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We have received healing and we want to give glory to God and give him testimony about the wonder of who Jesus is. He's alive and he's real and he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Uh forever, ready to heal and ready to deliver as we expect and as we anticipate. Amen? Amen. So we give praise to God in all things. Now, are we ready to hear the word of God? Amen. Alright, let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 2, and we'll start reading at 13. 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 13. 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. And Lord, we thank you for your word that brings life. It's active in transforming our hearts and our minds. And as we receive your word, Lord, the Bible says that the entrance of your word brings life, it brings light. And we pray right now, O God, that the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ would shine in our hearts and in our minds as it relates to this topic of submission. And we give you praise in all things. Speak to us today, we pray. Amen and amen. We probably have in our midst today former rebel rousers, former people that engaged in rebellion, bucking the system, held and bound by their own selfishness and fleshly desires and wishes. And we have engaged in intentional thought that has been against God's order and God's design. We were rebellious. How many of you were rebellious before you knew Christ? Amen? You didn't want to be told what to do, you didn't want to uh change, you didn't want to submit to anybody. And I gave my life to Christ when I was nine. But don't you know that the sanctifying power of the gospel takes time to get into our thick skulls and thick hearts sometimes, isn't it true? I accepted Christ as at nine, baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues at 12, and at 14, I drove a half an hour without a license from church. Because my sister, who was dating some clown, would take her in the car after service and just drive. And it one Sunday night it was about one o'clock, and I'm sitting in the car waiting and waiting and waiting, and I got school tomorrow. And it was that old um that old uh station wagon that you see in the movie Family Vacation, okay? What a beautiful car. So I said, let me have some fun. I started it up and I took it around the block. My first left-hand turn, I'm driving down the street, three cop cars with their lights on, blocking the street. And I was like, oh Lord, help me. And there was a turn, a left turn I could make before the the uh cops had closed the street. So I went back to the church, and you think that would have been the thing that said, hey, stay, stay put. You got away with it, stay put, but no. I started it up again, and I drove a half an hour home, and for some reason my mom was was up, and I walked in, and when my mom got nervous or concerned, her eyes would stop like blinking like a butterfly. And uh I walked in and uh she said, Where's Connie? And I said, I don't know. And I she said, How did you get home? I drove the car, and all of a sudden her eyes went. And uh sometimes we just don't know why we do things that we do, it's you it's human nature that our heart wanders. The Bible says that our hearts were deceitfully wicked, who could know it? And sometimes, even though we give our hearts to Christ, who could know the heart of man but the Spirit of God that comes within us and shows us who he is? Isn't it true? Now, when I was uh a little bit older, maybe about the same time, my brother was uh youth leader, and uh we were at a convention of sorts, and for some reason we got into it, and I punched my brother in the face, the youth leader, in front of the entire youth group. I gave him a good right. I thought I would put him down, but he kind of just staggered, and uh I punched my youth leader in the face, who was my brother, which added uh several disciplinary actions on top of that. But we are without Christ, we cannot submit to the law of God, we cannot submit to the righteousness of God, we cannot submit to anything because the Bible says that there are none righteous, no not one. Amen. And what God does is he comes in and he shows us what our heart is, and we respond to him in faith, knowing that without him we are lost. Without him, we'll go down, we'll go down roads that will bring us horror and adversity and pain. If God gives us what we want, we understand that our desires are faulty, and we will stray and there'll be pain and there'll be sorrow. So we understand that God touches our hearts and he shows us the way and he shows us who we really are and the fact that you will submit to something. You will submit. And if we don't submit to the Lord and his laws and his ways and the salvation through Jesus Christ, we're gonna submit to our selfish endeavors and the devices of our own heart that are governed and ruled and under the authority of Satan for our lives, and that is a scary, scary place to be. So God is calling us to surrender and submit to the Lord in a new, fresh way. Amen? So what's the most difficult doctrine in the Bible to understand? There's a lot of them. How about the Trinity? Right? How do we understand that there's three gods in one? Three God. One God, three persons in the Trinity. We read it, we understand it. At the baptism of Jesus, the Holy Spirit came down as a dove, the Father spoke from heaven and said, Behold, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased, and Jesus came up from the from the water. This is a difficult, difficult doctrine to understand. There's another, there's other doctrines that we we need the grace of the Lord, the wisdom of God to understand through the word of God. But there's uh the hardest one to live out on a daily basis in our thoughts, our words, our behavior, in our