July 20, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
All right.
1 Let everyone submit to the governing authorities, since there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are instituted by God. 2 So then, the one who resists the authority is opposing God’s command, and those who oppose it will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the one in authority? Do what is good, and you will have its approval. 4 For it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, because it does not carry the sword for no reason. For it is God’s servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong. 5 Therefore, you must submit, not only because of wrath but also because of your conscience. 6 And for this reason you pay taxes, since the authorities are God’s servants, continually attending to these tasks. 7 Pay your obligations to everyone: taxes to those you owe taxes, tolls to those you owe tolls, respect to those you owe respect, and honor to those you owe honor. 8 Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, Do not commit adultery; do not murder; do not steal; do not covet; and any other commandment, are summed up by this commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law. 11 Besides this, since you know the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up from sleep, because now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over, and the day is near; so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us walk with decency, as in the daytime: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:1-14, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer. Amen.
All right, so this continues with the “therefore.” Romans 1-11, Paul is making the case of who Christ is and what He has done. He’s making the case for the gospel, that we are put right with God, we are justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:1, CSB)
He’s making the case that God has established a New Covenant that was all along seen in the old covenant. But that righteousness, a right relationship with God, doesn’t come from obeying all the commandments and all the laws and getting all your ducks in a row and being legalistically perfect. It comes through having a loving, faithful relationship with God. You put your faith in God, you trust in Him, you trust in what Christ has done for our salvation. And you just put your life into a relationship and an alignment with Christ.
And it doesn’t just mean believing right doctrine. The devils do that. That’s not faith. Faith is a personal trust and just a Jesus is my Lord and I’m following him.
And you don’t have to do that flawlessly or perfectly. Your sins are forgiven, but that’s who you are now. That’s your identity, and that’s how you’re saved, by being God’s child, by faith in Christ.
All right? Then he says, therefore, well, if that’s all true, how then should we live?
And we’ve already talked a little bit about how we live and how we worship and that sort of thing. And here now he’s talking about how should we live in our relationship with the state? How should we live in our relationship with the neighbor? And because this is true, what does that say about the times in which we are living? So we’re going to look at all three of those things tonight.
And so he says, we are called to live in submission and obedience to the state. Boy, Americans don’t like to hear that. We’re a nation of rebels, baby. We don’t like, listen, if there’s one thing, my wife will tell you this, if there’s one thing that’s true about me is I do not like being told what to do. If you ask me to do something, I’m a pretty cheerful guy. I’ll probably try to do it. I’ll probably try to help you. But if you start telling me, Kevin, do this, or Kevin, do that, Kevin, do this, who the heck are you? I don’t want people telling me what to do.
And that runs deep in our culture. We don’t like being told what to do. We like our freedom. We rebelled against England to get it, and doggone it, we don’t like being told what to do. And here Paul comes along and says, hey, do what the government tells you to do.
Now, my wife, on the other hand, I use her as an example all the time. She likes rules. The rules are there for a reason. They ought to be followed. But even her, even her, it’s like, yeah, maybe not.
We live in a neighborhood that has a HOA, all right? And, man, the minute we moved in, it’s like, I don’t like HOAs. I don’t like paying somebody so they can tell me what color to, you know, paint my house. That doesn’t seem right.
My wife though, she’s like, hey, man, it protects the neighborhood. And in our neighborhood, it’s a very well-manicured neighborhood, and they take care of it, and, you know, they haven’t been really a nuisance to us. We got one note because we parked where we’re not, straight across from our house is their land, not my land.
But I only have a two-car, you know, two-car driveway. So every once in a while, there’s a bunch of people there. I’ll park across on their little plot of dying grass. And they put up a sign that said no parking. I took that sign as a suggestion. That was a suggestion sign. When we first moved in there, that sign wasn’t there. I don’t know what neighbor complained about us parking there to get the HOA to put up that sign. But they put up a sign that said no parking.
When I saw that sign, I wanted to get my son’s chainsaw and just, yeah, the heck with your no parking. But I didn’t.
But every once in a while I’ll park there because, yeah, it’s a suggestion, right? And we got a note one time. That’s all we got was a note. So they’re a nice HOA. They just left us a note and we moved the car.
Now, my wife, if I park there now, you know, because we got to move cars in and out of the driveway or we got guests coming over, I’ll just say, I’ll just park it there for a couple hours. She’s like, no, no, park it across the street. It’s against the rules. And I’m like, no, it’s just against the suggestion. It’ll be all right.
But now we bought another house in another neighborhood. And oh, my goodness, that HOA. They are conscientious. They’re the kind of HOA where you got the lady who’s got nothing better to do with her time than walking down the street with a ruler to see if your grass is a quarter inch over the limit. And you know who’s really upset at that HOA? Little miss rule keeper. She’s like, all right, they’ve gone too far. They’ve gone too far. All right? But we signed the contract. We signed the contract. So those are the rules. And we’re called to obey the rules.
We’re called to obey the government.
Now if you read Romans 13:1-7, you may think that it’s saying that government has this kind of absolute authority. There’s God and there’s government. And that’s how it sounds.
