Romans Chapter 13 Verses 3 – 5

• Paul writing this under the authority and rule of Caesar Nero.  Us reading this under the authority and rule of a similar level of corruption and dysfunction…sounds crazy, doesn’t it?  But remember the foundation laid for us thus far in this letter to the Romans.
• “Paul, a bondservant, a slave, under the authority of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God.”  Romans 1:1.  “And not only that but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope and that hope does not leave us ashamed, it does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”  Romans 5:3-5.  “All things work together for the good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”  Romans 8:28.  “I’m begging you, therefore brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”  Romans 12:1.
• And here we find ourselves in Romans 13:3 with a mystery.  “Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil.  Do you want to be unafraid, do what is good.”  Paul is trying to get through to his contemporaries, those that are so very angry and stirred up and frustrated with Roman rule, specifically the rule of the psycho Nero…”wait I though he said words like terror and unafraid?”  Understand what he wrote in the original language.  A language that reaches so much further into our understanding than English…Paul uses the word for dread here…
• He says, “do you want to be unashamed, unswayed and unshaken…free of dread…do good.”  What is good?  Feed the hungry?  Clothe the naked?  House the homeless?  Help little old ladies across busy streets?  Well all that is certainly good superficially, on the surface, but just as we learned last Sunday, every sacrificial act, every good work, everything that we consider to be helpful will end up on the eternal trash heap of insignificance if not fueled, powered and carried out simply in response, worship and love for Jesus Christ!
• What?  Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, separated, sanctified and called for the purposes of good works…please…a Roomba can do good works…called and set apart for the gospel man…the singular, only, all alone, sole good work from which all other good works originate from…tribulation produce hope and hope is powering because of what…the love poured into us continually by the Holy Spirit who was given to us…by whom?  Jesus Himself according to John 14!  Having confidence that everything that happens to us as we pursue hard after Christ is working together for His glory man…I thought it said working all things work together for good for us?  Oh, ok.  Let me ask (axe) you something...do you believe that there is any other greater good than to bring glory and honor upon the name of Jesus Christ?
• If you consider an answer of yes…go back to Romans 1:1, in fact, please return to John 3:16 and understand that without Jesus, take Jesus out of the equation and you do not simply return to dust, you and I are absolutely, unequivocally, unquestionably, hopeless.  Lost.  Cut off eternally because of our sin and condemned.  The theologically correct and practically correct answer is this…good works apart from eternal perspective, for the purpose of delivering Jesus Christ to the lost, fueled by love, wisdom and righteousness…are indeed, not good at all. 
• So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was good to the eyes and good to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.  (Genesis 3:6)  Oldest trick in the book.  Dress up sin in logical, rational, superficial and temporal clothing…and start calling it good….but Jesus said, “what good is it if a man gains the whole world, yet loses his soul?”
• Interesting.  Talk like this on the street.  Define right.  Teach of truth, absolute truth…and what is the common answer…”don’t judge me man…”  But that’s not what you mean.  What you mean is “don’t offend me.”  “Don’t tell me something that is difficult for me to face.”  Because if I judge you HOT, well that’s all good isn’t it?  So really it has nothing to do with judgment…but everything to do with offending your flesh…
• Paul reveals a mystery to us here.  One that is only perceived if one considers Romans 13 in light of Romans 1 – 12…that if we are eternally minded, filled with the Spirit of God, after His glory and exaltation rather than our own, then it doesn’t matter who is ruling us earthly, we have our King.  And when the temporary rule maker makes a rule we hate, we respond goodly…and therefore maintain a position of surrender and worship not to Caesar but to Christ and it is as Paul says here, clean, clear, capable and compelling conscience time man…and we fire on all cylinders for the Lord, even in times of tribulation, trouble and tyrants…because the salt is salty and the light is bright!

Romans 13 Verse 6

• Paul is really laying it on thick here.  Putting us and putting his contemporaries to the test because tax payers were the most hated of the bunch!  They didn’t receive a salary from the Roman Government for collecting taxes you see and so they made their money by extorting the people.  The tax is 10, they’d tax the person 11 so that they would make a profit and some of the worst tax collectors would tax 20, 30, 50 pieces of money when the Roman requirement upon that tax collector was to deliver 10 pieces of money per person…
• But Paul says, even that kind of personal, particular, overt offense…does not bring dread upon one who is not subject to them or to anyone else, other than the Most High God. 
• Tax collectors are God’s ministers?  My horrible neighbor is God’s minister?  My ex is God’s minister?  My mother-in-law / father-in-law is God’s minister?  Let me ask you this…can your decision as to how to react to that person bring glory and honor to Jesus Christ?  Can it grow you in strength, maturity and power in the Holy Spirit?  Yes?  Then yes indeed…God’s minister.  Try looking at it that way.  Try changing your lens man by which you be hatin’…and see that God is not glorified in your wrath man…in your rational, logical complaint after complaint…He is honored, well pleased and glorified in your love and application of wisdom…and ultimately a world is reached for good, in a sustaining way only if you’ll switch your glasses man…
• And check out the revelation of the pattern here by Paul…

