In his sermon titled 'Preserving God's Hierarchical Design,' Scott Brown discusses the significance of recognizing and adhering to the hierarchical structure established by God over the church, the home, and the state. He emphasizes that God's authority is supreme and is the foundation of all relationships, as outlined in Romans 13, which states that all authority is appointed by God. Brown argues that rebellion against this divine structure leads to personal and societal turmoil. He highlights the importance of honor and obedience within the family as the basis for all societal relationships, citing the Puritans' belief that honoring one's parents is fundamental to understanding all other forms of authority. The sermon further explores how the church and civil institutions also require submission and honor towards leaders, even if they are imperfect. Brown warns against the anti-authoritarian tendencies in modern culture and calls for Christians to uphold God's hierarchical design for His glory and for the happiness of His people.

Please open your Bibles to Romans chapter 13, Romans chapter 13, and find verse 2, Romans 13 verse 2. I'd like to address the whole matter of the reality and the goodness of the hierarchical design of God as the supreme authority over the church, over the home, and in the state, and try to explain first the existence of that authority, and then the goodness and the beauty of it. God has declared himself to be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We just sang, Come thou, Almighty King. This is your Father's world.

God the Father created all that there is. He is the ruler, the king, and designer of all that He has made. And He exercises His authority over all things, over all institutions. And I'd like to identify that authority in kingship and to say to all of us that we live in a world where The powers that be, the evil powers that be that work in the world want to unravel all of God's authority in all of these realms. And of course the heart of man is against all authority, and so I'd like to walk through this matter.

It's just very important that we first acknowledge God's authority over all things and embrace God's authority over all things, and then play our part to preserve God's authority in the social realm in the three great institutions that God has created. In the midst of that, I'd also like to have us consider and really marvel at the power and the beauty and the happiness there is in honor and obedience in these realms of authority that God has given, because there's much happiness for every soul of man that acknowledges his authority. So in Romans chapter 13, I'll begin reading, Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever rejects the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment upon themselves. Let's pray.

Lord we pray that you would open up our eyes to see wondrous things from your law, that you would teach us the ways in which we should go, that we would marvel and find such joy in fitting into the authorities that you have established for your own glory. I pray for happy people who have found all of their hope in you. Amen. So there are many relationships where honor is required for both success and happiness. And this culture of honor is required actually in the various jurisdictions that God has established, those jurisdictions represented by the institutions that he has established, the church, the family, and the state.

And the Bible teaches that honor and obedience in the home is really the foundation of all relationships. We all know people who are hard on relationships. There are people who move from relationship to relationship, church to church, marriage to marriage, job to job. And often the root cause is the rebellion really against the institution and the authority that God has established. And often you find that that happens with adults because they actually never learned how to do it in their families.

We have many families here, and it's critical that you secure honor and obedience in your children so that they understand how sweet it is to have a humble spirit before their father and mother. The Puritans actually believed that the fifth commandment to honor father and mother was really, it was the controlling factor in all relationships. And they taught that the honor due parents is the heart and soul of all other relationships in the various relationships and the various jurisdictions and the various institutions that we're all engaged in. And I want to give you four examples of how honor and obedience in the home causes a life full of blessing in every area of life and to identify how this same honor and obedience is required of us in those jurisdictions and institutions that God has established. This is a very important point.

Misunderstanding this causes tremendous upheaval in your own life and in every jurisdiction that you'll ever be a part of. We actually have a, we, well not we, some have a president, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention today who is advocating the dismantling of hierarchies in the church. It's very interesting. I think we'll get some insight on that as we go through this. God desires, let's begin with this first jurisdiction, this first institution of the family I'm going to identify for.

And we'll begin really with the Church of Jesus Christ and the sheep who are in the flock of Jesus Christ. We learn from Ephesians 5 that submission For a child of God is a blessing to those who are in Jesus Christ's dear flock, and God desires that His children in the church actually submit to one another. That's why in Ephesians 521 the apostle says, submit to one another. And he's talking about this disposition that we have toward one another, where we moderate our attitudes, we weep with those who weep, we rejoice with those who rejoice. We serve one another.

We put ourselves below one another. And in that sense, you know, the way to secure sweetness in the church is to acknowledge that there actually is a kind of authority that we all have in one another's lives. The very existence of another soul puts us in relationship with that soul, and we have responsibilities to love them, to serve them, to forgive them, to practice hospitality with them. We could go through all the one and others in the Bible and explain that. You know, we are called to be affectionate to one another, to give preference to one another in honor.

We're even called to bless those who curse us in the church. Those are part of the one another's, you know, people think, well, if I'm part of a church nobody's ever gonna curse me, but you actually might be in the position where you need to bless somebody who cursed you. It might happen. And so what happens in the church is that we bring ourselves under the influence of the hurts of other people, the cares of other people, the needs of one another, instead of focusing on ourselves, we lift up their cares and their needs to God. And there is this way that we, as the apostle Paul told the church in Ephesus, there's a way that we submit to one another in the fear of Christ.

