Our first scripture reading this morning comes from the book of Exodus, the first chapter beginning at verse 15. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shifra and the other Pua, ‘When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birth stool, if it is a son, you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, she shall live.’
But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this and let the male children live?’ The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.’
So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.
From the book of Exodus, we turn to Acts chapter 5, beginning in verse 25. This is immediate, the day after a large group of the apostles had been arrested in the temple in Jerusalem. Luke writes, ‘And someone came and told them, ‘Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.”
Then the captain with the officers went and brought them, but not by force, for they were afraid of being stoned by the people. And when they had brought them, they set them before the council, and the high priest questioned them, saying, ‘We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.’
But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’
From the book of Acts, we turn to continue with Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the first chapter beginning in the sixth verse. Paul writes, ‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.’
‘As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am I still trying to please man? If I were trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Lord, you have given us your word as a guide and as a rule for our lives. You teach us, you have taught us how to live by the standards that you give us. You have given us the desire to obey you instead of our sinful nature, instead of the sinful natures of other human people. We ask that you strengthen our resolve, that you open our ears and open our hearts to receive your word and your instruction for us, so that we might be better able and more faithfully willing to serve you and obey you rather than men. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Who will you obey? Who will you serve? Who do you seek to please? Who or what is the highest authority that you will obey today?
Our obedience of authority can be considered to be a very hot topic in certain social circles, but I don’t intend to wax political from the pulpit; that is not our shared purpose here. However, the question of our obedience and authority is something that the church of Christ has had to be concerned with ever since the days of the patriarchs, way back in the book of Genesis.
Scripture makes it very clear that God’s people are to willingly subject themselves and obey the valid and established worldly authorities. We cite and remember things like from Romans 13: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God,” or from Titus chapter 3, “Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.”
Or we remember that the Hebrew slaves obeyed the Egyptian Pharaoh and their harsh taskmasters. The Israelites obeyed Moses, Joshua, and the judges while they lived. They also obeyed their kings, obediently following them into either righteousness or into sin. The prophet Daniel and his three friends obeyed their Babylonian and Persian rulers, except for when they didn’t, which was for good and righteous reasons.
Although we Presbyterians have a signature hallmark of some ingrained sense of rebellion against governmental authorities, those of you who remember your history know that King George III called the American Revolution the Presbyterian War. Presbyterians are not anti-authority; in fact, we are far from it. We are very much in support of the ruling authorities and a good sense of order both within the church and out there in civil society.
What we are against is the oppressive, abusive, and ungodly use of authority against anyone at all, whether it be by the civil government or within Christ’s church. Previously, we’ve spoken about the dangers of scripture being taken, used, and interpreted separate from their original context, and here today we find a pair of verses that have been misused recently by some modern popular political and even so-called evangelical leaders in support of an obstinate, intransigent, and even belligerent culture of disobedience against the current ruling political party.
These verses, which they enjoy removing from their proper context, are “For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ,” from the Apostle Paul, and “We must obey God rather than man,” from Peter and the other apostles.
Now, while there are some divine virtues to be found in certain examples of civil disobedience, they are never a good in and of themselves and should not be the first resort; they should never ever become the default response to any or every authority which we might happen to disagree with.
These declarations from the apostles, first and foremost, were applied to and against an ecclesiastical authority, even as their authority may have also extended into the civil sphere. The righteous acts of disobedience by Old Testament saints like Daniel and his friends, Queen Esther and Mordecai, David against Saul before he was crowned king, or of Moses and Shiphrah and Puah against their respective Pharaohs—those are not the examples or memories from scripture which Paul intends to call to our minds when he asks, “For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?”
Paul does not desire to incite a religious rebellion within the hearts of the Galatians, just as Martin Luther did not intend to start the Reformation when he nailed his 95 theses up on the Wittenberg church door. No, Paul was trying to bring to mind the living examples of himself and the other apostles and how they stood up for the truth of Christ—not through compromise or by making their message more appealing to either the religious leaders or the people, but instead by standing firm, resolutely, and with the absolute conviction of rightness, even as the truth was found to be displeasing to many.
None of them preached the gospel to give offense, but they preached the gospel and allowed others to despise it and them because they were faithful to Christ instead of Satan’s world. Satan, the father of lies, will always take offense at the truth.
What both Paul and Luther sought to remind their respective audiences of was their motivation for writing the correction of theological error and the desire to see the Lord Jesus Christ worshiped and glorified rightly and for the correct reasons.
Paul and the other apostles all took their stands against religious authorities who were theologically wrong, not the civil government of Rome, because they wanted to see Christ Jesus glorified for his great work of salvation and not try to impose their interpretation of Christ’s heavenly kingdom onto the world—certainly not before Christ comes to establish it himself. Their only desire, purpose, and goal was to serve God and continue to be approved of by him, despite this putting them in opposition to the approval and acclaim of or the praise and preference of men.