But that’s why you have to read the whole Bible. And you realize that in the Bible there is a tradition of people not obeying the government. You have the midwives in Exodus. And Pharaoh says what? Throw the male babies in the river. And they say no, we’re not going to do it. They lie, they get sneaky about it. But they try their best to subvert an illegitimate government command, a horrendous government command, and protect the lives of these babies.
And then you have Moses, and Moses confronts Pharaoh. And throughout the Old Testament, you have the witness of the prophets who continually get in kings’ faces and say what you’re doing is wrong. And they defy the kings.
You have Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; you have Daniel. And they all disobey the government. And so what’s the deal? Are we supposed to just blindly obey the government, or is there an exception clause?
And the best I can tell is the exception clause is obey the state, obey the authorities, obey the religious authorities. Jesus, Paul, and John or Jesus and Peter and John, they try to obey the religious authorities. But when the religious authorities tell them to shut up, they say no.
And here Paul writes this command that we’re to obey the authorities. And he got put to death kind of for not obeying the authorities. And so there is a place where we disobey. And the basic general rule is this: Obey the state until the state commands you to disobey God. Obey the state until the state commands you to disobey God. And then you disobey the state.
And the number one way most states, most authorities, schools, government institutions, the number one way they will try to get you to disobey God first and foremost is simply this: shut up. That’s why I love our Bill of Rights. Because guess what our Bill of Rights says here in the United States of America.? You don’t have to shut up. You don’t have to shut up. You can speak out about what is right and about what God says is right. So we are to obey the state until the state commands us to disobey God.
We’re also to obey the state in the areas where the state has authority. There are areas where state governments will try to take authority which isn’t their God-given authority. Notice in Romans 13, Paul says that the God-given authority of the state is to reward good and to punish bad. Well, what happens when the state rewards bad and punishes good? We can disobey the state. The state has stepped out of its authority. What happens when the state tries to tell us their authority in areas they don’t have authority, but where we have authority?
Listen, parents, your children are under your authority. Now granted, you’re in a state that has laws, but I don’t believe that the state has the laws to tell you how to raise your children. That’s your authority. You have that call.
Now there are places the state can intervene if you’re a horrible parent and you’re harming the child, etc., etc., on behalf of showing mercy and justice on the behalf of children. But basically, the state doesn’t have the right to raise your children.
Big argument. Public school, private school, home school. And I’ve told people this all the time, I got no dog in the fight. I got no dog in the fight. Alright? I know we got the homeschoolers here. Don’t get mad at me. I like homeschool. I’m not against it. Got no dog in the fight though, except this one: parents are the best people to make that decision for their kids. How they’re going to raise their kids and what schools and how their kids are going to be schooled and educated. I think, parents, that’s your job. your job is to educate your children. It’s not the state’s job to educate your children.
Now if you’re like me and you’re too lazy to homeschool and you think, and your town at the time you’re raising kids has good public schools and they’ll teach your kids math and English and won’t indoctrinate them into things that I don’t want to indoctrinate them into, thank you, schools, for helping me raise my kids. For teaching my kids. Not raise my kids, but whose job is it to educate my kids? Not theirs, it’s mine. All right? Whose job is it to put values, to put value, you know, people say, doggone it, we need prayer back in school. Shut up. You need prayer back in the home. Don’t tell me about prayer in school if you don’t pray with your family at home. That’s just lazy. That’s just like, well, we want them to instill our values into our kids.
No, you instill your values into your kids. Listen, dads? Here’s a deal for you. 93% of kids who are raised in faith, who are raised in a household of their faith where their father was a faith figure in that household in other words, a man of prayer, a man who was active in going to church, active in serving the Lord, and was a man of faith 93% of those kids will hold on to their Christian faith through their adult lives.
But if it’s just the mother without the father, you know where that number goes? 17%. 17%.
Dads count. They count.
All right. So the state can’t tell you how to be a dad, can’t tell you how to be a mom. And fortunately, we live in a government where we have a Bill of Rights. I think our founders got it right. I think our founders got a lot of things right. They said that the government can’t tell you to shut up. The government can’t tell you what religion to follow. The government can’t make a state religion and compel you to follow that religion. The government can’t search your property without probable cause. They can’t make you confess your crimes to them. They can’t tell you to talk when you don’t want to talk. You’re not compelled to answer them in something that might incriminate you. You can be quiet. You can be quiet for a writer, even if it won’t incriminate you. You don’t have to answer them.
Did you do this? I take the Fifth. What does that mean? You’ve got rights. You got all sorts of rights that our founders put in place. And I think our founders recognized that the Bible, for centuries, people thought the Bible taught almost absolute authority for governments based on Romans 13. But I don’t think that’s what Romans 13 is saying. I think our founders got it right when they said the Bible actually teaches limited government.
Your job, government, is to execute justice on the wrongdoers and to reward the right doers. That’s why, by the way, our job as Christians is to show mercy. Right? Paul says in Romans 12, remember, Romans 12 and Romans 13 is an artificial division in Paul’s letter. Just a few verses earlier, he says, don’t seek vengeance. Leave it up to God. Well, who is God’s instrument to execute vengeance? Not you. No vigilantism here. Sorry. Some drunk driver goes and wrecks your kid’s life, puts them in a wheelchair for life. You don’t get to go shoot them. You might want to shoot them. You don’t get to.
