 Okay, historical development, 1.17, the theology of public life. Our objective, just to remind us what we're doing here, especially with going through the history like this, some of you like history, so I've got a lot of good feedback on the history part of it, others you, not so much. And so, look forward to going on to more theological part of this study, which I certainly understand. But the history, I think, of this is important, and one of the reasons it's important is we'll see this morning the development of the thought of a theology of public life. And as that develops, we're getting closer and closer and closer to what I believe our church will see as a biblical theology of public life and something that we can adopt and feel good about adopting biblically. And so we're working our way that direction, and then once we have that pinned down, we'll begin to apply those things and talking about practical outworking or practical application of that theology. So all that's on the horizon. Our objective so far, though, is we want to, as your notes say, develop a thoroughly biblical theology of living our Christian lives in the public square, not allowing our culture to drive Christianity underground. That's what our culture wants to do, drive Christianity inside the four walls of your home or inside the four walls of a church building as long as you become a monk or a nun inside a convent or a monastery, everything's fine. But as soon as you take your beliefs, your Christianity into the public square, we encounter trouble, as the Lord said that we would. But what a good theology, a robust theology of public life does is give you a basis, a foundation on which to do that effectively. Where your efforts should begin and end, no retreating into the four walls of a church building, no retreating into convents or monasteries, but living your life, as Luther would say, quorum deo under the gaze of God or in the eyesight of God as it were, the one to whom we must give an account. And that involves, as we have seen, we'll see, that involves theology of Christian resistance. Sometimes you'll see that referred to as resistance theory. It's a little less theory than it is practice throughout the ages, throughout the history of the church, because so many have faced persecution, but that's going to lead us to a theology of resistance. We've been working toward that theology of public life first by considering our context, the beginning of our study, the most recently, we went through Romans 13 together, and then now most recently we've been studying the historical development of that theology and the history of the church. Last week, we arrived at the period of the Reformation, and we took a look at Luther's theology of two kingdoms, right-hand kingdom and the left-hand kingdom. The right-hand kingdom is the kingdom of God, which is spiritual and invisible, made up of the elect, those redeemed of God, and regenerated, the invisible church, the body of Christ that will inherit heaven. That's the right-hand kingdom, okay? And then we looked at the left-hand kingdom, the kingdom of God that is physical and visible. Notice that both are the kingdoms of God, right? Both represent the kingdom of God, one spiritual and invisible, the other physical, external, invisible. That left-hand kingdom is the kingdom of God on this earth, made up of both ecclesiastical authority and civil authority, and is necessary to restrain wickedness on the earth after the fall of man in preparation for the ushering in of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, okay? Right-hand kingdom, left-hand kingdom. In this context then, Luther began to argue that under the left-hand kingdom, that Christians, according to Romans chapter 13 verses one through seven, a text that we've looked at pretty extensively in here, began to argue that according to Romans 13, one through seven, all Christians should obey civil authority with two caveats. One, when civil authority commands something which God forbids, or when civil authority forbids something which God commands. He had a two-part qualification on a Christian's obedience to Romans chapter 13 verses one through seven. Those were the two obvious exclusions in Luther's thinking, in Luther's mind, originally. What does that leave out from our study previously, what we've already talked about? Don't remember, and we'll have to go back to part one and start over. We remember the, yes, Josh Dodge, thank you for bailing us out, brother. Let's see if he's about to bail us out. Yeah, I'm gonna guess. Is it when the government overreaches or gets out of their jurisdiction? Yeah, oversteps the bounds of their God-given authority, yeah, very good. So there are three areas in which we would say it's both a Christian's right and a Christian's responsibility to resist tyranny or to resist government overreach, civil authority, and that's when civil authority commands something that God forbids, or when civil authority forbids something which God commands, or when civil authority oversteps its bounds, goes beyond its God-given jurisdiction and begins encroaching upon the authority that God has rightly given to another, okay? Those three areas. Well, Luther, and Luther's thinking originally, he thinks like many of us did, or Christians who may not have thought about these things, may not have looked at Romans 13 with the depth that we looked at Romans 13, and so they look at the text and they think, okay, well that makes sense to me, and then it's very commonly propagated, very commonly taught that a Christian should obey