Paul’s chief concern here was for the truth of God’s gospel and his faithful transmission and dissemination among all the peoples of sinful humanity, so that they would come to the knowledge of salvation in Christ alone, according to God’s grace alone, and believe. He did not preach this gospel for his own praise; he did not seek to persuade the people to some new radical philosophy or to publish a guide for happier living generated from the reason of men. He was not preaching your best life now.
No, Paul preached the truth which must be believed, and he did not care one wit or concern himself with anyone’s opinion concerning either himself or God’s truth because the truth is, by definition—at least Webster’s old definition—conformity to fact or reality, exact accordance with that which is or has been or shall be.
Paul was not a philosopher; Paul was not a people pleaser. Paul was a gospel preacher, plain and simple. He would later explain his philosophy of ministry to the Corinthian church by saying, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
Paul did not seek out to convince folks to convert to Christ; he sought only to preach Jesus Christ, regardless of the personal cost to himself, and he trusted the Holy Spirit to do what he will do—regenerate hearts and give them the faith necessary to believe.
As Paul writes this letter to the Galatians, he reminds them of the circumstances upon which they first knew him. Chapters 13 and 14 of the book of Acts records Paul’s first missionary journey through the Roman province of Galatia—first to Pisidian Antioch, then to Iconium, then to Lystra, then to Derbe, and back again in reverse.
See, Paul and Barnabas were initially well received in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, but after the devout Jews there became jealous for their faith, just as Paul once had been, the evangelists turned to the Gentiles. Then, after many of the Gentiles had received the good news of Jesus Christ, the Jews incited the God-fearing women and leading men of the city against Paul and Barnabas, having them expelled from the territory.
At Iconium, the residents of the city, Jew and Gentile alike, became so divided concerning the gospel message that when a plot was discovered to mistreat and stone them, Paul and Barnabas were sent onward to continue their preaching in the country surrounding Lystra and Derbe. At Lystra, these missionaries were first received as the incarnations of the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes, causing the people to try to offer sacrifices to these two gods and prompting Paul to protest against these idolatrous attempts at worship.
Yet despite their generally positive reception, there, Jews came down from Antioch and Iconium and turned the crowds against them, causing the people to stone Paul, leaving him for dead with his carcass thrown outside of the city gates. However, he rose, still very much alive, returned into the city, and then traveled on to Derbe after a positive reception and fruit-filled evangelistic efforts there. They reversed their course, and after no other adverse incidents were recorded as being suffered by them until after their return to Syria.
So you see, it was well known how Paul and Barnabas suffered on account of the gospel that they had preached in this region. They clearly had enemies among the Jewish community, a community which they easily could have appeased, and calm by an appeal to Paul’s background. Compromises in the name of peace could have been made if only the Jewish parties were not so obstinately and absolutely wrong about Jesus.
The Galatian Gentiles and Jewish Christians alike accepted the truth of Paul’s gospel—his preaching in the midst of this persecution, in spite of this persecution; perhaps some even accepted it because of Paul’s faithfulness under this persecution. Paul was condemned by the Jews; the Jews tried to kill him over not small differences in doctrine and faith, what they considered to be heresy.
With the other apostles, Paul shared a like in the same persecution and hatred from the Jews—no different from, neither better nor worse than those who walked the streets of Jerusalem with Jesus. This gospel, preached by Paul of salvation being found only in Christ’s atoning sacrifice on our behalf, was what the Galatians had believed. This gospel of faith alone in Jesus of Nazareth was what they had been converted to.
This is why Paul writes, “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” We focused before on Paul praying for the anathematization of those teachers who preached something different than what he had preached on his first trip, anathematizing any message different from what he had preached. Now we consider him anathematizing any gospel different from the true gospel of God that they had already received and believed.
The same gospel which Paul so confidently believed that he willingly suffered violent persecution for because of his faith—the same gospel which the Galatians were also believing in when Paul left them and continued on his journey. Is it any wonder that the Jews, even Jewish Christians, would be so jealous for their ancient religion and its arcane practices?
Perhaps maintaining a strong desire for some form of gatekeeping to prove a person’s true commitment to the faith meant that they felt that the simplicity of the gospel needed to be augmented and improved to ensure that only real Christians entered the church; that they might have viewed these Gentile converts as coming into their religion—that since these unclean outsiders were being granted access to their sanctuary and the body of faith, the hereditary country club members needed a means to retain their authority and their control and to prevent any significant change.
Are there things which we continue to do—even if it’s only still out of habit—that we know now serve no useful or effective purpose?
Things like throwing salt over your shoulder, or spinning around three times—superstitions—do we still do these things even though we have faith? Doesn’t that all sound like a rather worldly mindset to you? Isn’t that just what the people with power, the haves, always seem to do with the powerless, the newcomers, and the have-nots?