So in the relationships that we have with brothers and sisters, that is critical. And that's really one of the ways that God creates a really beneficial culture among His people. It's a culture of honor and service and submission. And then that extends to another relationship, and that is the relationship in the church. And in the church, we find that the Lord by His word requires honor and submission in the Church of Jesus Christ, under the just and the scriptural authority of elders of the church.

There are several places that speak of this, Hebrews 13, 17 is one of them. Obey those who rule over you and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable to you." Here the apostle is saying that you might have an impulse to be unsubmissive and to be rebellious, literally to those who are ruling, the elders of your church, But it won't be profitable for you. It'll be very unprofitable for you, frankly. That's what he says.

Paul speaks to Timothy, who is a pastor in the church in Ephesus, about this, and he says, and we urge you, brethren, to recognize those who labor among you and who are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their works' sake. Be at peace among yourselves, and we exhort you to warn those who are unruly." And then in 1st Timothy 5, verse 12 through 14, and then in verses 17 and 18, we read these admonitions, Let the elders who rule be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine. For the Scripture says, You shall not muzzle the ox while it treads out the grain. And then he says, And the laborer is worthy of his wages. And then in 1 Thessalonians 5, 12, and 13, we find a very similar admonition where you have leaders who are like all leaders, imperfect men.

But the apostle says, and we urge you, brethren, to recognize those who labor among you and esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake, be at peace among yourselves." So you have this jurisdiction of the church where There is a preservation of honor for that authority. So there's preservation of honor toward one another when we look into one another's eyes and we respect one another. And then there is the honor that we are required to have toward leaders, imperfect leaders. And you know, what you'll find from time to time, you know, the hardest parts of church life happen when you find yourself with people who never really learned how to do that, and you find broken relationships in the church that stem from this. You find church splits and slanders and hatreds and divisions.

And a lot of times those things, you can trace them right back to families where children really weren't brought up to honor their father and mother. There's a root cause of it. Sometimes it's because the person is not a believer, but if children are allowed to speak harshly toward one another, dishonor their father and mother, dishonor one another as siblings, not appreciating one another. You know, sometimes you'll see children hitting their parents and getting away with it, and it's just setting up that child, you know, for further tumult someday if they ever join a church. And so it's critical to establish those things.

Then another area is the area of civil leadership, this institution called the state. God instituted the state to govern, to prosecute evildoers. And God commands us not only to honor our civil leaders, but actually to obey them. And he actually says to submit to every authority. And he says, let every soul be subject to the governed authorities, for there's no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.

We most primarily apply this to the civil government, but he says here that all authorities are established by God. Now we know that all authorities aren't all that great, you know. Well, when the Apostle Paul was speaking of this, you have to remember who was in authority. It was Nero. And the Apostle is instructing the saints who are in the church in Rome right next to Nero.

And he is instructing them to honor all those authorities. And he's saying Nero is an authority from God. It's astounding, isn't it? We have this idea sometimes that we should, we only need to submit to and honor authorities that have everything right. But that's obviously not true because there are, all there are always flaws in all authorities, all.

And so we don't owe honor to authorities who have everything right. We owe honor to all authorities who don't have everything right. So there's no kind of condition involved here. There's also the authority of employers. God also commands honor toward our employers, and I'm going to extract this from Ephesians chapter 6, verses 5 through 8.

Bond servants be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart as to Christ, not with eye service as man-pleasers, but as bond-servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with good will doing service, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free." So here the apostle is explaining the importance of the preservation of honor toward the hierarchical authorities that exist in the realm of employment, in industry. And of course all industry is structured this way. You have heads of companies, you have boards, you have presidents and vice presidents and operations managers, and they all have authority in those realms. And What Paul is telling the Ephesians is that there's a way that you conduct yourself in the midst of your authorities. And granted, authorities in industry don't always do everything right, just like the civil authority, just like a father and mother, just like the authorities in a church.

But their perfections are not the reason for the affection of honor. It's rather something that is due. We give honor to whom it is due. And it's due all who are in authority, not just those who deserve it. You know, it's disastrous when a person who lives in the state doesn't understand that, a person who lives in the church doesn't understand that, a person who lives in the church doesn't understand that, a person who lives in the home and doesn't understand that, and the person, you know, who lives in the context of industry doesn't understand that.

That there is honor due authority. That doesn't mean that you embrace everything that the authority embraces, endorse everything that the authority endorses, but there is honor that is due to that authority. We live in an anti-authoritarian world. We live in the midst of an anti-nomian, anti-law church environment, in mainstream evangelicalism, and you actually have many people who believe that, you know, it's not even right for pastors to come and preach the law of God in their church, and it's not right to make commands of God's people because we're all under grace and not the law. Well, those are massive misunderstandings of what the Bible actually teaches, but that's kind of the environment we live in.

And the reason I want to bring this message is there are, you know, there are fissures, there are earthquakes going on in our culture that just continue to want to tear down all of the jurisdictional Authority that God, who is King, who created authorities, has established. And it's for the Church of Jesus Christ to understand the way that God structured the world and to uphold it. And you uphold it on the level of your heart, you uphold it on the level of your family, you uphold it in the level of your church, you uphold it in the level of your business, you uphold it in the level of your relationships with the civil authorities. That's how God ordered the world. This is my Father's world.