Whose authority is it to punish that drunk driver? It’s the state. It’s the state. What’s your job with that drunk driver? Mercy, and forgive. We say, well, why doesn’t, the government should exemplify Christian values. Not necessarily. The government is not commissioned to mercy. The government is commissioned to justice. We’re commissioned to mercy. Follow? That’s their authority. All right? That’s why there can be such a thing as a just war. That’s why the government can say no, we need to protect the world from a Hitler and so we’re going to fight them.
I don’t think Christian pacifism is the, the, God gives the government the sword and its job is to resist evil. That’s their authority. And then their authority also extends to provide for the common welfare. They can tax you. They may tax you too much. You may feel like the taxing is unlawful. Well, guess what? In our case, we live in a place where we can do something about that. We can do something about that in America. We can vote for people who don’t want to tax us as much.
Listen, here’s the great thing about where we live. We’re the government. Government for the people, by the people, of the people. We’re the government. So if you don’t vote and you’re of age to vote, don’t complain. Shut up. Don’t be lazy, you get to govern. I mean, how hard is it to vote, for goodness sakes? Washington, they send you everything, say here, fill this out, send it back. Oh, I just don’t have the time. Well then don’t complain.
But they have the right to tax us. I’m not an anarchist, I’m not against, listen, I’m glad there are roads out there. I’m glad there’s police out there. I’m glad there’s firefighters out there. I’m especially glad for the most helpful people who are paid on government payroll and they need to make tons more money. And that is 911 call receivers. They’re the ones, man, they’re it. Alright, so pay those people lots of money. No, but they provide for the common welfare. And so that is their role.
And as I said, I think our founders got it pretty, I think they made some radical transformations in history that were actually in a line with what the Bible has to say about the state. The state has a limited authority, but inside of that authority, we as Christians are called to submit to it.
And notice Paul is writing this in the first century, and he’s under the authority, religiously, of the Jews, who were very opposed to him, and of the Romans, who at least with Paul were more neutral, but later would be very vicious toward Christians. And he still says, he still says no, respect that authority. Obey that authority within the realms that that authority is commissioned to operate.
So therefore, be a good citizen. Be a good citizen. Obey the law. You know, you think, well, the speed limit says 60, but that really means I can go 70. And they pull you over and write you a ticket. Guess what? Pay the ticket. You were going 70. You may have thought it was a suggestion, but I guess that day it wasn’t. That day it wasn’t.
I have a friend, and they were going across, and, you know, they were operating basically how so many of us, myself included, operate. It’s like, well, you know, if you’re just a little over the speed limit, you’re not going to get a ticket. Which is pretty much true.
I’ve been driving a red Camaro for eight years now and average seven, eight miles an hour over the speed limit. And I’ve passed the cops with their radars, you know, because they always, by the time you pass them, you’re busted, right? They always know where to park. So it’s like, ooh, there he is. I slow down, you know, but you know, he was, he got my speed, you know, half a mile back. And I go by them and they’ve never pulled out. They never written me a ticket. So I’m figuring like, oh, I’m within my rights to drive 67 or 68. But you know, one of these days, one of them pulls out and writes me a ticket for going 67 or 68. Guess what? They’re right, and I’m wrong. It said, I saw the sign, it said speed limit.
And I had a friend, and they were going through Montana where the speed limit’s 80, and they were going 84, and they got pulled over, and they kind of complained. It’s like, man, come on, you’re being tight here. I was only going four miles over the speed limit. And I thought the cop had a good point. He says, dude, we let you drive 80. You know? We let you drive 80. So just, yeah, pay your fine, pay your fine, pay your taxes.
All right. So be a good citizen until you can’t. And then be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. That is your priority. But we are to be honorable, conscientious, law-abiding citizens. That’s what we’re called to do.
We are not to have a debt. We are not to owe anybody anything except the debt of love.
8 Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8, CSB)
And I’m not talking about, you know, I’m not making a big ding about financial debt. A lot of people make this, you know, you know, it’s a cardinal sin if you have any debt besides your home or something like that. I’m not saying that.
I don’t think it makes sense. I don’t think it makes sense to, you know, get in over your head. I think a lot of people have no control on their spending. They spend more than they make, and they make a mess of their lives that they got to climb out of, and it adds misery to their lives. And so I would give the advice, I would give the financial counsel. And I know this is upper level math, that, Brian’s not here tonight, but he might be the only one who’d be able to understand it because it’s such high level math. But here it is. Spend less than you make.
I know you might need a degree in calculus to figure that out. Certainly, if you didn’t go to algebra 2, you won’t be able to comprehend that. But ask somebody who’s really smart in math, what does he mean by that? Spend. You know, that little sign they have, “less than.” All right, “spend” on this side, “you make” on the other side of that little sign, and that pretty much works. Spend less than you make.
Well, you know, it’s hard to do. Yeah, it’s hard to do when you got an I want, I want, I want.