civil authority with those two exceptions, and those two exceptions are very clear. What's not quite as clear as the third exception, and that was the exception too that Luther had to develop into or grow into, and many of us as we come to study a text like Romans 13 by good and necessary inference from the text of scripture. There are scriptural justifications, a scriptural foundation for that third qualification, but as Christians begin to think about these things and look at how the Bible applies to circumstance, by good and necessary inference, they come to that third qualification as Luther does. Luther began with those first two, and so far in Protestant theology, at the beginning of the Reformation, we're missing the third reason for resistance. That's when government without the authority, without authority encroaches on the authority of another going beyond its God-given jurisdiction. All right, so now we're dealing with the time of the Reformation. The Holy Roman Empire is in place as distinguished or distinct from the Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire is in place. The Holy Roman Emperor at the time was Charles the Fifth. Emperor Charles the Fifth was a Roman Catholic, and he fought also, in addition to being a Roman Catholic, fought for the divine right of kings. They might not have called it as such at the time, but believed that the king, the monarch was absolute, wielded an absolute authority, and that expected the unequivocal obedience of every Roman Catholic in the empire, every person in the empire. It was his divine right as an appointed king to have that kind of obedience. Charles, during this time period, during the period of the Reformation, as you can imagine, had a really difficult time curbing or stopping the spread of Protestantism. When Luther, when the Reformation started, and the teachings of Martin Luther, the teachings of John Calvin, Beza, Zwingli, other reformers began to spread, Charles found it impossible to stop the spread of what he would have thought to be heresy, and so Charles began to write edicts, laws against the spread of Protestantism. Numerous cities and territories in the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire at the time, throughout really Western Europe, became Protestant, and as those territories, city-states, areas became Protestant, they came under severe Catholic persecution. The diet of Augsburg in 1530 gave Protestant territories a deadline by which to return to Catholic practices or else, and the or else meant that Charles could invade their territory, take their lands in churches, and force them into Catholicism. So these territories were obviously under a bit of stress, knowing that Charles was going to assume the right to invade at any moment, take their territory, take their lands, take their churches, and force them into a Catholicism. So these individual territories, these cities, areas, knew that they couldn't withstand an attack, if you will, by Charles and the army of the Holy Roman Empire, and so these territories and cities began to form alliances on their own, and the alliances were meant for defense. They had a biblical basis that was rooted and grounded in what we've already talked about, which is the unalienable right to life, right? So as they were thinking of pondering the biblical justification for forming an alliance, the foundation of their biblical justification for forming an alliance came from the divine right to life, that God has given us life, and that we're not to forfeit that to anyone, and in keeping with the sixth commandment, that we're not to murder, they would say that we need to labor to preserve life, labor to defend life. So it wasn't a league or an alliance for the purposes of self-aggrandizement or of asserting power on their own. They conceived of this alliance as necessary to protect their families, as necessary to protect their Christian brothers, to do good to their neighbor, to all men, especially those of the household of God, and so the alliance was conceived of as a defense, and that was sort of the biblical justification that they formed to begin the alliance. Now they wanted to be sure, and they wanted to think through those things, and so they went to Luther and asked Luther's help on the matter. So this newly formed, they called it the Schmalkaldic League, Schmalkaldic League, Germans with their words, whatever that means, and they decided to go to Luther to check and see with Luther whether or not he felt as though they had biblical grounds on which to form this league, form this alliance. Luther initially claimed that the alliance was unbiblical. Why would you imagine that Luther would claim that the alliance was unbiblical initially? Anyone want to take a stab at that? In Luther's mind at the time, we're still thinking of the two caveats or qualifications to absolute obedience to civil authority according to Romans 13, right? There wasn't the third in place yet. So in Luther's mind, the emperor had not asked them or commanded them to do something that God forbids, and the emperor had not forbid them yet to do something that God commands, and so they had no grounds, no basis on which to resist the emperor by forming this alliance or this league that would stand opposed to the practices of the emperor, right? So we have these two points in mind, not yet the third. So Luther, this Schmalkaldic League did not fit Luther's two point resistance theory, and so he originally said that the league was unbiblical. This league would eventually be formed, and it would lead to what is called