Defy Tyrants & Obey God-Romans 13:1-7

In an article in 2008 the late Dr. R.C. Sproul recounted a time when he shared a taxi cab with the brilliant apologist and theologian Francis Schaeffer. They were both on their way to St. Louis. Now, Dr. Schaeffer, as many of you know, spent a large portion of his ministry focusing on Christianity as a worldview; he also thought carefully about the relationship between the church and the state. His book A CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO (published 1981) was actually written as an answer to Karl Marx's THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO (which was written in 1848). Schaeffer also spent a great deal of time living abroad, particularly in Switzerland where he founded the L'Abri community, a sort of retreat center that is devoted to instructing people in the Christian worldview. Well, as Sproul and Schaeffer traveled together in a taxi years ago, R.C. asked him, "Dr. Schaeffer what is your biggest concern for the future of the church in America?" And without hesitation, Dr. Schaeffer turned to him and said: "Statism." Dr. Schaeffer feared that one day the Church in America would be swallowed up by the State. He feared the encroachment of the government into the life and affairs of the church. And he also feared, as R.C. Sproul later explained it, "that the citizens of the United States were beginning to invest their country with supreme authority, such that the free nation of America would become one that would be dominated by a philosophy of the supremacy of the state." Schaeffer had remarkable foresight, almost prophetic. And what he said so many years ago, I submit to you, is beginning to come to pass in our day. We are living in a time when the State has begun to (and will continue to) try and control the Church. As a result, we would assert that it is high time for Christians to get their church-state theology in order and understand what the Bible says about these two realms (or sphere sovereignties) and their relationship with one another. This coming Lord's Day, having already studied Romans 13:1-7, we'll go back to it to draw some implications from the text in our sermon "Defy Tyrants, Obey God" which will be part 2 of this mini-series "The Christian and Government."