1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,333 Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ 2 00:00:05,333 --> 00:00:08,700 to which we can say, Amen. 3 00:00:08,700 --> 00:00:10,933 Today I feel a little bit like Justinian. 4 00:00:10,933 --> 00:00:19,466 I'm not on the bulletin, but we have to have a homily so there it is. 5 00:00:19,466 --> 00:00:25,100 Justinian did not have much territory and he decided to reconquer the whole Mediterranean 6 00:00:25,100 --> 00:00:27,300 region for Christ. 7 00:00:27,300 --> 00:00:33,966 I don't know if that makes him wonderful, but he did some other great things too like 8 00:00:33,966 --> 00:00:39,033 promoting Christianity, which is great. 9 00:00:39,033 --> 00:00:41,166 Our text is from the lesson just read. 10 00:00:41,166 --> 00:00:46,666 Therefore it is necessary to submit to the authorities not only because of possible punishment 11 00:00:46,666 --> 00:00:49,866 but also as a matter of conscience. 12 00:00:49,866 --> 00:00:55,566 This is the word of the Lord. 13 00:00:55,566 --> 00:01:02,733 Dear friends in Christ Jesus, did you notice at the beginning of this message I offered 14 00:01:02,733 --> 00:01:04,300 you something? 15 00:01:04,300 --> 00:01:10,433 Grace, mercy and peace to you from God and from Jesus. 16 00:01:10,433 --> 00:01:13,833 That is an important part of our theme for today. 17 00:01:13,833 --> 00:01:20,666 Without the grace, mercy and peace, without God's mighty works of salvation, where would 18 00:01:20,666 --> 00:01:25,133 we be as his people? 19 00:01:25,133 --> 00:01:29,033 What would our lives be like? 20 00:01:29,033 --> 00:01:32,966 It is of course Jesus Christ who has died for us and given us his life that we might 21 00:01:32,966 --> 00:01:39,833 be his own and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness. 22 00:01:39,833 --> 00:01:44,666 And in our catechism we can say this is most certainly true. 23 00:01:44,666 --> 00:01:57,966 This is the gospel of salvation for you and me that we need to hear and love and receive. 24 00:01:57,966 --> 00:02:08,866 There is not a hint of this good news, this gospel in our current text. 25 00:02:08,866 --> 00:02:17,366 Here we are dealing with Christian maturity, with things that are said to people who need 26 00:02:17,366 --> 00:02:20,000 to hear them. 27 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:30,533 With a positive response, possible only as a Christian, to the good advice St. Paul gives. 28 00:02:30,533 --> 00:02:39,700 To the law he gives us, which is also God's word. 29 00:02:39,700 --> 00:02:47,533 Submit to the authorities and you will live in this world. 30 00:02:47,533 --> 00:02:53,733 Not only because they can punish you but also because you don't want a guilty conscience 31 00:02:53,733 --> 00:02:57,100 about it. 32 00:02:57,100 --> 00:03:03,333 Now I'm going to make some observations and some of you might not like them and that's 33 00:03:03,333 --> 00:03:11,266 okay because I might not like some of your observations. 34 00:03:11,266 --> 00:03:14,033 I drive around St. Louis a lot. 35 00:03:14,033 --> 00:03:18,233 How many of you drive around St. Louis? 36 00:03:18,233 --> 00:03:27,733 Have you observed the scrupulous way in which all citizens obey every traffic law? 37 00:03:27,733 --> 00:03:32,500 I have noticed it's a lot like the Pirates of the Caribbean scene where he says, they're 38 00:03:32,500 --> 00:03:37,566 more like guidelines. 39 00:03:37,566 --> 00:03:47,766 Stop sign means slow down slightly. 40 00:03:47,766 --> 00:03:52,500 When I'm downtown taking care of St. Paul's Lutheran, which I do on Sundays, the other 41 00:03:52,500 --> 00:03:59,766 St. Paul's, the tiny one, I'm down there and about every third Sunday I have someone run 42 00:03:59,766 --> 00:04:03,100 a red light at full speed. 43 00:04:03,100 --> 00:04:08,300 That doesn't happen out here in suburbia because they'll catch you and get you. 44 00:04:08,300 --> 00:04:10,833 Yesterday I was on the freeway driving 60. 45 00:04:10,833 --> 00:04:11,833 Amazing. 46 00:04:11,833 --> 00:04:13,500 Some people still do that. 47 00:04:13,500 --> 00:04:18,766 I had a car pass me at least 90 miles an hour. 48 00:04:18,766 --> 00:04:21,300 Amazingly dangerous, amazingly fast. 49 00:04:21,300 --> 00:04:25,166 I wonder, we consider ourselves a Christian nation, a Christian community. 50 00:04:25,166 --> 00:04:33,266 It seems like even in a small thing like obeying Caesar on traffic regulations, we can't do 51 00:04:33,266 --> 00:04:35,000 it. 52 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:36,900 We won't do it. 53 00:04:36,900 --> 00:04:40,966 One day I was at lunch at the art museum. 