in history the Schmalkaldic Wars. 1546, they began these wars of resistance. They were a defense. Charles did invade. Charles did begin to take territory, and so the League Alliance did what the League Alliance said they would do. They came to the defense of one another, and this lasted for a fairly short amount of time before the Schmalkaldic League was entirely defeated by Charles V and thousands upon thousands of Christians were killed in the process. All right, Luther in his two point theology of Christian resistance was being a little inconsistent with the Schmalkaldic League because at the time, Luther was in hiding under the protection of an elector, Frederick the Wise, who was hiding Luther in Wittenberg at the time, and basically an edict had gone out that if anyone had found Luther alive, they had the permission of the state to kill Luther and bring him to justice to take his life. And so Frederick the Wise, Luther was heading out of Wittenberg. Luther the Wise had him kidnapped and took him into hiding in Wittenberg where Luther could continue to write, and which was very helpful for the spread of the Reformation. And so Luther continued his work. All this time, Frederick the Wise, Luther's host was violating Luther's two point resistance theory by applying a third point to his resistance theory, saying that the government or civil authority under Charles V had overstepped its bounds, had gone outside of his jurisdiction to stop the spread of a biblical doctrine. And so Frederick the Wise was resisting according to that third point and Luther didn't say anything to Frederick the Wise about it. He just stayed under his protection all the while Frederick the Wise. So in other words, Luther was a little inconsistent in his application of his own theology at the time because he hadn't fully worked that out. Well, at this time, while he's under the protection of Frederick the Wise, the Schmalkaldic League sends lawyers to Luther to argue their case, right? And the reason for sending lawyers was because the lawyers understood the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, right? They understood the constitution, the basis on which the empire was formed and the basis on which Charles V had been appointed its emperor. And so the lawyers were going to argue their case with Luther and see if they could persuade Luther as to the necessity of their cause for forming this alliance. So the lawyers of the prospective league visited Luther. The lawyer said Romans 13 did not apply to the princes of these territories, the territories that were forming the alliance since they themselves were civil authorities in their own right, okay? Think about the argument that the lawyers began with. The princes over these respective territories were civil authorities in their own right. So they could form their own, make their own decisions, operate according to their own constitution, their own desires, and not according to Charles V because they were civil authorities in their own right, right? So that's a fairly easy one. Luther responded, God had placed the emperor over those princes. So although those princes were lesser magistrates, they did have a responsibility to obey the greater magistrate, which was the emperor. And so it was unbiblical. Very simply, very oversimplification of this flow of argument, the lawyers then responded that the emperor, Charles V, was appointed by seven electors who represented the princes. This was true. And since those seven electors elected the emperor, they, those princes, not only had the right, but the duty to oversee him according to the constitution of the empire. As you're hearing that, you can begin to formulate little connections with our own representative form of government, can't you, right? Because these electors had elected Charles V, those princes, the lesser magistrates, not only had a right, but had an obligation, a duty to oversee the exercise of Charles V's rule in keeping with the constitution, that was their responsibility and their duty to oversee him in accord with the constitution. Should the emperor violate the law, or should the emperor break his word, it was not just their right, but their legal responsibility to resist him. Now this argument continued for a period of time, but Luther was persuaded and Luther believed that based upon the authority delegated to the people to form a government, there were several arguments used, right? One of the arguments went back to the Israelites and the Israelites' ratification of Saul as king, and then the Israelites' ratification of David as king, the people ratified their kings in Israel, although God was the one who appointed the king. But that king ruled by the consent of the governed. And so this was a similar application. The emperor was appointed by these princes, these lesser magistrates. So being persuaded, then Luther wrote what is called the Torgau memorandum. If the lawyers were right about the constitution and it was the right and duty of the princes to resist under the law, according to the constitution, then Luther believed they also had a theological basis for that resistance and began to form that theological basis with the Torgau memorandum. All of this in Luther's mind, though, persuaded to the princes alone. It wasn't the common man that had a responsibility or a right, excuse me, to revolt or rebel or resist. They had to obey civil authority, but the princes had this responsibility. And so this is where the reformation doctrine or reformed doctrine of the lesser magistrate comes in. And over centuries, many