But here’s a great word when it comes to. Paul will talk about this later. Make no provision for the flesh. Here’s a great word when it comes to fleshly indulgences, which buying things that you don’t need and you can’t afford is a fleshly indulgence. Here’s a great word and you ought to operate, this word ought to be, you ought to listen when the Holy Spirit speaks this word to your life.
Here’s what the Holy Spirit says. And another difficult word, difficult word to translate from the Greek, but the basic English translation is this: No. But I want. No. But I really want. No, no. Maybe later. Maybe later you’ll have enough money. But just because I want, I mean, we live in a culture where we think I want equates, I need, I must have at whatever cost to myself, my future, my family.
But here’s the debt we will always owe and we’ll never be able to repay. And yet we’re called to pursue that. And that is the debt of love. You will never love as much as you’ve been loved, and you will never extend as much mercy as the mercy that you have received. And Paul says you owe a debt to that. Spend the rest of your life paying it. Spend the rest of your life paying the debt of love.
How are we to therefore respond to our neighbor? Because we have been loved and mercy has been poured out upon us, we now in turn love and pour mercy upon others. And what does that look like?
Well, you know, it looks a lot like the Commandments. Don’t steal. If you love your neighbor, don’t steal from them. Don’t take what’s not yours. Don’t kill. Certainly, if you love somebody, you don’t take their lives.
Don’t commit adultery. If you love somebody, you don’t ruin households and destroy homes by I want, I want, I want.
You don’t even covet. You don’t envy. Instead, you rejoice when your neighbor is blessed.
You don’t lie. You don’t bear false witness. And that’s just not talking about a court of law. We bear false witness all the time when we do what? When we gossip. Gossip is bearing false witness. Gossip is saying things that we do not know to be true that basically build us up or build another person up at the expense of another person.
Christians do it. Christians have a great way of doing this. It’s so spiritual. It’s so sneaky, that way it makes it even more evil. We need to pray for them because they are . . . And then we gossip about them. They’re doing this and this and this. So we need to be pious and pray.
Don’t do it.
Love your neighbor.
The Commandments actually is what love looks like. And so there’s nothing wrong, and here’s how we use the Commandments as a Christian. A lot of people say, well, we’re in the New Covenant. We just get rid of the Commandments. No, we don’t get rid of the Commandments. We hold the Commandments up and say, how am I doing with this love thing? How am I doing with this love thing? Has the love of God, am I lying to myself about how good I am about repaying the debt of love?
Oh, I’m repaying the debt of love. Oh, I did do a little character assassination on a few people today, but I’m really practicing love.
Man, it grieves me when I catch myself talking behind somebody’s back, and I do it. I try not to do it anymore. I don’t want to do it anymore, but I’ll still do it. And it grieves me. And the Holy Spirit will point it out.
And so we use the Commandments as kind of a measuring stick, not as some legalistic thing to say, if I follow all these rules, then I’m going to put myself in God’s debt. And He’s going to have to bless me and be good to me. No, He’s already blessed you and He’s already been good to you. Therefore live this way. And really, it’s the way it works, right?
You know, I’ve used this example before, but I just had my 44th anniversary and I’ve never been with another woman, all right? Never been with another woman, have not committed adultery against Jill in 44 years of marriage, and didn’t fornicate, technically. You know, that whole lust in your heart thing, Jesus kind of messed me up with that. But anyway, you know, you know, didn’t cheat on her before, we were married virgins. Only been, you know, one. One woman man. All right? And I plan to make it to the finish line that way, you know?
But I can honestly say the reason for that is not because the Bible, because of the commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery. Lots of preachers get caught committing adultery who know that commandment, sadly. Lots of people get caught committing adultery know that commandment.
No, the reason is because I love my wife and I love God. And Kathleen Kelley’s not here because she doesn’t like this joke you’ve heard the joke before and there’s been no legitimate offers. You know? No drop dead gorgeous woman who’s intelligent and wonderful has come up to me and said, hey, I don’t know why, it probably happens to some guys, doesn’t happen to me. I’m actually grateful.
And I’ll tell you what, I am very confident. Even if that happened, I would say, no. No. You are not going to find me at a Coldplay concert on a Kiss Cam. Just saying. Don’t even know who Coldplay is. You’re not going to find me at a baseball game on a Kiss Cam unless it’s Jill. And if we were on a Kiss Cam, she would be mortified, and I would love it, and I would smack a big one on her just because it would be fun.
All right, so motive is everything. Love is our motive for the Commandments. But the commandments are a good mirror. They’re a good way to look at how we’re living in love. And then we have concentric circles of love. Listen, we have . . . People, this drives me nuts, alright? I love humanity. Big whoop. What a cheap saying that is. Do you love the annoying person you’re married to? That’s the test. Do you love your 3 year old? Your defiant terrorist, I-want-it-my-way 3 year old. Do you love that one? Do you love your ungrateful, entitled teenager?