Romans Chapter 13 Verse 7

• Taxes are due to whom?   Caesar, right?  Customs are due to whom?  The government, right?  Fear is due to whom?  God alone, right?   Not fear as in He’s gonna get you but fear as in recognize the awesomeness man…Matthew 10:28, Jesus said do not render fear to one who is able to kill the body but render fear, recognize the sacrifice man…fear the One who is able to destroy both the soul and body in hell…let what you do be rooted in this very fact, that God rescued you man…and therefore, render honor to whom honor is due…so in light of that…who are we to honor?  Eeeeeeeryone man!  The bad ruler, the tax collector, the ex, the neighbor and in so doing and throughout all that doing and the undercurrent of all that doing…honor the King.  Man that’s the reason…
• Peter said it well.  1 Peter 2:17.  Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the King.

Romans Chapter 13 Verse 8

• Now check this out.  This is cool.  The law given in the Old Testament was in the negative as sin reigned.  Then Jesus came and took sin away, man.  Didn’t just cover it up like the imperfect and insufficient sacrifices of the Old Testament…He wiped it out.  And so the law didn’t change…God did not change from the Old Testament to the New…the law is simply fulfilled in Jesus and so what we see is the law given in the negative in the Old Testament yet in the New Testament it is turned to the positive…check it out.

Romans Chapter 13 Verse 9

• Catch that?  “You shall not, you shall not, you shall not…” be on guard, be on the defense against sin…then Jesus comes on the scene, love came down, Emmanuel, “God with us,” He gave Himself as the perfect and sufficient sacrifice for all sin ever and then, after defeating sin and death, He sent to us the Holy Spirit, to dwell within any person who would accept Him as their Lord and Savior and thus, no more defense…no more retreat!  Now…engage man…go on the offense!  Overcome man…more than a conqueror, move mountains…live, man!
• And amazingly, the power-up…is love.  Love is the weapon of righteousness.  Love.  Now all of the “you shall not’s” transformed by the power of the cross to “you shall!”  Love man…it is the fulfillment of the law…why?

Romans Chapter 13 Verse 10

• If I simply love, I naturally won’t do these things, you see.  Love is the cure, it is the courage, it is the strength, it is the answer, it is the fulfillment and it is only available to those who would offer a reasonable response to Love Himself…

Romans Chapter 13 Verses 11 – 14

• I’ve been away much this week.  I flew out Monday night to attend a meeting for work in Texas on Tuesday and then flew back Tuesday night.  I was here Wednesday and then flew out Thursday morning to attend my Grandmother’s memorial service in Massachusetts.  I finally got home early Saturday.  Six flights in total…exhausted is not the word.  But I’ve been so energized by God… 
• Being away from my family is always hard for me.  Especially when my little little follows me all the way to the door begging to come with me.  Link doesn’t leave my side.  He sits in the bathroom when I shower.  He asks, “dad, can I come” more than any other question and recently, especially this week, everytime I drop to my knee to hold him in my arms, he says to me, “bye dad.” 
• Breaks my heart.  “I’m just giving you a hug son.  I’m not going anywhere.”  I have plans of taking my kids to the park.  I have plans to hang out with them, to play with their toys with them, to eat meals with them, to tuck them in, to pray with them, to tickle them…to just enjoy them and to be their dad…one of the highest honors and supernatural wonders of all my life.  Because they are from the Lord to me, gifts the Bible would say, and they have come forth from April and I, of which is a relationship I simply adore.
• And it occurred to me this week as I was traveling and talking with the Lord, that in the Bible, specifically Luke Chapter 7, Jesus mentions in verse 35 of that Chapter that wisdom too has children…and I began to imagine my life without my little little…without his innocence, without his love, without his dependence upon me, without “us,” and the thought is next to unbearable…
• And yet we live our days without our little ones all the time…not our children but wisdom’s children…the godly consequence of a life lived not for self, but in reality man…for the King man…and I am convinced that if I had never had Link I would be just fine, sleep just fine, go about my day just fine…but show me my life with him…show me the joy of him in my life…and now show me my life without him…unbearable.
• Oh how we miss out on life abundant and we don’t even know it.  This is what is meant when we pray and when we sing out, “break our hearts for our sin…” because if we knew for a moment the Link’s we have lost because of sin…oh how we would repent. 
• Paul says, “no provision for the flesh…”  No provision.  No secret pet sins, no little white lies…man turn from it all and turn to love…walk properly man, in other words, walk in reality…all of these other situations and circumstances mentioned here are simply fake…they are false and they lead to a false conclusion…
• A future without the child of wisdom man…no Link…if you could see, man if only you could see…