July 28, 2024 | Citizens of Heaven

Transcript:

This morning. We're going to be continuing in first Peter chapter two. Kids, if you're headed out the door to Children's Church, you're welcome to go ahead and do that. We're also glad to have you in here with us. If you want to stay with us. First Peter chapter two, and we'll be looking at verse 13 and following.

We are all, to varying degrees, perhaps familiar with our modern government and politics, and I doubt you would describe politics as overflowing with kindness, grace, understanding, wisdom, honesty, honor. Probably not the first words that come to your mind when you think about government and the situation in Peter's day wasn't any better. Peter wrote this letter to believers under Nero in Rome.

Again, probably if you think of Nero, you don't think wisdom, honesty, all those things. But really he started out as a fairly reasonable leader, even brought some helpful reform to Rome. Some good things. However. Then he lost control. He was drunk with power. He was just drunk as well. Often he killed his mother. He killed his wife or had them killed.

I don't think he actually killed them. Followed various cults. Ignored wise counselors who had helped him along the way. He used his political position for selfish gain. He was even portrayed as an Apollo like figure, as a divine sun god type figure. And when Peter writes this section, we're about to read. That's who the Emperor was. Some of those things probably had happened.

Some of those may not have happened quite yet. But it wasn't hard to figure out who Nero was and what he was doing with his power. Now, the section we're going to unpack here follows after the section we talked about last week from verse nine through 11, where Peter shepherding his readers gives them three key ideas that we're going to come back to over and over through the next two chapters, because Peter has told them you were made to proclaim God's glory, and while you proclaim his glory, you need to be guarding your souls.

In fact, proclaiming his glory is one way that you guard your soul. And then verse 12 reminded us, not only is it about our relationship with God and our internal relationship, but our relationship to others. And so as we live out proclaiming God's glory and guarding our souls, we are displaying God's glory before the people who see it.

And the goal of that is at the end of verse 12, that they people who would accuse you and speak against you as evil doers, may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. So the question for this morning is, what does it look like to proclaim God's glory? Guard your soul and act with honor in a fallen world where there are human authorities who don't do what they should do?

That's the question we want to probably not answer every piece of that this morning. Probably just start us towards a biblical answer to those questions. So let's read what Peter said, beginning in 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. Father, you are our perfect authority. And this is your word. May we bow before it today. Amen. Peter begins this section with with his first command. It's translated here. Be subject or submit. There's another way you can translate it. It's vital to think through and wrestle with. What does that word mean and what does it not mean?

The Greek word that's used here can mean total submission or unquestioning obedience. It means that when the same word is used, it says, submit yourselves to God. But it doesn't always mean unquestioning obedience. So we have to look at the context and look at why would he choose this word instead of other words? For example, another word you might think of that sounds similar to submit would be obey.

Well, if you go through and you look which, by the way, I would encourage this kind of study with with our modern technology, you have opportunities and fairly easy ways, even if you don't know Greek or Hebrew, to look up. You go to blue letter bible.com or the app you can look up. Well, where else is this word used?

How else does he use the word that's translated here as submit? If you don't know how to do that and would like to, I'd be glad to talk with you sometime and show you. If you go through and look at that, looking at the word translated, be subject here and looking at the word translated, obey in many sections you're going to find some tendencies where those two words don't mean exactly the same thing.

Usually the word translated obey refers to a situation where there's a specific kind of command, and there's supposed to be immediate compliance to it. So we might think maybe the most common when you think of children, obey your parents when they tell you to do something, you do it. And the focus there isn't on the attitude around it.

Although we'd say there's a right attitude and a wrong attitude for obedience. But where the word obey is used, it's usually about just here's a command do it. Not so much. Here's leadership. Will you follow? So when when Jesus commands the sea to be calm, it doesn't say that even the winds and waves submit to him. The Greek word there wouldn't make as much sense.

So the winds and waves obey. He says, be still. And they're still. There's an immediate external response to his command. Generally speaking in Scripture, this is not always true. You'll find some of these, but most of the time that word translated obey. It says you obey a command more so than you obey people, although it does talk about it that way.