Not that any of you would have ungrateful, entitled teenagers. She’s not a teenager anymore. Yeah. Do you love? I mean, I remember, you know, my kids were great. My kids did not give us a hard, but I remember one time my son, I said, “Michael, you need to mow the lawn.” He tried to test, he wanted to see. “What are you going to pay me? What are you going to pay me?” Now, if it was a neighbor kid, absolutely. But no, I just looked at him and said, “You want to eat? You want the combination to the lock I’m going to put on the refrigerator and pantry door. I’ll give it to your sisters, but I won’t give it to you. Go mow the lawn. You’ll be all right. It won’t kill you.” But do you love that child?
Listen, I remember my friend got married, and I love, and this guy, he’s a know-it-all, you know? And he looked at his wife on his wedding day and he said, “Honey, marriage is the school of love.” And I knew, based on her response, that he married the right woman for him. She said, “You’re right. So long as you know you’re not the teacher.” That’s a good woman right there.
You’re right. Family is the school of love. Church is the school of love. You go to church for a while and you realize that everybody who goes to church are not perfect. That they can be annoying, they can be hypocrites. They are less than perfect people. And everybody gets, you know, “Oh, I went to church and nobody was great to me, and they didn’t cater my every need.” It’s like, well, neither did you. It’s the school of love. It’s the school of love. We’re in the school of love.
The workplace. It’s the school of love. And we can turn the workplace into a school of gossip. Employee rooms where we complain about management and management rooms where we complain about the employees, but those are your neighbors.
Then we live in neighborhoods. And I got to tell you something. That highly conscientious HOA in a neighborhood that I may be living in within the next year or two. And I know the lady with the ruler. I know who she is. And she lives right down the street from where my house is going to be. And you know what the commandment’s going to be? Love her.
And I’ll tell you this. Forty years of pastoral experience has taught me that people who have a high need to control others are annoying. But they’re also almost always people who have deep fear in their life rooted in childhood trauma. And they’re trying to control their environment to protect themselves from getting hurt again.
And so whenever I, I don’t like controlling people, they annoy me, you know, I already told you, I don’t like being told what to do. But every time I run into a controlling person, immediately I go to “It’s a wounded soul.” And my response? Is sarcasm and passive aggressive no, love, love, love, love. I’m good at sarcasm and passive aggression, but it’s love.
All right. You live in a community. Poulsbo or Silverdale or way up there in the wilderness, Hansville or Kingston, the frozen tundra of the Kitsap Peninsula. I live in Port Orchard and Bremerton. I live where the po’ folk live. And we got ’em, man.
And it’s been so good at Bremerton. We haven’t had people camping out in front of the church. And this morning, there they were. There they were.
But I knew this guy. I knew him, and he’s a nice guy. And I just kind of look at him and I go into church, and I’m wondering if I need to go out there. And he came in and he said, “Hey, pastor, I’m going to clean everything up. But my cart that I live off of, the axle is broken. And I’ve just been trying to fix it so I can get off, so I can get out of here, and I can’t fix it, blah, blah, blah.” I was so appreciative that he just came in and talked to me. I just said, “Man, you’re not in trouble,” you know?
When I got out of church, I was going to go he wasn’t there I was going to go take him to the hardware store and get him whatever he needed to fix his axle, and he wasn’t there. So I went to the potluck instead.
But every homeless person has a name, has a mom, and has a dad. Some of them have children, and they all got a story. And we could say, well, you know, they’re there because of drugs and all that. Well, guess what? I used drugs, and I’m not there but for the grace of God.
And so we live in a community, and we’re to love our community. We live in a country, and we love our country. Over aggressive patriotism. I get in trouble for this military town I can get in trouble for this. But over-aggressive patriotism can be a very dangerous thing. People have done very bad things for the love of the fatherland or the motherland, and just a blind acceptance of whatever my country does is right. And we’re the good guys, and the rest of the world is the bad guys. It’s just not true, and we need to have a discerning eye toward that.
Having said that, everything is right and nothing is wrong about loving the land of your birth and your home and wanting the best for it and praying for it. Everything is good about that. And so there ought to be some sense of loyalty and desire and hunger to see the goodness of the Lord in our place of residence. And that ought to be a priority. I think it should be a priority for us to pray for the United States necessarily over other nations, not because God loves us more, but this is where we live. Again, this is part of our concentric circle.
Having said that, we also extend out to the world as Grace Covenant Church. We support several missionaries. We support missionaries in Mexico and Dominican Republic and Spain and Nepal and Ghana, and we got churches in Paraguay and Peru and all that. And I got to tell you, and maybe God puts a nation on your heart and you pray for that nation. Yoshiko Hanks was a Japanese. She’s a Japanese woman, Japanese born and married an American serviceman, Lanny Hanks, and Yoshiko in Oakdale had a ministry where she would invite Japanese students to come to America. She would home them in Christian homes, and they would stay for a year, you know, one of those kinds of exchange programs. Many of those young people became Christians, and they would go back to Japan, and she would just have a passion for them. And they would have a hard time in Japan finding church community and the whole thing. You know the story.
And Yoshiko planted in me just a heart for Japan. So do I pray for all the nations of the world? No, but I pray for Japan more than I pray for others. And you guys have kind of helped me continue that. You know, it’s like, oh, well, they’re really nice Japanese American people who go to our church. You know, your folks are there, and you were born there.
