a terrible boss. I think everybody has a terrible boss story, right? Someone who is just a jerk supervisor, a tyrant who loves to rule his or her—I'll be gender inclusive—little kingdom with an iron fist, whose joy is making your life miserable. A bad boss can cause so much frustration and stress in your life. Taking credit for your work. Favoritism in the workplace. That kind of email that comes out of nowhere where you're like, "What? What did I do?" Yelling, being your best friend one moment, your worst enemy the next. A bad boss can ruin your life.

But a bad boss can do something else. A bad boss can also show you your heart. Think about this with me. You come home in a foul mood. You slam the door, you throw your stuff down. You're like, "I hate Mondays." That shows something about who you are. You begin having fantasies about the boss getting run over by a bus. Maybe it's just me. Or fantasies about you being the boss, and you get to send the bad emails. You get to do the yelling. Having a bad boss, it can show you what you're really like on the inside, can't it? You're like, "That person is such a jerk. They're so hateful to me. I just hate them. Oops." Because it shows us like, that's what I'm like. I hate them. They're hateful. See, what do you see? Your own heart.

That's a natural response to the bad boss. And yet, look what Peter calls us to in submitting ourselves. It's not just a lack of hating your boss. It's not a lack of fantasizing about his or her untimely death. Something more. Something far higher. Look at verse 19:

For it is a gracious thing when mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. — 1 Peter 2:19

In the original Greek, that is not an adjective. It's not "a gracious thing." It is grace when you do this. It is a grace when you do this.

Let me do Sunday school with you. You know that if you're a Christian, you get two things from God: you get mercy and you get grace. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. You deserve punishment for your sins. Jesus takes the punishment for you. So you get mercy. And then you also get grace. He gives you something that you don't deserve: eternal life with him, the Holy Spirit, adoption into his family, unending piles of his love and affection for you. The gospel gives us both mercy and grace.

So let's apply that to your bad boss. Your bad boss gets grace. Gets a good response that's not earned. That's not merited in any way. It's not just a lack of retaliation or complaining or talking behind his or her back. It's returning something completely unjustified to that person: kindness, a civil response, even-handedness. And if you do that, what happens if you return grace for hatefulness? People notice. Now, nobody in your company is going to go, "Yay! You are so awesome."

Because what do people love to do at lunchtime? Complain. And you're not going to join in with that? People love to do that. But let me tell you, you may not get applause for that. You may not get praised for that, but people will notice. People will notice because why? It's life in the fishbowl.

Keep your conduct among the unbelievers honorable. So that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. — 1 Peter 2:12

That's what can come from a submissive heart. That's a loud testimony without words.

Marriage and Submission

Last area: in marriage. This is the third field that Peter calls us to play ball on and likewise, practice submission in marriage. Now, notice here the word that introduces both these sections. Chapter three verse one, chapter three verse seven. Likewise. Well, likewise to what? Likewise to submitting to the governing authorities, likewise to servants submitting to their masters in order to win them over to faith. Likewise, husbands and wives.

So what's in view here, again, is keeping your conduct before the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. It's about life in the fishbowl. It's not about marriage in general. This is about a believing wife submitting herself to an unbelieving husband, a believing husband submitting himself in his day for the sake of his unbelieving wife. This isn't just about any marriage. There are other passages, Ephesians five, that do talk about submission in marriage. I covered those back in our gender series earlier this year. This is about a spiritually mixed marriage.

Again, let me restate. Peter is not saying every woman who's in an abusive marriage, stay in it. If you are in a marriage where someone is abusing you or hurting you, don't just continue taking that. You are allowing that person to become entrenched in patterns of abuse and learning to become a seasoned sinner in that area. If you're in a marriage or situation like that, please come talk to me, one of our elders, one of the commissioned women of our church. We would love to help you find a way out of that. So again, this is not an abusive marriage. It's about a spiritually mixed marriage, about a woman who's a believer trying to win her unbelieving husband to Jesus.

And this explains why Peter talks about adornment. Did you notice that in here? Jewelry, gold, braided hair. It's a bizarre statement in here because the Bible is not anti-jewelry. It's not anti-adornment. It's not anti-braided hair. In fact, we see lots of places in the Bible where women do wear jewelry or adorn braided hair. We're not going to have a collection after our service for all the jewelry from here. Okay? So you're good.

What is he saying? Let's put our thinking caps on. What is he talking about? Well, picture the situation. You have a believing wife. She's going to go out to church. If she's getting dolled up, she's getting all her makeup on and jewelry, she's wearing that dress. Right? The husband thinks, where is she going? She's going fishing. But if instead she doesn't put on the makeup and the jewelry, she wears the old college sweatshirt, what's the husband say? She's going to church. No, she's not going fishing. She's going to church, and she's not going fishing for a man. She's honoring my marriage.

And see, this is why he says this: that the believing wife may win her unbelieving husband by her conduct. In the same way, he addresses a believing husband to an unbelieving wife in this bizarre countercultural way. Again, says the word likewise. It's the same pattern. There's a believer in the marriage and an unbeliever.