54 00:04:40,966 --> 00:04:41,966 My wife and I had gone. 55 00:04:41,966 --> 00:04:43,366 We decided to have lunch at the restaurant. 56 00:04:43,366 --> 00:04:45,933 There's a stop sign outside and I was waiting for my wife. 57 00:04:45,933 --> 00:04:49,166 She was using the restroom. 58 00:04:49,166 --> 00:04:53,233 And I counted 42 cars in a row that did not stop. 59 00:04:53,233 --> 00:04:59,566 42 in a row for the stop sign on that road. 60 00:04:59,566 --> 00:05:07,300 Our governments should be just overloaded with money from all the tickets. 61 00:05:07,300 --> 00:05:10,866 But you see, we act as though it doesn't matter. 62 00:05:10,866 --> 00:05:14,100 Traffic regulations are probably a small thing. 63 00:05:14,100 --> 00:05:17,366 But how many people cheat on their taxes? 64 00:05:17,366 --> 00:05:20,366 How many people lie in court? 65 00:05:20,366 --> 00:05:24,533 How many people lie in life? 66 00:05:24,533 --> 00:05:30,266 It doesn't seem to matter what we do, what the authorities tell us. 67 00:05:30,266 --> 00:05:37,200 It doesn't seem to matter what God says about disobeying. 68 00:05:37,200 --> 00:05:41,433 And we can think of, of course, much more egregious examples of this. 69 00:05:41,433 --> 00:05:47,300 But I leave those to your imagination. 70 00:05:47,300 --> 00:05:51,700 Submit to the authorities and you will live in this world. 71 00:05:51,700 --> 00:05:55,433 Not only because they can punish you, but also because you don't want a guilty conscience 72 00:05:55,433 --> 00:05:56,433 about it. 73 00:05:56,433 --> 00:06:02,233 In addition, we have the advice of Martin Luther, who ties submission to the authorities 74 00:06:02,233 --> 00:06:05,666 to the fourth commandment. 75 00:06:05,666 --> 00:06:14,700 And if we call ourselves Lutherans, we might at least want to heed that. 76 00:06:14,700 --> 00:06:17,733 And who were the authorities in Paul's day? 77 00:06:17,733 --> 00:06:23,766 Oh man, you'd think it was some popular Christian emperor like Justinian. 78 00:06:23,766 --> 00:06:25,666 It would be okay. 79 00:06:25,666 --> 00:06:27,166 But guess who it was? 80 00:06:27,166 --> 00:06:31,033 It was the Emperor Nero. 81 00:06:31,033 --> 00:06:34,466 He said, submit to the authorities. 82 00:06:34,466 --> 00:06:38,466 And it was Nero. 83 00:06:38,466 --> 00:06:44,366 Nero known for lighting up Christians for his garden parties, known for brutally killing 84 00:06:44,366 --> 00:06:52,766 his enemies, known for setting fire to Rome and blaming the Christians. 85 00:06:52,766 --> 00:06:56,200 That Nero. 86 00:06:56,200 --> 00:07:00,566 And Paul says he is God's man and holds his authority. 87 00:07:00,566 --> 00:07:05,666 Boy, that's something. 88 00:07:05,666 --> 00:07:08,733 If the Romans were Americans, it would be different. 89 00:07:08,733 --> 00:07:13,733 But they were Romans. 90 00:07:13,733 --> 00:07:17,666 And there was also Justinian about 500 year, year 500. 91 00:07:17,666 --> 00:07:22,333 He restored the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean region. 92 00:07:22,333 --> 00:07:26,500 He defended the faith and orthodoxy. 93 00:07:26,500 --> 00:07:29,866 And his rise to power was fairly brief. 94 00:07:29,866 --> 00:07:32,133 He married an actress. 95 00:07:32,133 --> 00:07:35,766 I guess you might want to think about him like marrying someone like Taylor Swift or 96 00:07:35,766 --> 00:07:37,433 something. 97 00:07:37,433 --> 00:07:43,233 He married somebody who could organize things and get things going and have things be well 98 00:07:43,233 --> 00:07:44,233 done. 99 00:07:44,233 --> 00:07:47,700 So he could go out and conquer all the time and domestic things were taken care of by 100 00:07:47,700 --> 00:07:55,766 his wife, Theodora, who we could also honor today. 101 00:07:55,766 --> 00:08:01,800 And he helped indirectly spread the gospel. 102 00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:03,833 But what about our current situation? 103 00:08:03,833 --> 00:08:08,866 In our system, we have a say in who the authorities are and we don't necessarily have to like 104 00:08:08,866 --> 00:08:12,933 them or support them with our votes. 105 00:08:12,933 --> 00:08:19,133 But know this, dear Christian friends, I said with our votes. 106 00:08:19,133 --> 00:08:23,733 Once the authorities have been established and properly placed into office, they are 107 00:08:23,733 --> 00:08:33,133 to be submitted to, prayed for, hoped for, whether we like them or not. 108 00:08:33,133 --> 00:08:35,333 They are now our governing authorities. 