reformed theologians, reformed Baptists have held to what's called the doctrine of the lesser magistrate. And that came from Luther's thinking at this time with respect to these princes and the Torgau memorandum that the lesser magistrate had the right and the responsibility to resist if the greater magistrate overstepped its jurisdictional bounds or exercised in authority outside its God-given jurisdiction, okay? Then it was the responsibility of the lesser magistrate to resist. In any of that, though, and it was thought to as an offset to chaos, an offset to anarchy, that the common man, so to speak, was not allowed to resist themselves. Obviously, they made exceptions for that with respect to self-defense or defense of your family. The Schmalkaldic League was really sort of an example of that. The princes, the lesser magistrates were the one forming that alliance, but it was obviously the people in those territories that were making up the army, making up the defense, the militia that would come to their defense. And so this doctrine of the lesser magistrate has some holes in it and we'll poke at those holes over the next few weeks, but nevertheless, Luther believed that inferior magistrates had the duty and responsibility, but not the common man. Many reformed Protestants told the doctrine of the lesser magistrates still today, but notice the third reason for resistance now found a foothold in the theology of the Reformation through, in particular, through Luther, later through Calvin and Calvin's disciple, Theodore Beza. We'll talk about him a little bit in a minute. So resistance then became necessary, one where civil authority commands something that God forbids, two, when civil authority forbids something that God commands, and then now third, when it violated, when civil authority violated the reasons for which it was established and for which it exercised a delegated authority when civil authority stepped out of its delegated bounds. Shortly after Luther's Torgau memorandum and the formation of the Schmalkaldic League, Catholics in France began what became known as the French Wars of Religion. Before we get into the Reformation in France, any questions about that so far? What I want you to see from that little walkthrough history is the development of Luther's thought on that, the Reformation thought. That thought, the thought of Luther with respect to those three reasons for Christian resistance still exist today, and many, when you hear reference to the doctrine of the lesser magistrate, that's a doctrine that was developed under Luther's teaching during the Reformation, that the lesser magistrate has the duty and right responsibility to resist but not the individual Christian. Yes, Robinson. Check, yeah. Just to clarify, if we're to compare with today, when we talk about lesser magistrate, greater magistrate, what groups of people are we talking about? Yeah, very good, brother. So in our example, in our country today, greater magistrate, our civil authority might be the federal government or the president of the United States, when he waves his pen and passes something with an executive order, right? He's operating as a magistrate and giving commands, so to speak. Lesser magistrates would be state government, local governments, so in a very practical way to see this working out even now is right now at the federal government level, we have our federal civil authority talking about a nationwide mask mandate, right? It's on the conversation that may get to the point where we have to mandate masks or mandating, for example, vaccination passports, right? You've got to have some kind of passport, some kind of paper that proves you've been vaccinated. Those things talked about at the federal level, right? Well, what's happening at the state level with our good governor is he's resisting that, isn't he? They pass or they start encouraging private business to require vaccination passports, and so the Florida governor exercising resistance as a lesser magistrate finds businesses for passing vaccination passport rules, right? All that's been done in our state. So we see this tug of war between the greater and a lesser magistrate in our country, in our government right now. Now that's not done for Christian reasons, right now. I would say there are, our governor, the governor in Florida did come to the aid as a good lesser magistrate, did come to the aid of Christians when he passed an edict, as it were, saying that church was essential, right? When federal government was saying that it wasn't or when others were saying that it wasn't, right? So that's a very good example of the lesser magistrate resisting the greater magistrate and how in Luther's mind the doctrine of lesser magistrate is to work. Our only stipulation would be is that what happens when all the magistrates are in league together, when all the magistrates are saying evil is good and good is evil, right? That day's coming. I think it is the Christians, right? And it is the Christians' responsibility to resist. How the Christian does that is also, I think, dictated clearly by scripture. And we'll talk about that when we'll talk about the three reasons for resistance or the three ways to resist, right? Protest fleeing and defense or fighting, right? Protest fleeing and fighting. We'll talk about that later, but that's an example, if you will, of how the doctrine of lesser magistrate works in our day. Any other thoughts, questions about any of that? Ryan. I just wanted to make sure if you know where that lesser magistrate doctrine came from, I know you said