Faith Fears God Over Man

I can’t ignore the fact, this morning, that God has so arranged even my preaching schedule so that we come to Hebrews 11:23 on the Sunday after Donald Trump was convicted on thirty-four counts of falsifying documents and election fraud. We have all been forced to watch this spectacle, whether we wanted to or not, in all of its seedy details, and now that there is a verdict, half the country is celebrating while the other half wonders whether they are even considered citizens anymore. In times like these, it can be difficult to know how a Christian is to respond. It’s difficult because, on the one hand, Donald Trump is no saint. He is not the Messiah, sent to defend the church against the attacks of liberals. The whole basis of this case rests on an illicit relationship he had with a porn star and the resulting hush money payment he made to keep her from making that relationship public. At no point in any of that did Trump exhibit Christian morality, nor is he known for that even now. But, on the other hand, it is just as obvious that his opponents have stretched the law to serve their political ends, even if it means disenfranchising half of the American electorate. How is a Christian to live in this climate? How are we to serve in a country of immoral leaders? How are we to respond to a tyrannical government? Thankfully, the Lord has already spoken on this, and we find such a place where he has spoken in Hebrews 11:23 and Exodus 2:1-10. From these passages I want you to understand that faith fears God over the government. I want to consider that point by asking two questions. First, how is the man or woman of faith to relate to his government? Second, what should the man or woman of faith value more than government?

So, to begin, let’s answer the question, how is the man or woman of faith to relate to his government? The Bible depicts human government as a conflicted institution – as both minister and tyrant. We find the very first institution of government in Genesis 9:6, where God tells Noah, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” In that verse, God delegates an important responsibility that until then was only reserved for him – the responsibility of executing justice. To prevent violence from once again spreading throughout mankind, leading to another cataclysmic judgment, God charged Noah and his descendants with protecting life through government. The NT pictures the role of government in the same way. In Rom. 13:1, Paul writes, “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.” He even goes on, in verse 4, to say that rulers are “ministers [or deacons] of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” This is shocking, considering when Paul wrote these very words. He said this while the tyrant, Nero, was ruling in Rome. He said this, as he was facing persecution from the Jewish authorities and Herod Agrippa. Even while facing such tyrants, he called them ministers because he recognized that God has delegated the authority for justice to human rulers for our good.

But, there is another edge to the sword of government that we find in Scripture. Not only is human government seen as a God-given institution, but it is also seen to be tyrannical. We see this in the story of Moses from Exodus 1 and 2. The story begins with this statement in Exodus 1:8 – “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” Remember, Joseph’s life had been so arranged by God that he, through twists and turns, would be summoned by the Pharoah to interpret a dream. By God’s power, Joseph not only interpreted the dream, but he was then placed as second in command over all of Egypt so that he might store up grain for the famine that the dream predicted. Then, when the famine did come, he was given authority to dispense the grain as he saw fit. In that authority, he was able to reconcile with his family and then bring them under his protection in the pasturelands of Goshen. As God had promised his forefather, Abraham, he blessed Joseph and made him a blessing to the world. Through Joseph, Israel was saved, but also, Egypt was saved. For a time, Egypt knew this, but as time wore on, the Egyptians forgot what God had done through Joseph. Instead of reaching out to God, a new Pharoah reached for his own power. Instead of blessing the people of God, he cursed them by enslaving them. Instead of valuing human life, he plotted genocide against the Israelites by ordering the execution of every newborn Hebrew boy. This new Pharoah, rather than being a minister of justice, put himself in the place of God and sought to defend his position against all threats – even if the threat came in the form of a little baby boy. This tyranny is not just the domain of ancient, pagan rulers. The kings of Israel were just as guilty of this tyranny. King Saul warred against God by seeking to kill the anointed king David. David used his power to commit adultery and murder a man. Solomon, for all his wisdom, married pagan women and built temples to their gods. The descendants of these kings did much worse, so that God would eventually allow foreign tyrants to destroy everything that they had built.