On the other hand, when it talks about be subject or submit. If you scan through those examples, you'll see a tendency to say it's a posture that tends towards following. It's usually not always, but usually in a context where specific commands aren't necessarily expected. So instead of the picture being here's a command, you externally conform to the command that's obey the word that's translated obey, submit looks more like here's leadership and I'm inclined to follow that leadership.

It will often include obedience. But there's a reason he doesn't use the word obedience here. I think we have some of these same distinctions. We don't quite make them as hard and fast as some of the Greek words would, but if I were to tell you about a child and say they obey. Just put a mental picture of what you think that looks like.

If I were to say that child is very submissive, you probably have a slightly different picture. When I think obey, I think commands and they do it. When I think submissive, I'm thinking more about attitude than the direct obedience. So we have some of these same distinctions. Another example I thought of, back in Florida, I coached my sons on soccer in rec soccer.

And I remember one time I was trying to get the defenders to learn, I want you to defend the right side of the field, and I want you to defend the left side of the field. And so I told them, stay on your side of the field, which worked great. I had a very obedient defender one time, though, where his partner was out of position, the ball was running and the other team was about to get it, and he comes running up to the middle of the field like this and stops and I'm like, just kick it and I'm trying to.

He obeyed. He did obey. He didn't really submit to what I wanted him to submit to, which was my fault. More than his. But there's a distinction there. If he had run across that line and kicked the ball, I would have praised it. I would have said, that's exactly what I wanted you to do. You are following my leadership 100%.

Even though technically I had told him, stay on that side of the line. So we have some of these distinctions between what does it mean to obey and what does it mean to submit? Peter does not tell you obey here. He doesn't use that word. He says, be subject or submit. He's calling you to think about your posture and your attitude more than your action.

Although actions matter. But I said this word could mean sometimes unquestioning submission. Well, does it mean that here. No. Peter qualifies this submission. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution. For the Lord's sake. He doesn't tell them be subject because this leader is naturally very charismatic. And it's just great to hear them talk. And you think they're good.

It's not why he doesn't say be subject because they in themselves possess authority, not why he doesn't say be subject because you approve of what they say. He doesn't say be subject because you agree with them. He doesn't even say be subject because they agree with God directly. He tells you, be subject for the Lord's sake in your submission.

You are actually serving your true King. You are to submit. To political authorities so that in your submitting, you are serving the interests and values of your true citizenship which is in heaven. Now, if I haven't raised some sermon Q&A questions yet, I don't think you're listening. There's a lot of questions that can come from this text. We'll get to some of them.

I want to tell you where we're headed. Just so you know where I'm planning to get. We're going to talk through these phrases. We'll hit a few rapid fire questions that maybe will be front of the mind at that point. And then at the end, I want to give you a lens using phrases from this text. I'll give you a few different phrases that as you look at specific situations, how should I act in this situation?

How should Christians act here? I want you to have a biblical lens that you can work and pursue a spirit of discernment to know what that looks like. So we'll get there by the end of this text says you're to submit for the Lord's sake. This morning, as I refer to Christians, I'm going to use a different term.

There's a lot of terms we could use. Christians born again, believers, followers of Jesus, a lot of different terms for Christians. One I'm going to use over and over because I think it fits the emphasis of this text is I'm going to call us heaven citizens.

Philippians says our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await our King. So I'm going to point to over and over just by that term, to say, this text is focusing on the fact that your citizenship is ultimately under a king who doesn't walk on this earth right now. And we could go to other biblical examples, which could be helpful as well, of how do you handle governments?

How do you handle leaders who might tell you to do something that is against God? And the basic the simple baseline is to say, be inclined to follow human authorities unless they tell you to contradict God's authority. That's the basic line. And we could all say, okay, that makes sense. I'm going to need more specifics to know how to live that out, but that's part of what it means to say submit not for their sake, but for the Lord's sake.

Even the way this is worded, when it says be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, you might have a translation that says something a little differently because the word institution isn't really there. It's implied by Emperor and governor coming up, but instead the word that's there is like every created thing he's emphasizing be subject to created things for the sake of the uncreated one, like even in the way he words, and which doesn't come out as much in our English.