Luther, so I know the person, but was he reasoning from scripture in reference to that league or some kind of persecution? And I know you went through that history, but would you remind me again of what he was thinking and what led to that? Yeah, so you can look up online and find the Torgau memorandum, which is gonna address it. The place where it's addressed, though, more fully, it's an article, it's a 20, 25-page article written by Luther. And the title of the article is a typical 30-word Puritan title. I can't remember the full title. Something to do with the use of civil authority and the expanse of Christian resistance under something along those lines. So if you're interested in that, Luther's writing on that article. Luther lays it out pretty clearly. Text me and I'll send you that article. You can find that online also for free. And really, really helpful to sort of read Luther's writing on it. Yes, Oliver? I don't quite understand the third reason for disobeying the government. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, it's not a bad thing, brother, because we're sort of in that period of history where people didn't understand it. Yeah, so in the third reason given for resistance is it is the duty or the right and the responsibility, even the duty of Christians to resist civil authority. And that's in accord with Romans chapter 13 verses one through seven, it's their responsibility to resist when civil authority overreaches or steps beyond the boundaries given to it by God and exercises its authority contrary to the will of God, exercises its authority in a jurisdiction where authority has been given to another. So an example of this would be if the federal government, for example, came in and said, we're going to educate your children now. Our response would be no, that authority has been given to me by God. They're not asking you to do something that God forbids technically. And they're not forbidding that which God commands. You can still have educational rights over your children, technically. But now that enters that third area where it is the Christian's right responsibility, even the Christian's duty to resist a government encroachment upon the authority that God has directly given to mom and dad, makes sense? So we'll see that because I think in, it's pretty clear to us, pretty clear to us one and two. Those points are pretty clear. What is more problematic in application, it's application doesn't mean it's unbiblical. I think it's highly biblical. But what's more difficult in its application is that third point of Christian resistance theory that it's the right or responsibility of the Christian to resist when the government exercises its authority in a jurisdiction that doesn't belong to it. And we'll see that more as we, we'll see that really clearly actually when we get into the American Revolution because they have the black regiment, the black robe regiment, I like these guys, during the American Revolution that as a part of forming their theology of Christian resistance understood the American Revolution to be in keeping with that third point of Christian resistance. So as we think about, we'll get into that in a couple of weeks, we think about their theology. We'll see that more clearly. Okay, yes, 6-0. The third theory, is that something that all reformed Protestants hold to? Cause I know I've heard, I mean, a few years ago that there's some that hold to the Revolutionary War was illegal. Yeah, yeah, and I think that's where there's confusion. So I would say that no, not everyone holds to that. That many people look at Romans 13, that's why we spent some time on that text, right? Many people look at Romans chapter 13 and they see in that, I think, wrongly though, that those two points are the only ones that are allowed, right, that are the only two that have a biblical basis. You can, you obey civil authority until they command something that God forbids or you obey civil authority until civil authority forbids something that God commands. And that's it for their theology. They put a bow on it, close it up and that's all that is there. I do think the third aspect is warranted from scripture and necessary from scripture. And those who see that third point, Luther's third point, so to speak, those who see that would, I think, be in line with Reformation thought as Reformation thought developed would also see, for example, the American Revolution as a just war. That's where just war theory comes from, things like that. So they would look at the American Revolution as justifiable biblically, not just justifiable logically but justifiable biblically because they're holding to that third. Those that don't, that I think are just confused by that, don't hold to that third point would say the American Revolution was unjust that it shouldn't have taken place. And we're gonna get there and we're gonna talk about that very issue very specifically because we have to put ourselves in the shoes of our Christian brothers and sisters there at the same time. What would you have done? What would I have done, right? And we'll look at that. There's some very, very compelling historical reasons for seeing the American Revolution as just, as biblical. So we'll look at that. All right, in France, there were developments in France that helped to push this along and this came in part through what are called French Wars of Religion, 1562, right after the Reformation, right? 