Understanding this conflicted nature of human government leads us to a second question: what should the man or woman of faith value more than government? The writer of Hebrews gives us the answer to this question through the example of Moses’s parents. In the face of tyranny, his parents, who remain nameless throughout the story, disobey the law of the land so that they might protect their son. Now, in reading that, you might think, well of course they would rebel against the law and protect their son because he is their son, but this assumes a great deal. For one, it assumes a modern, romantic view of children which ancient peoples did not have. Children were viewed as property, as labor, as insurance, and as a future investment in the family business. Parents did not exist for their children, but children for their parents. So, if there were militant pressure from the government to give up your child or risk the complete annihilation of your family, many would make that choice to save their own skin and that of their family. And besides, even today, with our modern, romantic view of children, many people still decide to value their own priorities and wellbeing over that of their children. Beyond that, the text itself tells us why the parents rebelled, and it’s not because they just really loved Moses. Rather, consider two motivations we are given for why they rebelled.

First, they rebelled because “they saw that the child was beautiful.” At first blush, this seems to make matters worse, not better. Is the text saying that they thought Moses was a handsome baby and therefore worthy of saving? Unfortunately, in our society, we’ve come to only understand “beautiful” in terms of physical appearance. But, in Scripture, beauty has a much broader sense. In the original story, from Exodus 2:2, it says, “The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him.” The Hebrew word for “fine” is toba, which has deep significance in the OT. We find it seven times in Genesis 1 alone. Over and over we are told, “And God saw that it was [toba] good.”  When God sees that the light or the land or the vegetation or the animals or mankind is toba, he’s not saying they are attractive or handsome. He is saying they fit the purpose for which he made them. They are good. They are beautiful. And so, when we read that Moses’s mother saw that he was toba, it means that she saw that he had a purpose.

That leads me to the second motivation for his parents. The writer says that they rebelled against the law of the land “by faith.” The decision to hide Moses away was not just a realization of his goodness as their child, but of his goodness as a child of promise. Moses was a descendant of Abraham, to whom God had promised that he would make his descendants more numerable than the stars of heaven. No human law could negate that promise. No Pharoah, for all his claims of deity, could resist it. God had promised, and it would come to be, and so, Moses’s parents rebelled out of faith that God would fulfill his promise. They feared God more than they feared man. They valued the things of God more than they valued man’s approval, obedience to the law of the land, or even their own lives.

Brothers and sisters, we are called to trust in God, even as we face a government that is increasingly hostile to his promises. We live under laws that distort the very order of God, directing parents to deny the goodness of male and female, directing Christians in the workplace to endure “diversity and inclusion” training so that we might be more tolerant and accepting of those who worship the goddess Ishtar. We live under laws that devalue life, forcing Christians in business to fund abortions so that others may worship the god Moloch. What are we to do in the face of this and other tyrannies by those charged by God with administering justice? Consider two NT examples in closing. First, consider the example of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Matt. 5:11, Jesus says, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” In this beatitude, Jesus calls his followers to rejoice in persecution. We are to see the persecution of tyrannical governments as a confirmation of God’s blessings on us. They would not hate us if they did not first hate him. And how did Christ respond when he faced persecution? Isaiah says, like a sheep before its shearers, he opened not his mouth. Though he was the very Son of God, descended from heaven to take the form of a servant, though he could call 10,000 angels to his defense, yet he was silent. Why? Because in his silence he took the full force of tyranny, as the Jews bent the laws of Moses to condemn him, and Rome pressed down on his back with the weight of the cross. Yet, both were defeated through the cross. The Sanhedrin is disbanded. The temple is demolished. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians are political parties long left to the dustbin of history. With all of their political power, all of their weapons, they could not defeat a lowly carpenter who they hung naked on a cross because in him was the very power of God.

Lastly, consider the example of Peter and John from Acts 4. After healing a man in Jesus’s name, they are called to account before the very men who had Jesus crucified. After preaching the Gospel to the Sanhedrin, they were whipped and then ordered never to mention Jesus again. To that command, they answered in Acts 4:19, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” Brothers and sisters, this is our calling: to look tyranny in the face, and to speak the truth of the Word of God with boldness. So may we go in faith and do just that.