So I pray for Japan. And I look at Asia and I look, wow, the gospel has penetrated so many countries, remarkably in the east, but not Japan yet. And I pray in my lifetime, not only will I see revival in America, but I pray that I will see revival in Japan. And man, you know, that’s revival when it hits Japan.
And so any indicators that’s happening yet? Keep me informed. All right, good, good. Well, keep me up to date, because I pray that the sun will rise in the land of the rising sun, that the Son of God will rise in the land of the rising sun. That’s one of the countries that God’s put on my heart. I pray for Ireland because I know that’s where all the smart people live. So I pray for these. I pray for these countries.
So that is the concentric circles of love.
It is cheap to say you love humanity, but if you don’t love the people you live with, start there. Learn to love in your family.
Now, finally, what is our relationship to the times in which we live? Paul talks about the time. He says:
11 Besides this, since you know the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up from sleep, because now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. (Romans 13:11, CSB)
We know the time. All right, you know me. My pet peeve is how Christians interpret this as, oh, every tornado, every hurricane, every earthquake, every threat of war is just a clear example that we’re on the cusp of the rapture.
That’s not what it means in my eye. That’s not what Paul’s saying here to know the time. He wasn’t writing something that was irrelevant for 2000 years and only relevant for Americans in the 21st century. I think it’s a bad way to read the Bible.
So what is it about the time that Paul was writing in that is the same as the time that we’re living in that we need to know the time?
Two ages in the Bible. One is referred to as the present evil age. We live in a fallen world, all right? Ever since Adam and Eve, we have lived in an evil age where satanic dominion has been released on the earth. Human beings, by and large, have been cooperating with that dominion. Human beings, by and large, universally have been infected with this sin, with this bent toward rebelling against God and living selfishly and easily being manipulated by the spiritual forces of wickedness because of that. It’s a broken world, all right? We live in this present evil age.
The second idea for time in the Bible is the coming kingdom. God is going to replace this evil age with the age to come. And the age to come is going to be a glorious messianic age where there will be justice, there will be peace, there will be harmony, there will be joy. All the ills and all the injustices and all the wrongs will be made right.
Now we know we live in the present evil time. But here’s the times in which we live that were different before the birth of Christ. That first Christmas, the age to come, broke into the present evil time. You follow? The age to come entered into that. And now the age to come, the kingdom of God established by Jesus, is present. And so we live this is what it means to know the time we live in the now and the not yet. The age to come has not fully come, all right? We’re not all living in the new heavens and the new earth for eternity. All sin is gone, death is gone, sickness is gone. We’re not living there yet. But guess where we are living. We are living in a day when that has been defeated by the cross and resurrection of Jesus.
And now as it is, we’re doing kind of, we’re living in the time between the times. The best example I have is World War II and the Battle of the Bulge. Or not the Battle of the Bulge. D Day. The Germans had one last place. They had Western Europe. And the Allies had no stronghold in Western Europe. They had won in the south. They had won in Africa. They had moved up through Italy. The Russians were marching toward Berlin from the east.
The Germans made the mistake that nobody should ever make. They attacked Russia in the winter. Don’t do that. Never attack Russia in the winter. Napoleon, Hitler . . . doesn’t work. In the north . . . well, nobody’s attacking from the north. The north is just frozen.
But the West Germany still had a stronghold in the West. And on D Day that was broken. When the Allies gained a foothold in Western Europe, Germany was surrounded. And in essence, military history tells us when an army is surrounded, they’re done. The war was over at D Day, except more people died and more battles were fought. And there was more blood shed between D Day and VE Day than the rest of the war combined. Germany fought hard to deny the fact that they were defeated. And it was bloody.
Know the time. Historically, we’re between D Day and VE Day. The incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, Pentecost of Jesus Christ has established the age to come on planet Earth. And the devil is defeated. Sin, death, and Satan are defeated. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. But they’re fighting for time. That’s the time in which we live. Follow?
Alright, what does that mean? Here’s what it means. In the Lord’s Prayer, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Our job, our future is the new heavens and the new earth and the glorious age to come. That’s our future. How many times have you heard me say it? We’re playing a game we’ve already won. But here’s our job description. We are citizens now of that kingdom, not the old evil age.
And we now bring to bear in this world, in the time between the times and the now and the not yet, we bring the not yet into the now. Follow me? We bring heaven to earth. That’s our job, to bring our kingdom to bear upon this world. It’s impossible to do, but God lives in us. So now all things are possible. Every time somebody converts and is baptized, the age to come has a victory over the evil age.
Every time a sick person is healed through prayer, a devil is cast out, a family is restored, children are raised in a Christian household, the kingdom is coming on earth.
And I’ll tell people this all the time. I don’t know how much kingdom we can get, but I’ll bet we can get more. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life in this age, in this time between the times. That’s what it means to know the time.
And then Paul says, so wake up. Wake up. Because your literal time, your 24/7, is precious. That is what you have to work with to do that. All right? You have the 24/7 that you live with day by day to bring God’s kingdom to bear on this fallen world. And that’s the investment of our time. That’s the investment of our hearts.