1562, 1598, Reformation is still working itself out. Roman Catholics in France were persecuting French reformers. The French reformers who held to the doctrine of Calvin, Luther, the other Reformation period writers were called Huguenots. It's a French word meaning literally meaning housemates. So the Huguenots were meeting in one another's houses in secret to study the Bible because of Catholic persecution. And so this name for them, these housemates, was a derogatory name that they took to themselves much the way that Christians did. They took a derogatory name Christian and applied it to themselves. The Huguenots applied this word to themselves, came to be known as the Huguenots. And this began a lengthy period, the French Wars of Religion began a lengthy period of persecution of Protestants in France at the hands of Roman Catholics. Catholics had a family in France, the Gieuse family, G-U-I-S-E, who particularly and zealously hated Protestants. And so the Gieuse family started killing Protestants. There was the first that began, really began the French Wars of Religion, a massacre at Vassie in France where the Gieuse family killed 63, wounded 100. Huguenots responded by beginning to form alliances and leagues by forming an armed militia to protect themselves, right? And as they were forming these alliances, the Huguenots began to arm themselves, other massacres spread. Catherine de Medici, whose mother to Francis, the second king of France, sought a peace with the Huguenots, decided to marry her daughter to the Protestant Prince of Bourbon. Huguenots were promised safe travel to Paris for the wedding and when they got to the wedding, a member of the Gieuse family decided that he was going to murder one of their captains, Coligny, and at the wedding, or shortly after the wedding. He attempted the assassination, the assassination failed and these hyper-zellet Gieuse family members thought that it was going to cause the Huguenots to rebel against them and this battle was going to ensue. So they, out of fear, so they say, they decided to kill everybody, kill all the Huguenots that were coming back from the wedding and that is called, I'm sure you've heard of this before, the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacres, August 23rd, 1572. Upwards they say there were copycat massacres that took place all over the country of France at that time and they say that upwards of 30,000 Huguenots were murdered by Catholics at that time in response to that failed assassination attempt. Persecution finally came to a near end in 1685 under the Louis the 14th's edict of Fontainebleau. I don't speak French, but I can speak French food. And it came to a near end not because they decided to end the persecution but because there were so few Huguenots left to kill. Louis the 14th, by his own estimation, said that he reduced the Huguenot population from 900,000 to 1,000. Those were his own numbers. And the way that Louis the 14th in particular had done that was through the use of draganades. I think that's how you pronounce that, draganades. He made violent military thugs in France under his command, housemates with French Protestant Huguenots in the cities. So if you can imagine, if you were to send the National Guard, for example, into Jacksonville and National Guard has to have somewhere to stay. Well, nowadays they get them hotel rooms. But back then they would have put them up with citizens in that particular territory, in that particular area. So Louis the 14th marked all of the Huguenots strongholds in France, marked all of their territories, all of their cities. And he sent these militaristic thugs, these draganades, into Huguenot areas and housed them with Protestants. As you can imagine, the persecution, the brutality, the murder. And so that was how Louis the 14th bred out or bullied out Huguenots from France. Down to, as he said, about 1,000 were left. Many Huguenots fled to the New World for religious freedom. My family was among those. Our name is French. We actually came from Huguenots. My family was on one of the first three boats that came over from France at this point, it was Northern Europe, to the New World for religious freedom. And those reformers took root here. This period of Huguenot persecution produced theological works then, calling for resistance, really according to the third point by a group that were later known as the Monarchimax, those Protestant reformers who opposed or resisted the monarchy. And opposed or resisted the monarchy on the basis of its tyranny and its brutality against a religious freedom or their right to worship God as God intended. So there were three works then that came out of this reformation history in France on the part of the French reformers or the Huguenots. The first, and I can't really pronounce it, Franco Gallia was the name of the work. I've not read it. I'm sure you can look it up. Francois Hotman, Hotman doesn't sound French, but Francis King, according to Hotman, Francis King was originally elected by the people. And that's true. Originally the kings were put in place by appointment of the people. So before tyranny, before the expanse of a godless, evil, satanic tyranny, France was a Commonwealth built on the consent of the governed and established through covenant with the people, right? So to return the state that had now become a hotbed of tyranny, to return the state to its proper form, its pure form, its original form before the evil spread of a satanic tyranny, it required resistance to the monarch's overreach. Point three, right? So they began thinking through an application of Luther's third point of Christian resistance, resistance to tyranny. The second work that came out during the wars of