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Submit...So God Can Be Heard


Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority,  or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. (I Peter 2:13-15)


          Are you like me? My immediate response to this is, "Yes, but..." and my excuse is usually some form of "What about when they are wrong?" I'm descended from rebels and revolutionaries. Aren't we all? What about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and Daniel, and Esther and Mordecai, and Jesus and the Apostles? And Martin Luther King, Jr.? We have a long track record of exceptions to this rule. The  thing I like to forget as I'm making my list of favorite rebels (real and imagined) is that these that I've just listed weren't exactly victorious, at least not at first glance. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were arrested, confessed and thrown into an oven. Daniel was arrested and thrown in a lion's den. Esther risked her life. Mordecai's rebellion resulted in a law being passed to exterminate all the Jews. Jesus died on the cross. The Apostles were beaten, arrested, tortured and eventually killed. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested and spent time in jail. None of these people overthrew their governments. They all faced the consequences of their actions. Their civil disobedience doesn't give us the right to thumb our noses at the government - much as I'd like to sometimes.
        God doesn't tell us that we're to obey as long as we approve, or as long as it's convenient. More importantly, He does not promise us that when it is proper for us to say "NO" to the government that we will emerge unscathed or that we'll win. Read the second half of Hebrews 11. Not everyone in the Hall of Faith shut the mouths of lions  or overcame enemy armies.  Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, or the Apostles, our attitude must be that we are disobeying man in order to obey God, and will suffer any consequences from which God does not save us.
       Civil disobedience must be the exception, not the rule. We must obey 99.999% of the time in order for that one act of civil disobedience to make the proper statement, because if we respond to every rule that way, we're anarchists, not citizens protesting an injustice. God's message won't be heard if it's diluted by 10,000 acts of petty rebellion.

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