conduct is this doctrine of submission. Amen? This doctrine of submitting. This doctrine that uh causes us to yield to another, our rights and our will and our way. Submission is huge. Now, my brother, I think I punched him in the face because he was horrific to me, let me tell you. I was walking in uh the bedroom one day with one of those long pretzels with the salt on them, and my brother's behind the door with a pillow all wound up, and he swings right in my face, and the the pretzel went right down my throat, and it was bad. It was bad. So, you know what? I was right to punch him in the face. You know what I mean? Yeah. But he would hold me down, and for some reason, maybe you experienced this, but he would say, uh he would say to me, Say uncle, say uncle. I never knew what uncle meant, but when I said uncle, he let me go. Now, this submission we're talking about with Christ is we're so glad that Christ doesn't hold us down. He doesn't force us, he doesn't coerce us, he doesn't manipulate us. We submit to him because we have experienced his love. Amen? And his grace. We don't have to appease him. We don't have to be uh afraid of the fear of punishment, and we don't have to act better in a certain way so that we would receive better rewards from him. He loves us because he is love, and he gave his heart and he gave his life for us, and that's the wonder of who God is. Amen. It is wonderful. So, the problem is our human condition and the propensity, the bent, the tendency of human nature is not to submit, it's not to prefer others above ourselves, it's not to honor another person, it's not to look at the the best in other people, it's not to prefer one another. That is our sinful nature. But now that Christ has come into our hearts and lives, we see who Christ is. The Bible says that he thought it not robbery that he would be stripped of his glory and of his uh splendor in heaven to come down and be in the likeness of man as God to serve us and to minister to us and to love on us, to show us the true nature of submission. He submitted himself. The Bible says that he learned obedience through the things that he suffered. This was the God man, this was Jesus. It kind of blows our mind, doesn't it? James Dobson came up with the fact that there's two types of kids, the compliant kid and the defiant kid. And he said that probably there are half, um more than half that are uh defiant, not as many as are compliant. I don't know what you agree with that, but man, I was the defiant one, let me tell you, when I was a kid. But how many children do we have in in here today? How many children? Are you a child? Amen. We have the choice to be compliant, or we have the choice to be defiant to the things of God and the word of God and the counsel of God. But uh resisting authority and finding it difficult to submit has been our situation since the fall of man. Listen to this verse. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away, we have left God's paths to follow our own, yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all. Without submission, there is no safety, there is no security, there is no protection. And Peter, in this passage of Scripture, is addressing how you and I are observed by the outside world, the kind of accusations that they that they make against us. People, when they look at us, do they see someone that is totally submitted and surrendered to the will and the way and the word of God? Do they see that? Do you stand out as being different? Do you stand out as being a testimony to the glory of God and the good of man? When you live with a close eye of scrutiny on you from others that don't know Christ, there are certain ground rules that we live by. Amen? Every day that we wake up, we should ask ourselves, Lord, am I surrendered to you? Is my life living in honor of who you are? Amen. Is the character and the fruit of the spirit being revealed in my heart and in my life? Love, joy, peace, goodness, faithfulness, long-suffering self-control, all of these fruits of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit that is evident in our heart and in our lives. Here, 1 Peter 2.12 says this keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. The Gentiles are those that don't know Christ, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Amen. We are people of good deeds. We love to say it. We love to do good deeds that creates goodwill in people, so that we have this relationship in which we could share the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. What our goodwill does and our good deeds is it opens folks' hearts to the gospel of Jesus Christ because people need to see that we care, that we love. Inward purity of life that is demonstrated by an outward quality of life will put them to silence if they accuse us of any wrongdoing or accuse us of things that go against the glory and nature of God. The New Testament word for submit is from the Greek word that means under or to arrange under. It was often used in military contexts, denoting how troops were arranged under a leader and an essential condition for military victory. The word submit means also denoting how troops were arranged, but it also speaks of carrying a load. It emphasizes humility, service, orderly, Christ-centered relationships rather than the disordered, broken, chaotic relationships we see in the world without Christ. Amen. When you look at the world and look at relationships, relationships are broken because of sin. The horror of irreconcilable differences and the horror and abuse of those that are without Christ. In the Bible, submission is the voluntary act of yielding one's rights and desires to the authority of God or to another institution or another person that God has set up as authority. It speaks of voluntary cooperation out of love and reverence for Jesus