He's pointing you to say, the most powerful human on earth ever was made by the young, created God. So you always submit to anything created for the sake of the one who was not created. And we could go. As I said, if the government tells you to bow down and worship an idol every time music is played, then we stand with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and say, no, I won't bow before that.

Now, most of the time in our context, they don't come out and say, bow before this idol. So we need discernment and wisdom to wrestle with what exactly does it look like in a modern context to bow before an idol and worship it?

There are times when our culture, sometimes even government, called us to bow before something metaphorically. To worship something that Christians will say, you'll have to throw me in a fiery furnace first, because I'm not going to do that. Or if the government tells you not to pray, you still pray with Daniel. But if you remember the story, when Daniel prays and gets thrown into the lion's den.

Darius the King didn't want to throw him into the lion's den. Daniel hadn't been a jerk for years on end, and then all of a sudden go. Now he's praying. We've got to throw him in the lion's den. Darius liked him. Daniel's posture had been to submit and work for the good of Darius and that government everywhere that he could.

But when he said no, you've now crossed a line by telling me something. My God says, I can't do that. Then he stood as a heaven citizen.

So Peter starts this section by saying, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution in their right relationship. Notice, he says, 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. Peter points out, there's different relationships here, and he points at two specific things.

In our modern world, it's roughly the equivalent of the emperor was the one person at the top. So you could talk about president. That's probably about right. Governors were maybe like we'd say, a state governor, but a more local governmental official. And so he points to those two levels and says, be subject to the emperor as supreme. That word Supreme's weird.

I normally use it when I talk about pizza and not other things. So you say, what does that mean? Well, it's interesting. This word is actually the same word as in Philippians two. Paul says, for us to not only look after our interests, but look after the interests of others. And he says, count others more significant than yourself.

If you translated it the same way, that would be count others more supreme than yourself. That's the same word. So significance. And what he means here by supreme or honor or weight, he says, treat this emperor with the kind of honor that his position deserves with significance. So honor, submit to the Emperor as Supreme and then the governor as upholding public order.

And he specifically points to the fact that governors are supposed to reward good and punish evil. We all know that does not always happen.

I think in our context, we we probably don't think so much about government rewarding good as much as the Romans would have. I think we tend to think more about the punishing evil side. But in ancient Rome, when you had a benefactor who was very generous to the city or to the empire, they would put up statues for them.

Like they paraded things like that. So for them, more so than probably for us, they would hear both sides of that. They reward good. They punish evil. Now I almost I thought about titling this sermon something different. I thought about titling it Subversive Submission, and I thought I'd have to explain the title too much to call it that.

But there's there's some truth to that, because what this text does is while it's telling us to have a basic posture of submitting to human authorities, it's also telling us that there are significant limits on human authorities. For example, here, he says, governments are supposed to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. He doesn't say governments are supposed to define what evil is, or define what good is.

If you were to go looking across the political spectrum, you'll find plenty of people who are trying to define what good and evil are in a political sphere. Peter cuts right at that and says, no, that's not their job. As heaven citizens, we live serving God, and he is the one who defines good and evil. Our value system is not built by any human authority.

Our basic systems of law and order. Do you register your car? You get a driver's license. Those kinds of things. Those are systems for just functioning. Human institutions design those. Yes. They don't define good and evil. The role of government in God's world is to praise good and restrain evil. That's his design, not to define good. No matter how much they may want that power.

So as heaven's citizens, we follow God with his necessary and good values as Earth citizens. We live in a world that has some necessary systems for law and order. And so Peter tells us again, let's put it back in the big picture. Peter tells us, you submit to Earth systems for the sake of your heavenly king. And in anything that Earth systems tell you, or try to redefine good and evil.

Scripture talks about those who call evil good and how good evil. We have that a lot in our society, and our government has plenty of it. Sometimes.

Peter says, as heaven's citizens be submissive, submissive to earth systems for the sake of your heavenly kingdom.

And why is he so concerned about this? Verse 15. This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Now, back in this time, people were saying some things about Christians that were crazy and extreme. They accused Christians of being subversive rabble rousers. That was one of the arguments against Christians.

They're going to come and take peace away from your area or from the Roman Empire. And sometimes the Bible even uses similar words. Through the gospel it says they turned the world upside down. But can you imagine if you're a Roman emperor and you hear there's this group of Christians and it said that they turned the world upside down, you're thinking there's a problem.