And I think it's just critical that Christians understand the role of preservation of honor in a culture. It's really a blessing when they do that and I pray that we'll continue to learn how to do that. So to you children, you know, do you have a heart of honor toward your parents? You know, do you workers have a heart of honor toward your employers? Do you church members have a heart of honor toward your dear sweet elders in this church who obviously don't do everything right?

Are you cultivating a culture of honor in your heart so that God's good order is preserved in the world? And of course only you can answer those questions because you know your hearts in all of that. Here's a reality. Honor determines just about everything in your life. And that's why the Apostle Paul speaks to children and he says, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right, honor your father and mother so that it will go well with you.

And the truth of the matter is is that if you lose honor toward your father and mother, toward your employer, toward your civil leaders, toward your spiritual leaders, it won't go well with you. So it's very, very important that we uphold this hierarchical structure of God. Now, I have a couple of friends in Florida who have written a resolution to be entered into the record of the Southern Baptist Convention at their annual meeting that is going to happen this summer. And they have written this resolution and it's titled God's Good Hierarchical Design. Tom Askell and Jared Longshore down at Cape Coral, Florida, in their church, Grace Baptist Church there have written this, and Tom sent this to me this week.

I'll read what they've written. I think it's a very good statement that explains God's hierarchical order and how good it is. So I'm just going to read this to you. It's written in the form of a resolution. There are whereas's and then there are resolves, so you'll just have to be patient with that.

And I know we're not a Southern Baptist Church, but this is written for Southern Baptist churches to consider. Whereas the church is to give glory, majesty, dominion, and authority to our God, who is worthy now and forever. And there are several passages of Scripture that are listed after each of these whereas's. Whereas God has created a hierarchical creation both in heaven and earth, and God has raised Christ from the dead, seated him at his right hand far above divinely created rulers, authorities, powers, and dominions. Whereas all authority in heaven and on earth is given to Christ, And Christ has given the keys of the kingdom to the church to be wielded on earth.

Whereas Christians are to submit to their leaders, wives are to submit to their husbands, children are to obey their parents, citizens are to honor their rulers, servants are to be subject to their masters with all respect, even the unjust ones, and such subjection is a gracious thing in the sight of God. Whereas the hierarchical structure of God's creation is seen in that there is no authority except from God, those that exist have been established by God, And whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed and will incur judgment for the authorities that exist are God's servants. Whereas the hierarchical structure of God's creation is seen that the head of every man is Christ and the head of a wife is her husband, whereas the implications of God's good hierarchical design are seen in that man was not created for woman, but the woman created for man. And in the church, women are not permitted to teach or exercise authority over a man, whereas many in our culture are confused about God's good hierarchical design and have even proposed tearing down God-established hierarchies. Now be it therefore resolved.

So now we come to the resolved section. Resolved That the messengers of the SBC meeting in Orlando, Florida, June 9 and 10, 2020, renew our commitment to God's good hierarchical design in heaven and on earth, and be it further resolved that we affirm every human being's ontological equality as those made in the image of God, while rejecting the egalitarianism of our age that demands each person be equal in every possible sense of the word, and be it further resolved that we exhort husbands to sacrificially love their wives, as Christ did the Church, wives to submit to and respect their husbands, fathers and mothers to raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, and children to obey their parents in the Lord. And be it further resolved that we invite all Southern Baptists to rejoice in and encourage women learning in the church and while so doing to maintain and renew our commitment to women learning quietly with all submissiveness, resolve that we uphold the goodness of being subject to civil authorities in all things, not contrary to God's law, while putting all our hope, not in man, but firmly, in the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ." So that's the end of the resolution.

I read that resolution because when I read it I thought this is a very clear and precise statement about the hierarchical structure of God, as the authors of the resolution call it, the good, hierarchical structure of God. And it is for individuals, the youngest individual from a child to a husband and a wife to a father and a mother, a single person, a worker, a member of the state, a citizen, or a member of the church to uphold these good matters of hierarchical design that God Almighty, who established all authorities, has done for His own glory, And he's done it for the happiness of all of his people. And so I just want to, first of all, challenge all of us just to examine our hearts. Our hearts as they relate to those authorities in the state, those authorities in our workplaces, those authorities in our churches, and those authorities in our homes, and even those authorities that exist between one another as we learn how to submit to one another, even personally, that we moderate ourselves in honor toward one another. The Bible says honor all men, and so that's a responsibility that all of us have.

So everyone in every station in society has this great opportunity to uphold the good hierarchical order that the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords has established for His glory and for all of our happiness. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank You for the greatness of Your kingdom. We thank You that You are the Creator and the ruler of all there is, you've given us instructions for how to live our lives in the midst of this world and all the different relationships. Lord, you've blessed us with such a rich array of relationships in all these areas, And you've given us ways that we might be a blessing in every part of life.

You are so kind to direct us in ways that are far better than our own hearts, that you lift us up out of ourselves and bring us into such a happy and beneficial kingdom that's governed by your commands and that is empowered by your Holy Spirit and is defined by your word of truth. And so, Father, sanctify us by your truth. Your word is truth. Amen. Thanks for watching!