Christ. Amen. The people that walk in this place for the first time need to see a body of believers that are submitted to one another out of reverence for Christ. Amen. That we are people that look to the best interest of others, that we prefer one another, that we love on one another. And that's where the joy comes in, doesn't it? You've heard the acronym Jesus, others, and you. When we focus on other people, we get out of our head. Amen. And we get out of our head and we get into another life of giving them the glory and the wonder of who Jesus Christ is. Submission to God is a just, rational response when we recognize in humble gratitude his supreme authority over all things. Amen? His goodness, his steadfast love, the fact that we were created in the image of God alone establishes authority over our lives. We were created in the image of God. The image of God, because of sin, is tainted, it's stained, right? But we still have this sense that there is a God that loves us, there's a God that knows us. We submit to God and His institutions. He has ordained willingly in faith that He knows what's best for us. God always works through authority. We submit in gratitude, knowing He's rescued us from the kingdom of darkness, into the wonderful kingdom of His light. Amen? The kingdom of his light and positioned us in the kingdom of his Son, the kingdom of love. So we are forgiven, children of God, destined to be with God forever, saved from hell and eternal separation from him. And we thank God for it. We submit to all things, the Bible says, as we read in 1 Peter, for his sake. Amen. We submit in all things for his sake with confidence, knowing that he's planned a unique mission for us, for each of us, before time began. We submit to government institutions because God says this is the will of God. We read it. We read it. Let's read it again. Verse 15. For this is the will of God that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every institution, to emperors as supreme, to governors as sent by him, to punish those who do evil and 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. Peter addresses submission in these verses. You might be thinking, uh, now, how can I be a model citizen in the corruption and chaos and confusion of this political uh political stuff that's going on in this day and age? How can we locally and nationally submit to a government that's lost its way, that's corrupt, that's chaotic and confused. Well, let's look at uh let's look at Peter in the day of Jesus, in the day when he wrote this passage of scripture, uh, when Christ was walking the earth, there was political corruption in the Roman Empire. There were tyrants and there were despots. Amen. No democracy in Rome. The king Caesar made the rules. Caesar was deified by the people. Once a year they would have to offer a pinch of incense, come before a ruling council, and say, Caesar is Lord. And they would then be given a certificate called the Labellus, that they pass the test that Caesar is Lord. After they have made that proclamation, then they can serve their other gods. Now this creates a problem for us as believers, amen. Because Caesar was not Lord, Jesus Christ was Lord, amen. And when Christians came before this council, they told them out straight that no, Caesar is not Lord, Jesus Christ is Lord and King. And there was much persecution that took place. Remember, Herod decreed for all the kids under two were murdered to destroy Jesus. These were leaders that the Bible says we had to submit to the governing authorities. And in uh in Rome, in the Roman Empire, in Rome itself, there were three slaves to one free person. Over the entire Roman Empire, it was half of the population were slaves. But yet God was calling these brothers and sisters that were slaves to submit to the governing authorities and submit to their masters, submit to those that were in charge of them. Then there were taxes, cruel, injustice. Jesus came into this environment and people thought he'd deliver them from the injustice and the oppression and the yoke of Roman oppression, but he didn't do that, did he? He never picketed, he never called for prolonged marches on Rome or Jerusalem in protest of cruel government. He never started an insurrection. He never tried to win any culture war at all. He preached the gospel. It was bad in Peter's day. Two years after the writing of Peter, there was a fire that broke out in Rome, and it was believed by the people that Nero started it. But Nero needed a scapegoat, so he blamed it on the Christians. He loved uh racing chariots, they said, so he built a track and he raced chariots in the daytime. And he loved to do it, so he raced them at night. And how he lit up the course was that he would he would round up Christians that did not did not give their allegiance to Caesar, but gave their allegiance to Jesus. He rounded up Christians, put tar and pitch on them, and burned them alive so that they would they would light up his track as he rode around this uh this this chariot racing. So, do you think we have it bad today? Under the oppression and cruelty that was happening in Peter's day, Peter tells the exiles and the Christians scattered to submit to the governing authorities as if you are submitting to God, because God is the ultimate, the ultimate authority and power. And he lifts up leaders and he tears down and he gives governments. Amen? Submit. Is there ever time to defy and not obey the government? When we submit until submitting to earth. Earthly authority makes you not submit to God's authority and rule and reign in your life. Amen. That's when we disobey. You obey governing authorities until your obedience comes, causes you to disobey God. When that happens, we make our case for Christ. We make our case for God. Amen. Remember the Hebrew midwives? They were to kill all Hebrew boys born, it was a law. Pharaoh thought that the Jews were becoming too much in number, and the midwives refused to do it. They feared God and did not do what Pharaoh commanded, the Bible said. That's uh a beautiful illustration of obeying God rather than man's decrees. Nebuchadnezzar built a huge image to have the population bowed down. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were the only three that were standing of the thousands that bowed their knee to a 90-foot image of King Nebuchadnezzar. And they said, We will not serve you, we will serve our God. And we know that he can deliver us, but even if he does not, we will serve the one true God. Amen. Wow. Darius, king of Midian Persia, told the people for 30 days, you will worship and pray to me and no other deity. And what did Daniel do? Opened his picture window so everybody could say, see? Bowed his uh bowed his knees and prayed three times a day, proclaiming the wonder and the amazement of who the one true God is. That was a case of obeying God rather than man's decrees. The Sanhedrin made a religious law to not preach the gospel, not speak the name of Jesus. Peter and John refused to do it, didn't they? And they said to the Sanhedrin, listen, fellas, I don't know about you, but we need to obey God rather than man. And we're going to be confronted with decisions to obey God or defy God and obey man. So it's coming down the pike. The world is uh in in a strange chaos and confusion. And there's some great things that are happening. There are people that are coming to Christ. There's a movement of righteousness in in America, but there's also this movement of destruction. And depending on who gets into our government halls in November, it could be a totally different story, isn't it true? We must be willing to obey God rather than man. It's the will of God. Very few places in the Bible it says this is the will of God, isn't it true? But they says here that this is the will of God to be a good citizen, to do good works, to show our neighbors that we are submitting to the government out of honor and tribute to our Lord. A good Christian should be a good citizen. A good neighbor. A good Christian citizen has a good conscience, isn't it true? How many have gotten a speeding ticket in the last uh couple of months? I got my license and in two weeks I had my first ticket. There was a nice stretch of stretch of road, and I said, Yeah. I didn't even make it up to 70. And the lights went on, and God said, Come on, boy, what are you doing? But we obey the laws of the land so that we can be a good testimony to our neighbors. Isn't it true? We can be good citizens. There was a man that wrote a letter to the IRS, a letter to the Internal Revenue Service, and the uh the IRS that uh stated, he wrote, Dear sirs, I cannot sleep. Last year, when I filed my income tax return, I deliberately misrepresented my income. Now I can't sleep, and closed is a check for$150. And if I still can't sleep, I'll send the rest. Amen. That is not having a good conscience. And here's the thing, friends. When the when the Holy Spirit comes in, our conscience, tainted and stained by sin, becomes alive to the things of God. Amen? And we're doing when we're doing something that dishonors God, when we're doing something that is against the word of God, the alarm bells of our conscience start ringing. Listen to the alarm bells, amen. And flee the wrath to come and do what is right. If there's anything that you have against a brother or sister in this place, what does the Bible say? You go to that person and you make things right. Amen? Listen, the devil hates unity. The devil hates reconciliation. The Bible says that it is uh an awesome and wonderful thing, precious thing that brothers and sisters dwell in unity. It's like the anointing oil that flows down Aaron's beard. When we have unity, friends, when we're sticking up for each other, when we're submitting to one another, out of out of reverence for Jesus Christ, there's this awesome sense of unity and victory. Amen. The devil cannot destroy a unified church. He loves to destroy from inside. Amen? From within. If you got something against somebody, go to them today, make it right. Grab a sub, go see them, make things right, amen. Before God today. If you're doing something that you know is uh wrong and evil, and the Lord is pricking your conscience on a daily basis, stop it immediately. Amen? And make it right before God. Submit and surrender to God. When we when we doubt God and we try to go on off on our own way to have our own selfish desires, that's a form of rebellion against God. And what does the Bible say? Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. It brings a stubbornness, it brings an obstinacy in our hearts and lives. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Because when we rebel against God, we give our we give our will and our way over to satanic influences, and those satanic influences influence us and impact us in areas that we do not want. Why would I punch my brother in the face? Because I was rebellious against God. Right? Friends, this is a this is a call to purity. It's a call to being sanctified before God. It's a call to set things right before God. And make it right. And say, God, I want to be everything that you called me to be. Whatever sin I have in my heart, I surrender and I fall on my knees. I don't use my own willpower. I don't use my own strength. I don't, I don't uh get up and say I'm gonna get up by the shoestrings of my bootstraps. No. What we do is we fall on our knees and we say, God, I need your mercy and I need your grace. Amen? This is how we operate in the wonder of who God is by his grace. As you receive Christ Jesus as Lord, what do you do? You'll walk in that same grace that you've received. Our salvation is based on receiving, on receiving, on