Not only that, but they were accused of gross things because people who didn't know what they were talking about would come here. Christians talk about drinking the blood of their Savior. Now, if we're used to that. But if you never heard that, come join us and eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. There's going to be some ignorance out there.

There's going to be people who look at Christians who say, there's some awful stuff here. And they did. They accused him of being subversive and disgusting. I don't think those accusations have changed too much.

There's plenty of people who think that some aspects of Christian belief are gross or hateful.

So in a world where there's ignorance and people.

Are accusing you as being evil doers, that's what he said in verse 12.

Peter is concerned that heaven's citizens, not. Give unnecessary reason for people to turn against God's message, which is why he says, do good, so that by doing good, you'd put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Have you ever seen that when a Christian is so concerned with kindness and love, that the people who come in accuse them of doing wrong?

Eventually they go. I mean, not that Christian. They have love. I see that. See, it puts to silence the ignorance of foolish people. And so he calls us to do good according to heaven's values. That God defines.

To do good. And that is our best response when we are falsely accused. If people accuse Christians of being full of hate, our best response is probably not to shake our fist in their face and yell at them that we're not.

Our best response is to say, no, we're not. Yes, but to do good. To have a posture that is ready to follow earthly systems where we can without disobeying our heavenly King.

So his first command is submit, but he's going to clarify it again. So he said, submit for the Lord's sake. But in verse 16 he says, live as people who are free. This text says live. That's an implied word again. It's a fine translation, but I think we can be more specific because he's been talking about being submissive.

We can translate it submit as people who are free. He's pushing you into the the paradox that says, I don't have to submit to any earthly authority ultimately, because God is my king. But at the same time submit to them as a radically free citizen of heaven. Say, well, what does that look like? Well, how are we free?

Free? In what sense? It doesn't mean free to do whatever you want. God never promises you that. We don't really want it either. God never offers us freedom to rule ourselves however we want to. What he does say is you do not have to be slaves to anything on earth. You do not have to be slaves to sinful passions, but you are a servant of God.

We never get to make ourselves independent outside of him.

I was thinking of this phrase. You even are so free that you don't have to serve yourself. Tim Keller wrote a great little book called The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness. I want a good book. Go read. That one's great. He's right. It's freeing to forget yourself. It's freeing to not have to live for me all the time. It's freeing to not have to defend my honor before everyone.

Because somehow that means I will be seen as less or not approved. It's freeing. We're so radically free. And when we come and submit in this world as people who are free, we're living as servants of God. If you imagine yourself traveling as an ambassador, this is a familiar picture in Scripture. But if you were an ambassador to another country, you're free in that country.

Your allegiance is not to the country you're living in. Your allegiance is to your home nation. But as an ambassador, you're serving your home nation really by doing two things. One, you're going to participate in local customs or in law and order. You're not a very good ambassador. If you go in and say, how many different customs can I flaunt?

You're not going to be a very good ambassador if you go in and say, how many different ways can I break their local law? Your posture should be one of. I want to submit to that. As long as I don't dishonor my home nation.

And the second thing, not only do you participate in that, but you don't stir up trouble. If you're an ambassador and you're leading the local revolution, it's not going to end well. We are ambassadors, and Christians are called to do the same kinds of things. We're not to be rabble rousers, stirring up trouble everywhere we can. We're also not to be hermits, ignoring the place that we live.

We're to live as ambassadors of our heavenly King. And it takes wisdom and discernment and practice. And it takes each other, helping one another to say, all right, how do I live? If I do this, will I be dishonoring my king?

You don't know that answer for every situation you will face right now. And I don't know that answer for every situation. But God gives grace, and he teaches us, and he gives us each other, and we come back over and over and over again to say, I want to be a person of peace, loving the people around me, but I serve my King.

I'm free not using freedom as a cover up of evil. He says in verse 16. We were talking about this passage on Friday with the elders who met for breakfast then, and a couple passages came up in our conversation. Romans six Paul says, shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? If you say, I'm free, I can do whatever I want.