So give up those foolish things. Give up drinking and drugs and promiscuous sex and gossipy and slanderous social relationships full of dissension and jealousy. Give up those things of darkness and walk as children of your true kingdom. Walk as children of your citizenship. Walk as children of the light.
Walk in this world as you always will be. Like Jesus. That’s the way to live, that’s the so what? That’s the therefore. Therefore, be Jesus’ representative. Be Jesus’ example. Be Jesus’ person in this place. You live in a dark neighborhood. Be the light in your neighborhood. You work at a dark place. Be the Jesus person at that place. You live in a corrupt society. Be somebody of the truth in a corrupt society. Yes, you will stand out. Yes, you may pay a price. But big deal. They might kill you. Well, guess what? You’re going to die anyway. I’d rather die for Jesus than, you know, die some other way. I’m not signing up for martyrdom. I’m just saying that, just in case, Father, Your plans are good, however You want me to go.
But listen, who have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. Give up worldliness. Not everything in this world is evil. And there’s nothing wrong with having things. There’s nothing wrong with having a car and a house and the things that God gives us. But, man, don’t put your heart into those things too much.
I love what CS Lewis says. He says, you know, in middle age, people start to find their way. All right, this is my job. This is my career. These are my investments. These are my plans. These are my goals. And they really feel like they’re finding their way in the world. And then he says this as only CS Lewis can with words. He says, when in fact, what the world is finding its place in them.
John Wesley once said of a man, a wealthy man, who was showing him all his, like the ruler in Luke 12. My new barns. Look at the new big barn I bought. Look at my new investments, my bigger and better this. And he wanted to impress Wesley with how hard he’d worked and how much wealth he had acquired.
Wesley just said, “It’s going to be hard for you to give all this up, isn’t it?” Well, give it up? Do I have to give it up? Yeah, you have to give it up. You have to give it up.
Story of the rich lawyer who spent his whole life just living for money and living for the world. And God, in His mercy, he got converted on his deathbed, and he gets to heaven.
And Peter just says, “Well, welcome,” you know? “Praise the Lord.” You know? “You gave your life to Jesus.” And the lawyer goes, “You know, I did,” he goes, “but my whole life I lived for riches. And I realized I was wrong. But, man, I wish I had something to show for my life. And I know you can’t take it with you, but can’t I go back and just get some and bring it up here?” And Peter says, “Well, that goes against protocol, but let me call.” He called upstairs. “Yeah. Guess what? The Lord says, you can go back to Earth and you can bring some up with you.” He goes, “Great!”
So he goes back to Earth. I don’t know how he does this, but he gets some of his wealth and he’s able to convert it into gold bars. And he puts it in these big suitcases, and he hauls them back up into heaven. And they’re heavy, and he gets them right to the gates. And he goes, “I got it. I got all my life’s work here. I got it. I can bring it into heaven.”
And Peter says, “Great, what do you got? Show me.” And he opens up the suitcases and all this shiny, brilliant gold, and Peter looks and he’s totally unimpressed, and he goes, “Pavement?”
Listen. God says, those things are for your enjoyment. But really, all that goes with us, all that is eternal is what we do in Him. Everything else, left behind. That would be a good Left Behind series, by the way. Everything else, left behind. And therefore, clothe yourselves with Christ. Clothe yourself with Christ. Put on Christ. Live like the person you are called and destined to be. You will be like him. Be as much, you know, I don’t know how much of the kingdom I can get on earth. I don’t know how much like Jesus I can be on this earth, but I’m pretty sure I could be more like Jesus. I just bet if you ask my family, “Hey, could dad, Kevin, hubby, Jill, could he be more like Jesus?” I don’t think she would say, as much as she loves me and honors me, I don’t think she would say, “You know, that boy is as much like Jesus as I can imagine anybody being.” She’d probably say, “Yeah, he could be a little more like Jesus,” alright?
Isaiah knows me pretty well, you know? Isaiah’s probably, “Oh, yeah, yeah, you could probably. You could probably. You’re a notch or two below there, the Big J. You know, you’re not quite there yet.”
And so how do I want to live my life? And I pray this all the time for me and for you, right? I say, “Lord, I pray that we walk out that door more like Jesus than when we walked in.” That’s what it means to clothe ourselves in Christ. And he says, make no provision for the flesh.
If you’ve known me for a while, you know that I’m not really a car guy, but I’m a car guy. What do I mean by that? All right, I’m not a manly car guy. Like, you know, I muscle cars and I rebuild engines and all that. No, you are looking here at the man who most resembles. I don’t know that they knew me before they came out with the ad campaign, but if they did, I would be the poster child for the Pillsbury Doughboy. All right? That’s me. I’m just the Pillsbury Doughboy, alright?
And so I’m not like this guy, you know, who, you know, people ask me in my Camaro, “What do you got under that hood?” An engine. I don’t know. It’s like, but I love how they look. I love shiny new cars. I always have. It’s just been a thing with me, all right?