receiving, on receiving. Amen? Allowing the Holy Spirit to minister to us and to fill us up in a wonderful and fresh way. We are submitted to one another, and that is awesome. It's the principle of submission. The purpose of submission is the upward purpose. We do it to honor God because God has called us to do it. Remember when your parents said, Listen, boy, I want you to do this, this, this, and this. Why? Why do I have to do that? And didn't your parents say, because I just told you, right? And of all your queries and inquiries and questions about God, it comes down to this. Because the just, true, perfect God says so. That's why we do it. Amen? Because we can trust him. We can trust him as we surrender ourselves to the Lord. There is this the wonder of the upward purpose. We do it to honor God. We live our life honorably in a hostile world by living our lives for Christ. There was a preacher that says, pray this prayer. I don't want any, I don't want anything between my soul and my savior. Amen. When there's things between you and the savior, it brings pain and adversity, and it brings this uh this selfishness and self-centeredness. If you have something between your soul and the savior today, get rid of it. Amen? Crucify it, kill it, put it away, and let the power of the Holy Spirit lead us and guide us. Then there's the outward purpose of submission. We don't have to like our government or our ruling authorities. How many love the Joe Biden uh no, don't raise your hand. How many love the Donald Trump government? Friends, it doesn't matter which government is in. The Bible says that we need to submit to our governing authorities as we submit to God. And here's the here's the clue for some of you young people. When you look at your parents like dumbbells and you say, I don't want to listen to them, you are saying to God, God, I am not listening to you. I don't want you in my life, I don't want to have anything to do with you. Because your authority given by God is set up for you. And when you say, God, I want to obey my parents because I know when I obey my parents, I'm obeying you. Amen. And this is uh this is a wonderful revelation of the wonder and the power of submission. Peter wraps up the thoughts on submission with these verses. 1 Peter 3, 8 and 9. We know there's submission to our government. Then he goes on to say there's uh submission to our our employer or our workplace. And then there's submission in the home with a wife and a husband submitting to their roles of living righteously in the home. And in Ephesians, it speaks about children respecting and honoring their parents and submitting to their parents, right? Listen, finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. Amen. Is there a time to defy and not obey the government? Yes. When your obedience to the government causes you disobedience to the law in the way and the will of God. Amen. We will rebel. Submit until submitting to earthly authority makes you not submit to God's authority, rule and reign. And here's the friends. Here it is, friends. Our life and times are in his hands. Doesn't matter what government rises up, we are not sub submersive, uh subversive anarchists, are we? We are people that respond to the government because we know that God has set up every institution. And that word institution has the sense of any creation that God has ordained. We submit and we say, Yes, God, I submit to your will and I submit to your way. I hope today that we look at the government in a different different light. That every government and every leader is established by God. We might not like it, we might hate it, we might have thoughts about taxes, we might have thoughts about something else, but we submit to the governing authorities and we submit to paying our taxes because we are submitting ourselves to the hand of God and He's got us. Amen. He's got us. Let's bow for a word of prayer. Lord, we thank you so much for your grace and mercy. We thank you, Lord, for the wonder of who you are. We've submitted before to our own selfishness and self-centeredness. We've submitted ourselves to the work of Satan through the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. But Lord, we're so grateful that your Holy Spirit has ministered the word of truth to us, and you have given us this great experience of being born again into the things of God. And now, Lord, I pray that every person that is in Christ here today will make a new, fresh surrender of submission and surrender to your will and to your way. That Lord, we'd not be bound with malice or slander, we'd not be bound with envy or jealousy, we'd not be bound with strife or factions, but our lives would be led in submission to one another because we submit ourselves to you today as Lord and King of every area of our life. And we can trust you, Lord. It doesn't matter if persecution comes, we're in your hands. It doesn't matter if we have to defy our government and disobey our government, we know that we are in your hands. And we know, Lord, that whatever you have called us to, you will equip us with the grace to see us through. Lord, we do pray for our government. We pray for Donald Trump right now, that you'd bless him, God. There was an attempt on his life and on the cabinet last night. And we pray for protection, we pray for provision. Lord, it says in your word that we pray for the welfare of our city because when the when our city is prosperous, we prosper. Amen. We pray for lack of water, God, that you'd bless it. That you give them wisdom and insight on how to govern us in a righteous manner, in a right way, Lord. And now we surrender to you. And we give you all the praise and all the adoration. We thank you, Lord, that you are the way maker. And we give you thanks in Jesus' name.

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Amen.