This article was shared during Transformation Connection Indonesia,
which was held in Surabaya, Indonesia on 28 October - 1 November 2008
Recorded by Dr. Sharon Ayabe from Kauai
Mark Beliles – City Transformation
30 October, 2008 – TCI Surabaya
I’ve been a pastor of a church for 31 years. And I was a very typical American pastor, discipling my people, when God intervened in my life and gave me a much bigger vision. In 1979, I heard a speaker talk about discipling the nations. And, somehow at that moment God gripped my heart with a sense of my purpose in really doing this.
And, so I began to study to prepare myself. How would this look? How would we do this? And, when I started to study this there were no books at any Christian bookstores that talked about this. But, I began to go back to the writings of the great church fathers and reformers. And, I began to learn that the Bible says so much about how to transform nations. So, I’m going to try to teach a few of the principles today and tonight about this.
And, I will also give some testimonies, especially tonight about how God is using key leaders and politicians all around the world.
To really disciple a nation, we need to train leaders for three main areas of a culture. I believe it’s very important to share the gospel and help to serve the poor. And, it’s so exciting to hear about what’s happening in the Mega-city vision. In very simple ways we’re transforming our cities.
But my passion and what I want to emphasize is what I want to call looking at things from a leadership perspective. If we never change our leaders and raise up new leaders in government and business and education all our efforts will be like putting on bandages on the sores of our society. We have to seek God for leaders that will not be causing new problems but bringing solutions. Whoever controls money, knowledge, and power in a city controls the future of that city.
Jesus emphasized our mission, which is to disciple the nations. But the way He said to disciple the nations, besides evangelism and service, it’s primarily teaching the nation God’s principles for these areas of life. The emphasis I want to draw your attention to is when Jesus says “Teach all.” I looked in the Greek for the meaning of the word, “all” and found it means “all”. And what I mean is that everything in this Book is vital for seeing transformation come. There is more in this Book about law and government then there is about the church. There are so many principles in this Book about business and the marketplace. And that’s what we need to teach in our churches if we’re go to raise up leaders who can lead well.
In fact, today, there is an emphasis on 7 areas of culture that need to be transformed. And, in many ways this diagram talks about these 7 areas. But I think the most significant institutions are the family, church, marketplace, and government. I want to take some time now and talk to you in particular about government.
Jesus himself taught about politics.
The first teaching that has transformed history comes from Luke 22:25-26. The primary purpose of this teaching was to speak to leaders in politics and government. So, this is just a government teaching. And He makes a comment about how the governments of the world usually work. “We can see the kings of the gentiles and they exercise lordship”. They see themselves as the master and their people as their servants.
This kind of top-down organization is the pagan idea of government. And, from the beginning of human history this is how almost all nations in the world have operated with a king or emperor with total control over the government. At the time that Jesus was speaking, the most powerful leader was Caesar. But Jesus said to His disciples, but this is not how you should govern. “But let Him who governs be the one who serves.”
Jesus was telling His followers that someday, Christians will have the opportunity to be government leaders and when that happens your attitude should be totally different.
So, what was He saying? The government exists for the whole purpose of serving and protecting those individuals of the state. Now, you may not realize this, but this teaching has transformed history.
It was never a concept heard before Jesus taught this about government leaders being servants. But as His disciples began to go out to the nations and to plant churches, they began to teach this principle. And, over a few centuries of time, finally pagan nations began to remove their kings and emperors and to give them new titles of leadership. Today, in many governments of the world the highest political authority is called the “Prime Minister”. This is because of this teaching of Jesus Christ. Christianity began to transform Europe with kings being replaced by prime ministers. Prime minister simply means, “the chief servant of all.” Now, unfortunately, someone could hold the position of prime minister and not have a complete Christian perspective of what this means. But at least, what is important to see is that when the church was faithful to teach what Jesus taught about government, gradually governments began to change. So, if someone ever says Jesus never taught about politics, ask them then where did the idea of prime minister comes from.? Almost no one knows this, but it is Jesus.
Let’s look at the second political teaching of Christ. And, this one comes from Luke 20. This one comes from a question the opponents of Christ asked Him. They were trying to trap Him with this question to cause Him trouble. But it was a political question, “Do we pay taxes to Caesar? Is this right?” And, of course, if Jesus were the Messiah and He said we should pay taxes to this pagan leader, the religious leaders thought this would end His movement. No one would believe He is the Messiah. He would become very unpopular with the Jewish people because they hated Caesar.
But if He said, “No we should not pay taxes to Caesar”, then the Roman authorities will hear of this and probably arrest Him for sedition. So, that would end His movement. So, they thought they had Him trapped.
And, to answer, Jesus asked for a coin and He held up this coin and asked, “Whose image is on this?” And, of course, the image was of Caesar, of the government. “Then give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.”
The symbol demonstrated the authority of the government over this jurisdiction. If Jesus had stopped there we would have been in trouble, but He said but “Give to God what belongs to God.”
And, this was a historically transforming statement. And, what He was saying was that Caesar does not rightfully claim rule over every area of life. Government’s authority should be limited. And, we should never submit to government the areas that are not under its rightful jurisdiction. At that time, this was radical because Caesar claimed jurisdiction over everything. The state controlled business, education, religion, everything, and anything it wanted to do. And, this was the pagan mentality of top-down, lordship over everything. It was true of Rome. But it was true of Egypt, China, and every civilization. Top-down total jurisdiction of the state. But Jesus was saying, “No this is wrong. Government is given by God only a certain limited role.”