We saw it in America through the era of Jim Crow, or when the Irish came over during the Potato Famine. We saw it in South Africa with apartheid, and unfortunately, we do see it even today in the conflict between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated—those who have turned vaccinations into a pseudo-sacrament, treating it akin to circumcision or baptism by requiring it before allowing a person’s full participation in the social, civic, and cultural American body.
If what these Judaizers, these false teachers, were teaching was truly only just a small correction of Paul’s doctrine towards the direction of the truth, or if their teachings were only minor aesthetic, personal taste-type changes to something unessential, like the style of worship music, procedures in church polity, dress code, or even what translation of the Bible they were going to be using, then Paul would not have been so upset. Those are unessentials, and we may exercise our Christian liberty in them.
No, what these Judaizers must have been corrupting were the essentials of the faith in which we must stand united; otherwise, Paul would not have been calling them anathema and commanding them to the Lord’s divine retribution and eternal damnation. Paul was not majoring in the minors; he was not making a mountain out of a molehill. He was concerned for the very souls of the Galatians and their faith in the only truth by which anyone is saved.
These false teachers were changing and twisting God’s gospel into something that was more appealing to an ordinary sinful human sensibility. They offered a defined structure, program, and plan. They offered social acceptance and stability. They offered a way to satisfy our human need to not feel indebted to someone, to prevent the wounding of our human pride by providing us each a way to earn our salvation.
Because deep down in our hearts, everybody believes that at the end of the day, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Grace—true grace—is so foreign to human nature, we cannot understand it. We do not trust free; we always expect there to be strings attached. We do not trust other people’s motives. We do not really believe in altruism when other people do something for us and they do not request or they outright refuse to take any payment or reward; we always wonder about it and assume, “What’s in it for them?”
Nobody does anything for purely selfless reasons, even if we do it just for the good feelings that we receive knowing that we helped somebody else out. That is human thinking; that is the thinking of sinful flesh. That way of thinking is what the law, what Torah binds our conscience to and enslaves us with as we interact and deal with other sinful people.
This is why God’s gospel of grace is so radical and unique among every other faith ever held or conceived of by man. This is what Jesus meant when he referenced the prophet Hosea in Matthew chapter 12, saying, ‘For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings,’ saying that the works of religion may please men, but grace is the gift of God which he pleases to give to those whom he wills.
Grace is given to those who obey him because his grace is what enables us to obey. The false gospel and faith that these Judaizers preached to the Galatians promised health, wealth, prosperity, greater ease in this life, but without any sound eternal hope for their future.
While the gospel and faith that Paul preached and lived out promised the people rejection by the world, the scorn of the peoples, persecution, and all sorts of temporal misery, yet with the promises of God for our eternal hope and security.
The people who practice and perform works of religion for the approval and acceptance of men are the very same hypocrites as the Pharisees of whom Jesus spoke when he said, ‘Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.’
Paul and the other apostles never taught or preached so as to be praised and accepted by the people. Everything of what and how they preached was the very opposite of what one would do if they wanted to please people; but they still preached it anyways.
They stood up to the religious authorities who were wrong and spoke the truth of God even under threat of imprisonment, persecution, and death. In the Acts of the Apostles, we had the apostles who had been just locked up in prison the night before for healing and teaching in the name of Jesus Christ. After they were miraculously released, they returned to the temple to continue their teaching.
And when they were brought back before the Sanhedrin again and charged with violating the express command of the high priest, their reply to them, because of their faith in God’s gospel, because of their confidence in the truth, because of their willingness to forego the approval of men and stand for what is right, they replied simply, ‘We must obey God rather than man.’
One plus God is always in the majority.
Consider the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, down in Egypt. Pharaoh commanded that they ensure the death of every newborn male Hebrew child, but they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them. Instead, they allowed the boys to live, to survive, because these women feared God more than they feared Pharaoh.
They risked their lives, their livelihoods, and even their families because of their faith. They stood against the false gospels of the world which taught Pharaoh to believe that he had power, that he was in control, and that he could preserve his kingdom through his might and his power with acts of violence.
The midwives obeyed God because they did not desire the approval of men; they preferred the approval of the only God who gives true grace. Shiphrah and Puah obeyed the word of the Lord and not Pharaoh.
Peter and the other apostles served and obeyed the command of Christ to ‘go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,’ and not the Sanhedrin and not the Jewish high priest.
Paul and Barnabas, they served and obeyed Christ at great personal risk to their lives and not the Jews or other teachers who corrupted the gospel by removing the hope of God’s grace from his called and chosen people.
They all remained obedient to Christ, who is the highest authority that commands the allegiance and obedience of every believer and the allegiance of every creature under the sun.