And I married a person who is completely unimpressed by shiny new cars. She’s impressed by frugality. And you get a car, you get an old, ugly one, and you drive it until it becomes older and uglier and older and uglier and uglier and uglier and older and older and uglier and uglier until everything’s falling off that car, and, you know, and there’s not enough duct tape in the garage to put it back together.
And finally, regretfully, you go out and find the best bargain on another car, and you do the same thing. And hopefully, in your life, you only have to do that two or three times.
And I’m like, if I could do it, I would get a shiny new car every two or three years just because I like shiny new cars. And this is not new for me. I’ve had this my whole life. I don’t even know why. I don’t know why. That’s my covet, all right? Because again, I’m not a motorhead, not in the least, but it’s my covet.
And years and years ago in California, as an associate pastor who couldn’t afford a shiny new car and the whole thing. And I’m just coveting cars. And I’m on I-5. And on I-5 in Southern California, you drive by this huge, huge auto junkyard, just tons and tons of steel, rusty steel cars smashed together, piled upon each other. I was driving down that one day, and sure as anything, the Lord spoke to me. He said, “Kevin, you know what that is?” I go, “Yeah, it’s a junkyard.” He goes, “No. That was everybody’s shiny new car. One day, that’s where they end up.”
Then he said, “Listen, son, you will become like that which you worship. All stuff is destined to become junk.”
If you want to be eternal junk, worship stuff. Stuff’s not evil. We need stuff to live. Stuff’s not evil. And it’s been amazing throughout my life that I liked cars, and every time I pray for a particular car, eventually I get one. But I always have to wait, because the Lord always says, “Okay, you want that? No, no, not yet. No.” “But I want it now.” “No, you can’t afford it now.” And then he has this powerful ally in my house. It’s like, no, Kevin, you can’t afford that.
My car was leaking last week, and I was excited. I love my Camaro, but I was excited. It’s leaking. Maybe the engine is shot, and it’s going to be more, it’s gonna be more, and here’s the thing. If it’s more to fix it than the car’s worth, permission to get a new car. It’s permission. My wife said, “No, you don’t need a new car.”
Said, “Well, it’s leaking, honey. You know, it could be the transmission. Something’s going on.” I take it there. They couldn’t find the leak. They said, drive it for 100 miles. I drove it for 100 miles. They couldn’t find the leak. They put new oil in it. I parked it in the garage. It’s not leaking anymore. Her and her stupid friend prayed for the healing of my car and God listened to them. And now I got to drive that car for another couple years. And I love the car. I love the car, but I want a shiny new one.
But it’s junk. It’s junk. All stuff becomes junk. It has a cycle. Most stuff is new and it just goes straight to junk over a number of years.
Some stuff is new, and it becomes junk, but you have a successful career, and your wife has finished raising the kids, and she wants to have a career. So she starts something that is going to be a tax write-off for you and never going to make a dime. She starts an antique shop and puts it in some quaint little downtown. And so then the junk becomes an antique for a while, and then it becomes junk again. That’s what antiques are. Antiques are just junk that’s been given a second chance. But they’ll soon become junk.
But we become like that which we place our focus. And if your focus is stuff, it’s junk. But if you clothe yourself with Christ, then you have these incredible promises. You will be like Him. God will perfect the work He has begun in you. Dear ones, that’s the time we live in. your salvation is nearer than it was when you came to Jesus. It’s nearer than it was yesterday at 7:40. It’s 24 hours nearer than it was yesterday. That’s a train you cannot get off. That’s a train I cannot get off.
You are rapidly approaching a face-to-face encounter with Jesus. And when I meet him, I want to be as much like Him as I can be in this world. And therefore, if I know the time, I’m not going to waste time making excessive provisions for the flesh.
I’m going to wake up every morning and try to remember Psalm 73:25-26. Who have I in heaven but you? And besides you, earth has nothing that I’m longing for or desire. You know what? There are glimpses of heaven on earth. There’s nothing wrong with the things that You give me, but that is not going to consume me. For You are the strength of my life and my portion forever. None of the stuff we acquire is going to be your portion forever. But a cup of cold water given in Jesus’ Name will reap an eternal reward.
Dear ones, clothe yourself with Christ. How do you do that? You put him first. You wake up in the morning, you say your prayers. You let His word speak into your life. You belong to a community of people who share your values and want the same thing you want. And you start to live in that heavenly community here on earth.
And you eat His food. You eat His food. When He says, “Come to this table, I will transform you at this table. It will be one of the means of grace in your life.”
We’ll say, “Well, Lord, how does that work? Do you become the literal body and blood? Does it work through the power of symbolism? Is it a spiritual encounter?” And again, C.S. Lewis says, “You know, the command was take and eat, not take and understand.” And I have my theory on it and you’ve heard it. I’m not going to elaborate on it again.
But dear ones, there’s a precious invitation given to each of us tonight to put on Christ. And so as His vicar, as His representative, I extend that invitation to you. Come to the table of God, for our Lord Jesus invites you.
And I pray in Jesus’ Name that everything we’ve encountered here, the singing, the praying, the Word, the sacrament, everything encountered, I pray this very sincerely that each one of us would walk out that door more like Jesus than we came in, because now is the time.
Amen.
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