Now how do we know what those separate jurisdictions are? The Bible gives us a wonderful definition of this. But in one general way, we can understand what Jesus meant if we think about image on that coin. That was very key understanding of what Jesus was saying. Jesus was saying that image represents the jurisdiction of the state. But Jesus says that the state cannot claim God’s jurisdiction. And, we know God’s jurisdiction because of the image of God. Caesar’s image was on the coin. But the Bible says, God’s image is on the soul of man.
This was told right in the beginning in Genesis 1, that God made man in His image. And when God first established civil government in history it was with Noah. And this image was mentioned by God for the reason that God created government. In Genesis 9:6, God delegated to man for the very first time the responsibility of punishing criminals. Before this there was no police or government at all. That’s why we see in Genesis 4 when the first murder happened. There was no government to exercise punishment. And, without any kind of civil government to punish crime the Bible tells us in Genesis 6 that the world became filled with violence like this.
In fact, it tells us that God saw that the end of all human life was going to come because of the unchecked murders and violence. Genocide is something that could happen very easily if there were no checks. It still happens today. In different cultures where authority breaks down then there is slaughter of human life on a mass scale. That was the condition of the world before the flood. It was a whole generation of mass murderers. If they were not directly guilty of murder, they at least were giving tacit consent as their families were fighting each other. So, they were directly or indirectly all guilty of mass murders.
So, that’s why God in His righteous justice decided that the penalty would be death of that entire generation. So, He brought the greatest act of capital punishment in history through the great flood.
And, then when the floodwaters receded He brought this one righteous family out and said to them the same thing he said to Adam in Genesis 1. “Be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth.”
But He added, for the first time, this responsibility. “Now Noah, if someone else kills someone else, you are to put them to death.” So this was the beginning of civil government in world history. So, this is what’s so important that we have to understand, brothers and sisters. Governments are not inventions by humans but are divine inventions for our good. It was founded by God just as much as God has founded the church. The state then is not an unspiritual thing. And, it becomes dirty and ungodly because good people have neglected being involved in it. And this is the problem all over the world. Most Christians think that government and politics are dirty and ignore it. So, the result is that ungodly leaders are leading the nations and bringing suffering and problems to these nations.
But while we must have in our churches teaching about our government and the call to serve even in this area of life. Do you say “amen”?
Genesis 9 tells us in verse 6 when God said started punishing murders, He gave the reason. The reason God gave is because man was made in His image. So, this brings us back to the story of when Jesus talked about the image of God.
Because when God started government with Noah, He said humans are valuable in the eyes of God and need to be protected. And this is why we have government in our fallen sinful world because it’s God’s design to protect all human life. The image of God describes the sanctity of human life. And, so when Jesus said, look at the image on the coin, He meant that taxes are under the jurisdiction of government. But give to God what has the image of God upon it. That’s the soul of human beings. The spirit and mind of man are created by God in a unique way in every human being. Our personalities and individual thoughts are not given by government, but they come from God. And, when we turn those thoughts into words in worship or other forms of communication, government has no right to control because it is given from God.
So, what we’re talking about here, is what Jesus was saying is that government has its limited areas of responsibility, to basically protect human life. But it’s not responsible for controlling how we think, or when we can meet, or whom we can talk to. It has no jurisdiction over religion, education, or communication. Government has no right to control those things in a nation because they all relate to our soul, our thoughts, our worship. Government needs to stay out of that area of life.
This, of course, was unheard of and Caesar would never have agreed to that. But this is one of the most important teachings of Jesus that has transformed government.
Gradually where Christians went and began to disciple people in different countries the concept of limited government gradually brought about individual freedoms and rights. Today, the idea of separation of church and state, comes from this concept.
So, let me conclude with just one last statement in the New Testament about government. And, this tells us the same thing that we read in the Old Testament.
And, these are from Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2. And, it says basically, the simple definition: government is ordained by God to punish criminals. The Bible never says government is to provide jobs, welfare to the poor, or schools. These all might seem to be good things, but what I think is very important, if we want to bring transformation we have to begin to think about God’s way of bringing transformation.
This is what Jesus was trying to say, “think jurisdictionally.” Don’t just assume that here’s a problem, we want to solve it, so let’s get the government to do it. I like brother Bob’s title, What if Jesus were Mayor? Or we could ask what if Iman were mayor? If a Christian is in government, their job is not to be a pastor, they’re not to get the government to do what the family is to do. They should not be getting the government to do what the church should do or what the business place should do. We have to step back and look at the problems and ask, then who has God ordained and given the rightful authority to solve this problem?
More problems come if we try to solve something the wrong way. You might remember the story of when King David wanted to bring the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem. And he designated the day and it was a big celebration for everyone. So, the Ark had come from the Philistines and had been hidden in a house for many years. But it had come on a cart pulled by a horse.
And, so on this big day, the people said we’ll just continue to bring it into Jerusalem the same way. And, you may remember, as it was going along and people were shouting and singing, the cart began to fall over and one man reached out to try to keep it from falling over. And, he was struck dead by God.
The people were shocked. David was angry with God. The whole celebration came to a stop and David and they were all calling out “Why? Why? Why didn’t You bless what we were doing?”
But this very grievous experience caused them to go back to search the scriptures about God’s way of how to move the Ark. And, they remembered it was to be carried on poles on the shoulders of the priests.
Maybe the people of the world can do things certain ways and it’s okay. But as Christians, if we’re going to bring transformation, we have to be serious about being sure that we’re doing it God’s way. Good intentions are not enough. So, let us learn how to think according to God’s jurisdictions and what He’s established.