So I'm going to sin to receive more grace. Your freedom is becoming a cover up for evil. Or Galatians five says you were free. But don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Instead, through love, serve one another. If your freedom becomes, I get to serve me and I don't have to serve anyone else, your freedom is becoming a cover up for evil.

Our sinful hearts are drawn by this attitude of anti-authority and rebellion. And I don't have to tell you that you can find it all over the place. Often you can turn on talk radio, and you'll find a general vibe of Anti-authority and rebellion, or political podcasts or political ads. Go on YouTube for the next however many months, and you'll find a lot of it.

Our sinful hearts can be drawn to that. And we say, I'm free. They can't tell me what to do. Well, if that freedom covers up selfishness covers up that rebellious resistance. If that freedom creates in me bitterness or anger or worry, then my freedom is becoming something it shouldn't be. It's covering up evil. If you think of the Jews in exile.

Like Daniel, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, even earlier, like Joseph. And you think, what did they do? They served their heavenly king. They also worked and engaged in the place that they live. Some of them even became very, very powerful in the government. They served in working for the good of the country they were living in as exiles.

The same way we are called to be peaceful God, serving heaven citizens who serve our true master while doing as much good as we can in our earthly citizenship.

So I want to hit a couple of rapid fire questions really quickly. I'm not going to give you full answers that probably won't be the all the way satisfying, but hopefully get you started thinking about it. And I'm glad to have more conversations later.

What does it look like to be a good citizen on Earth while your true citizenship is in heaven? What can it look like? There's a lot of options. It can look like I'm living a peaceful life. I'm following basic systems of law and order, and that's what I do. It can look like I'm significantly involved in the public sphere.

I'm very grateful that there are Christians who work in a public context as elected officials or other things who are engaged in saying, how can we help this government be better? I'm grateful for that. That can be part of being a good citizen of Earth, while being an ultimate citizen of heaven. I think it can include protest. It can include civil disobedience in complex situations.

It can include revolution. And you say, well, which authority is the rightful authority? And you have to wrestle through all those things. I say those just to get you thinking that direction and say, there's a whole lot of questions that Peter doesn't directly address in this chapter. What if I disagree with the political platform or agenda? What am I supposed to do then?

Well, protest. Sure, sometimes civil disobedience, but nothing here tells you that you need to agree with these authorities. It says have a basic posture of submission. Willingness to follow unless it contradicts God. So you can submit for the Lord's sake. You don't have to agree. But if the government tries to define good and evil in a way that God did not define good and evil, then we stand with our heavenly King, not our earthly.

You might say, well, we're in America. Our government is different. Fair point. Great political philosophy conversations. Obviously, Peter wasn't thinking that when he wrote it because he didn't know about it.

And I would say nothing here prevents you from pursuing a better and more moral government in any way. God gives you to do that. But the ends don't justify the means. So if you try to pursue a better government. Through sinful actions and attitudes, that's using your freedom as a cover up for you.

There are a lot of other rapid questions we could ask, but I want to just give the lenses that I would say, if you can think these, I'm going to give you seven. So that's a lot. They're all short phrases and they're all found mostly found in this text or paraphrased from it. Verse 17 gives you four of them.

How am I supposed to live? There's a lot of questions I need discernment for a whole lot of situations. What does that look like? Peter? Honor everyone.

That means no matter how much I disagree with somebody. There are human made in the image of God with value that affects the way I speak to them. That affects the way I speak about them. Honor everyone. Now, you don't honor somebody by flattering to them and lying to them either. I honor someone by speaking the truth in love to them.

But that's one lens. You could ask it that way. Whatever situation you think of, whatever pops to your head as you go. Well, what about this? What about this? What about this? Okay. Ask these questions. How do I show honor to everyone?

Even in the way to give a specific on this one. What if someone is about to be executed for violent crime? How do I show honor? I mean, it says honor, everyone. Did it change when that person committed the crime? Say no. We don't rejoice in like. Oh, yes. Got him. Now it's a human made in the image of God.

Justice is good. But we grieve for the evil. We allow for good and fair judicial processes. We need that. That's actually part of honoring both our society and the person who's accused.