I know you have probably struggled, your inner warrior, with the phrase here "weaker sex" to refer to the wife. What does that mean? Well, let's take this in the context of the Bible. It can't mean that there's nothing in scripture that means that women are mentally weaker or spiritually weaker than men. Nothing says that. In fact, commentators agree that "weaker sex" here refers to two things: physical strength and also social capital. In the Roman Empire at this time, a man could own property, a woman couldn't. A man was allowed to do whatever he wanted to his wife at home. And he's saying, act in a countercultural way. Submit yourself to countercultural standards, living in an understanding way with her.

As he says here, not exercising power as was common for husbands in the Roman Empire but showing kindness, giving honor to the wife, a person who was a weaker vessel in the Roman Empire, not using your physical strength or your social capital to put her in her place to the end that she might be heirs with you of the grace of life. See, Peter is calling us to submission in marriages in a spiritually mixed marriage with someone who doesn't love Jesus. Staying in, blessing that person, honoring, promoting the unbelieving spouse as unto the Lord.

Now, in every case, governmental authorities, bad boss at work, in marriage, this is about letting go of power, yielding power. Now, that is something for the most part that we don't want to do and we don't know how to do. We may not even see that we have power or privilege but what I see this most necessary to talk about is actually in a predominantly white church like CTK. See, people of color in this country have had to navigate power dynamics at every level in every area of life for years. They see power all over the place. It's only white people who don't really see power and in a majority white church like CTK, it's important for us to think about what does it mean to ask questions about our power, to submit our power as unto God for the sake of unbelievers. To do so by being willing to ask, is there something that I need to submit myself to out of love for Jesus for someone else, for their good, for the sake of the gospel. This may be the greatest playing field in our context where we need to address this.

And this is going to be tested in our church. This will be tested in our congregation. Because we've said over the next twenty years, we want to plant 10 churches, half of them with non-white leadership. And in this country, it is a very rare thing for white people to submit to leadership, submit to a person of color in leadership. And yet we've said we want to do that over and over again. This is going to be tested in our context for the sake as unto Jesus for the sake of the lost. Will we do it? Will we do it?

Imitating Jesus

Now, here's the power for submission and fuel for submission. Verses 21 to 25, imitating Jesus. Now, I know some of you are already just sick of this sermon. I don't want to hear anymore about subjecting myself. I'm sure you're exhausted. Nothing grates against us like having our rights trampled or being misunderstood, not being vindicated, being unseen. Who wants to exercise the subjection muscle after church today? Nobody. Nobody wants to do this but here's how Peter can hold this up to us.

See, the Bible never gives us a call for obedience in an area of our lives without giving resources for it and here it points us to Jesus. Jesus—it talks about his footsteps. So following his footsteps, Jesus who was maligned. Jesus who did not retaliate. Jesus who bore our sins. Jesus by whose wounds you've been healed. Jesus who subjected himself even to death, death on a cross for our sakes. Right?

Subjection, submission feels weak. On the last night of His life, we see two examples of this. We see the disciples and we see Jesus. So at the Garden of Gethsemane, here's the disciples who think they're really strong but end up being really weak. They make promises, "I'll never abandon you, Jesus," and they ghost Him. They follow from a distance. When Jesus is arrested, they scatter, they fall asleep while they're supposed to be praying. All kinds of weakness when they thought they were strong.

And then here's Jesus. Jesus who when the guards show up to arrest him, offers himself. Jesus who says, "Not my will, Father, but yours" and he submits himself to the father, then to the guards, then to the beatings, then to the nails. Like incredible strength.

Submission is not for those who look strong but those who really are strong because they've done the first submission. They've submitted themselves to Jesus. To follow Jesus in subjection is not to take one for the team, to become a human mat to wipe somebody wipe their feet on, not to become a human punching bag, but to trace the steps of our savior. To trace the steps of our savior and submit for his sake so that through our discipleship, other people might look in the fishbowl and say, "That's what God is like. That's what God is like."

Now, I don't know what you think of me this morning especially if you're new here. You're like, "We got a crazy liberal up here at CTK." So I'm going to close the sermon by quoting from Cal Thomas. Cal Thomas, conservative commentator. You know, and actually he's listed that way, always in the newspapers. Conservative commentator, Cal Thomas. This is what he wrote in the nineteen nineties:

Christians have a responsibility to slow down the spoilage of this world, to be salt in the words of Jesus, but they cannot do this through the arm of the state. Moral power, not political power, is the superior force. — Cal Thomas

If Christians will begin living what they claim to believe, loving their enemies, praying for those who persecute them, becoming a friend to sinners, a new kind of power would be unleashed in this land. It would be a power that no one could stop. It might produce something called revival which would create the social conditions Christians now say they want but cannot achieve by themselves.

May God be glorified and may many come to know him through the way we show off Jesus. In his name, we pray. Amen.