109 00:08:35,333 --> 00:08:42,000 This goes whether we are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, something else. 110 00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:50,366 If we lose, we're in a system where we have authorities that are made by God. 111 00:08:50,366 --> 00:08:57,966 We should take our lumps and respect them and honor them as though they are from Christ 112 00:08:57,966 --> 00:09:00,500 himself. 113 00:09:00,500 --> 00:09:04,333 Once the people have spoken, the votes have been tallied, the results declared, the people 114 00:09:04,333 --> 00:09:09,333 placed into office, they are in fact our authorities for their terms of office. 115 00:09:09,333 --> 00:09:15,766 And God expects us to honor and respect them as though they were placed there by God himself. 116 00:09:15,766 --> 00:09:21,166 Now there may also be a place for civil resistance, but such protests must be carried out in a 117 00:09:21,166 --> 00:09:27,900 way that respects both the free speech we enjoy and the free speech of others. 118 00:09:27,900 --> 00:09:33,633 Civic free speech is not necessarily a right from God himself, but he has given us this 119 00:09:33,633 --> 00:09:40,133 right under our constitution and therefore we enjoy it for now. 120 00:09:40,133 --> 00:09:49,433 The protests must be carried out in an honorable and peaceful manner with mutual respect, not 121 00:09:49,433 --> 00:09:55,900 with rancor and rioting and shouting down dissent. 122 00:09:55,900 --> 00:10:00,866 You may say, Dr. Dost, what a strange sermon, what a strange message. 123 00:10:00,866 --> 00:10:06,033 And yet we know that because Jesus Christ is our Lord and Paul is the apostle of our 124 00:10:06,033 --> 00:10:12,666 Lord Jesus Christ, that we are enjoying to submit to God's properly constituted authorities 125 00:10:12,666 --> 00:10:19,966 with genuineness and respect and to not do so is sin. 126 00:10:19,966 --> 00:10:24,266 And former authorities, once they are out of office, need to submit to the current ones 127 00:10:24,266 --> 00:10:25,966 as well. 128 00:10:25,966 --> 00:10:32,166 This was the lesson we learned from our first president, George Washington, who willingly 129 00:10:32,166 --> 00:10:39,266 turned over office to his successor, John Adams, and had the opportunity to become king, 130 00:10:39,266 --> 00:10:42,733 but did not. 131 00:10:42,733 --> 00:10:49,233 This respect for authorities is God's command and we begin so we end in the same place. 132 00:10:49,233 --> 00:10:56,300 It is a way that brought us substantial blessings through 200 plus years of God's own grace, 133 00:10:56,300 --> 00:11:05,500 mercy and peace for us and our ancestors in this world and in this faith. 134 00:11:05,500 --> 00:11:09,066 Now none of this saves us. 135 00:11:09,066 --> 00:11:14,033 Only Jesus Christ does that and only through his work of atonement are we saved. 136 00:11:14,033 --> 00:11:19,833 We are not saved by the good things we do, but it is what saved people are called to 137 00:11:19,833 --> 00:11:21,600 do. 138 00:11:21,600 --> 00:11:33,733 We are called to respect, to honor, to show nobility, to exemplify the best, to be good 139 00:11:33,733 --> 00:11:38,900 citizens and to submit to the authorities properly constituted by God, whether we think 140 00:11:38,900 --> 00:11:43,666 them good and righteous or terrible like Nero. 141 00:11:43,666 --> 00:11:52,666 And so there was not a lot of gospel here except the gospel I injected here and there. 142 00:11:52,666 --> 00:11:57,833 But the gospel in the normal sense is not really what our text is about. 143 00:11:57,833 --> 00:12:03,133 So remember your loving Lord and what he submitted to in order to save us. 144 00:12:03,133 --> 00:12:10,933 He submitted to the authorities, was condemned by the authorities, was brought to death by 145 00:12:10,933 --> 00:12:20,066 the authorities and laid down his life and rose again from the dead for you and me. 146 00:12:20,066 --> 00:12:27,266 And you will see that submission to the authorities, however unjust, is also part of God's story 147 00:12:27,266 --> 00:12:28,900 of our salvation. 148 00:12:28,900 --> 00:12:33,766 In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 149 00:12:33,766 --> 00:12:35,633 Amen. 150 00:12:35,633 --> 00:12:40,900 Now may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. 151 00:12:40,900 --> 00:12:41,933 Amen.