It is truly affirming that of all the different arguments people will try to make against our Christian faith, there is one historical argument which cannot be made against us—the martyrdom of the apostles. History makes no claims against them or their faithfulness to Christ in his gospel through the ending of their lives.
Every apostle and gospel writer died a violent martyr’s death according to church tradition and recorded history, except for John. However, John was condemned to be boiled alive in a cauldron of oil in Rome, which he survived by the providence of God without injury, before he was then exiled to the isle of Patmos, where he wrote the book of Revelation and then later died in Ephesus as an old man.
No accusations, no scrap of historical evidence has ever been presented suggesting that any of these men ever recanted or denied their faith in Jesus Christ, even in the face of torture, mutilation, death, exile, or persecution. No one, nobody, no person would or will ever suffer so much for something which they know to be a lie or believe could be false.
No one. They willingly suffered because they stood upon the conviction of faith and the knowledge of truth, not bowing for the approval of men because they knew and they were already approved of by God.
So who will you obey? Who will you serve?
Martin Luther, after posting his 95 theses, sparked a theological debate across the Holy Roman Empire. Who was right and who was wrong—the Augustinian monk Martin Luther or the whole ancient Roman Catholic Church? Still, Luther continued to write and teach the doctrines of grace which he had rediscovered and uncovered within the text of sacred scripture, rescuing them from their premature burial beneath the bonds of arcane ritual and superstition.
Unable to stop the proliferation of Luther’s gospel across Germany and the rest of Europe, Pope Leo the 10th excommunicated Luther on January 3rd, 1521. The pope declared Luther to be anathema. Three months later, Luther was summoned before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms to stand trial before the civil governing body.
There, Luther was asked to recant of his alleged heresy. On the second day of his trial, Luther made his famous declaration, saying, ‘Unless I am convinced by proofs from sacred scripture or by plain and clear reason and arguments, I can and will not retract; for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.’
Luther took his stand upon the word of God. Luther believed and trusted the promise of God’s gospel. He knew that he must obey God over the declaration of men.
Martin Luther did not need to seek the approval of any man or king or Roman pope because he was already standing approved of by the Lord Jesus Christ. As proven time and time again, God’s gospel of grace stands opposed to all of the anathema of the world and against all the powers of Satan and to all his antichrists.
So whom shall we obey? We must obey the one who approves of us, for we desire to remain in the light of his approval, within his good graces. We must believe and teach the truth of God against the lies of Satan and stand firm against any distortion of the truth.
We must obey God rather than men in all things, but especially in matters of our faith in God. Yet how are we to know if we are obeying God? By testing things against and standing upon the firm foundation of sacred scripture and Jesus Christ.
Just like Martin Luther and the apostles before him, we believe that the Bible is uniquely and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the supreme and final authority on all matters on which it speaks, and coming from our EPC essentials. Therefore, on all matters of religion and faith, it is the foundation for and the ultimate arbiter concerning true doctrine.
But what about everything else in our lives? People make many different decisions and religious claims every day which impact their daily lives, but the Bible does not speak directly about every single circumstance and situation that we encounter, especially concerning things which were not yet invented in the first century A.D.
Something which we understand and affirm from the whole teaching of the Bible is that God alone is the Lord of the conscience, and thus we are totally freed from the obligation of obedience to any of the dictates and commands of men that are contrary to God’s word concerning faith and worship. Furthermore, when these human-led rules force us to act against our Holy Spirit and scripture-led conscience or to not act in some manner for the sake of another person’s preference, then they are going against the teachings of scripture and are therefore sinful.
Like Luther told his courtroom accusers, “It is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand; I can do no other.”
Because of our faith in Christ, because of the plain teachings of the Bible, we too must obey God rather than men. For if we surrendered our rights of conscience by obeying men against scripture, by instead working to gain the approval of temporal authorities, then we would not be serving Christ.
However, this does not give us license to use our faith as a bludgeon, to display the gospel as a weapon against the world and present Christ for the purpose of causing offense to the world. If we will only preach Christ faithfully and true, then the world will take notice and suffer its own offense.
We do not need the world’s approval because we already have God the Father’s approval, Jesus’s approval, the Holy Spirit’s approval. They have called us, they have chosen us, redeemed, and regenerated us. We know and believe this because Jesus gave himself for us to save us from our sins and to rescue us from this present age.
We should be like the apostles, be like Shiphrah and Puah, be like Paul and Barnabas, so that if need be, when the time comes, we will also be able to confidently take a stand for our faith—like Daniel, like Martin Luther, or Paul, or Peter, or like Jesus Christ himself, who gave himself on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.
So strive to obey God yourself and do not worry about the approval of men or of the world. Continue to serve Jesus Christ and remain in the light of his approval. Amen.