That's part of honoring everyone. So he says, honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Your relationship with fellow believers is different from your relationship with other people. Your relationship with other heavenly citizens should be one characterized by a special kind of love. So let me ask you this question. How's your heart respond when there's somebody that you would say is definitely a believer in Jesus, or a brother or sister in Christ, and they disagree with you politically.

Especially.

In the last eight years or so. That's nothing new. It's going on for hundreds of years in America. You can go back and find it historically. But when that person who you would say is be sitting around the throne of heaven as a citizen of heaven disagrees with you politically, how do you handle it?

I'm not saying you have to agree with them. You don't have to think they're right, but you have to love them. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. The only mention of fear in this text. Because God is the ultimate authority. What do we do? We trust our true king. And we pray he doesn't tell you. Be afraid of the Emperor.

Even though they had lots of human reasons to be afraid. He doesn't tell you. Fear him. He doesn't tell you. Fear the governor. In fact, the message of Scripture over and over is fear God rather than man. If the government says, we're going to kill you for being a Christian, you say, go ahead. Because this says Fear God.

There's an ultimate joy and trembling toward God that is not there in any other relationship.

He comes back to honor. Honor the Emperor. Honor the king. There's a special kind of honor for positions of authority. Again, he's already put in there to say, not over God, not equal with God. Not treat Nero as Apollo and bow before him. Not Caesar is Lord, just like Jesus is Lord. He's already baked those things in there.

But with that, as heaven, citizens ambassadors living in earth say, I will show honor. I will honor his authority, even if it restricts my freedom in some ways, as long as it doesn't conflict with Christ's lordship. Honor the Emperor.

Do those four statements characterize the politics you see in our country? Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the King. I highly doubt you would say they do. They don't really characterize the politics you see within churches often, not just within our country. The other three statements really come from the previous paragraph.

And we want to include these because this is why we study through books of the Bible at Berean. We don't just study a paragraph here and a paragraph there. We want to see what's Peter's overall message. And so right before this in verse 12 he says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. Act with honor. That doesn't mean that I live according to their values.

They don't get to define right and wrong. But he is saying, did I do good according to heaven's values so that others have the opportunity to see it and say they're doing what's right. They're doing something good. So you put that lens on there. How about am I proclaiming God's glory? He he. It says in the end of verse nine, he called us out of darkness into his marvelous light so that we would proclaim his excellencies.

When you think about politics, does your speech lift up God as the King? Does it proclaim His excellencies as perfect in wisdom and power and glory?

Or do we proclaim God really well on Sunday morning? And not so much. When we read news sites?

The last one in my guarding my soul.

When you think about authorities in our world. Are you filled with anger?

Are you filled with bitterness? Worry. Not only does that fail to really proclaim God's glory as the King who's in charge of it all, but it's hurtful to your soul. We probably all know somebody. Who seems so worried about politics. That you think that's just not good for you. So put this lens in my guarding my soul. If I could paraphrase Jesus, what does it profit a person if they gain their country but lose their soul?

So I want to encourage you to take these lenses and think about your life. If you're going to respond to this message. It's not happening right now. Really. It's really going to happen over this week and next week and the rest of your life. And as different situations come up and you think about the way you talk about any authority at home.

Maybe the way you talk when you're talking to people who agree with you. Sometimes I think the most, the least loving speech happens when we get with people. We agree with. Or how about the way you talk with people who disagree with you?

Or what you consume off of social media or websites or news sources? I'm not trying to slam any specific ones, but I am saying in every one of those situations you should be able to say, I'm supposed to honor everyone. Am I doing that? I'm supposed to love heaven. Citizens in a special way. Am I doing that? I'm supposed to fear God above everything else?

Am I doing that? I'm supposed to show honor within earthly systems? Am I doing that? Is my conduct honorable according to heaven's values so people could see it? Am I proclaiming God's glory? And am I guarding my soul?

That's what Peter calls us to do. And as he starts this section, the first thing he looks at is to say, what about those human authorities that you might disagree with and that you might be irritated with?

Submit, for the Lord's sake. I invite you to take a moment and pray in response. I invite you just to ask God to show you any area of your life where you need these lenses to shape what you're doing and what you say, your attitudes. Let's just respond to him and then we'll sing together.