religion in France was the Doudroit des Magistrates, by, if you speak French, you can help me out, by Theodore Beza. Theodore Beza was a disciple of Calvin. And Beza's points were similar. The monarchy was originally elected or appointed by the people, by the consent of the people, agreed with Hotman on that. And just like the people of Israel, ratified Saul as their king, ratified David as their king, the people existed before the king was given his power. It's a very important point in the development of their theology on this. The people existed before the king. So the king was not only responsible to God for how the king was to govern, the king was also responsible to who? The people for how the king governed, had a responsibility to God and to the people. The people were there before the king was given his delegated authority. And so governments, therefore, at their root are covenantal. They have a covenantal arrangement with God, a covenantal responsibility to God, and a covenantal responsibility to the people or to the govern. Therefore, because they have responsibility to the people, people not only have the right, but the responsibility to resist unjust or unlawful rule. We won't go back to Romans 13 to plow up ground that's already been tilled. But if you remember our understanding of Romans 13, Romans 13 does not teach absolute obedience to governing, to civil authority. Romans 13, also there written in the white space between the lines, is much responsibility on the part of civil authority to obey God in their exercise of authority. And when civil authority disobeys God or legislates or exercises its authority, contrary to the will of God, there's the right or the responsibility of the governed to resist that tyranny or that spread of evil. It's a responsibility of the people to do it. In other words, it would be sinful for the people not to do it. And we're gonna talk about that. People not only have the right, but the responsibility to resist unjust rule to oppose usurpers. Against kings turned tyrants, resistance, like Calvin and Luther, should be led by the lesser magistrate. That was what Beza had thought, still the doctrine of the lesser magistrate in place. Third, and this is a book we're gonna take more of a look at here in a few weeks, was a work written the same period of time. The title is Vendicke Contra Tyrannus. Vendicke Contra Tyrannus by pseudonym, Stephen Junius Brutus. And in the Vendicke, government exists as a two-fold covenant. And think about it this way with me. Two-fold covenant. In one covenant, you have a God on one side and the people and the king on the other, right? So one covenant, God on one side, people and king on the other. In this covenant, the people and king, covenant to obey God, both covenant to obey God, okay? In the other covenant, you have the king on one side and the people on the other, right? People agree to obey the king as long as the king rules justly in the sight of God, right? So on one covenant, God, people and king, they both agree to obey God. The other covenant, king on one side, people on the other, and the people agree to obey the king as long as the king obeys God, right? Or rules justly in the sight of God. If the king violates either of these covenants, the people then have a right and a duty to resist him. Okay, and this is, again, what we're seeing at this time in particular, is really a development of that third point in Christian resistance theory during the period of the Reformation. And that's gonna take clearer and clearer shape as we get into the Reformation in Britain and then in the American War for Independence, okay? So we're gonna look at those in the next week. Any questions to close before we close? Okay, if you have any questions, feel free to ask me and we'll keep plugging along. We're getting close to the revolution and hopefully we'll put a wrap on this little historical tour we're taking, right? Get into some more theology. Pray with me. Father in heaven, very grateful Lord to you for the opportunity that we have to think about these things. Thankful Lord for faithful brothers and sisters who've gone before us with the help of your spirit and the instruction and direction they have from your word, have thought through these things, worked through these things and we come now Lord to enter that conversation as it were, developing and applying our own theology of public life, help us to be faithful in that endeavor and help us to consider these things rightly, clearly, biblically, help us not to be swayed by personal agendas or interests, but Lord, we wanna be faithful to you in these things, knowing that you for your glory and for the good of your people have appointed civil authority, help us to think rightly about our relationship to civil authority. I mean, we not sort of blindly or simplistically stop short of a full-orbed understanding of these things, but Lord, help us to think deeply about not simply what you've said in scripture, but what you mean by what you say in scripture and help us Lord to obey you in these things and to be faithful to you in these things and Lord, we pray that with your help Lord that we would enjoy many, many, many more years of peace before any of this would have to be employed or applied, but Lord, if that's not your will, your people we want to not be ignorant of Satan's devices, but want to stand at the ready to defend your word, to defend our right as it were given to us by you, to worship you as you have called us to worship you. All this for your glory God, help us we pray in Jesus' name, amen.