What Exactly Do We Owe the President?

In a post today entitled The Most Disobeyed Commandment in the Church, David Murray cites the Westsminster Larger Catechism (Answer 127) in outlining what we owe the President:

1. All due reverence in heart, word, and behavior
2. Prayer and thanksgiving for them
3. Imitation of their virtues and graces
4. Willing obedience to their lawful commands and counsels
5. Due submission to their corrections
6. Fidelity to, defense and maintenance of their persons and authority
7. Bearing with their infirmities
8. Covering them in love

I fear that many Christians I know (including at times myself) have failed miserably at these (especially numbers 1 & 8). I'll let you and the Holy Spirit be the judge at how well you specifically have done, but Murray puts it this way:

Many Christians have shattered this commandment in a thousand pieces over the last four months, perhaps even over the last four years.

Sure, we must defend the sanctity of life and of marriage, but we must not do so at the expense of the fifth commandment. Since when do we get to pick and choose which commandments are most important and which are irrelevant?

Serious moral errors in some areas of government policy and practice are no excuse for failing to obey this commandment in all other areas.

Thankfully and mercifully, God offers forgiveness for this sin too – if we repent of it and believe in Jesus.
 

A Word for Preachers...Alexander on the Authority of Scripture

"(O)utside Holy Scripture, we have no authoritative Word from God. With the eroding of confidence in the authority of Scripture in our own generation, it is not at all surprising that there has been an evacuation of authority from the pulpit. The decline in preaching is almost inevitably a result of such an absence of conviction concerning the authority of Scripture. The history of the Christian church bears ample and sad testimony to this connection.

"The whole cast of a truly biblical ministry will be a concern that people should recognize our only interest is not in selling our own line, or persuading people of our own opinion, or seeking that they might adopt our own view on a particular issue, but in humbly, obediently, and openly seeking to deal with what Holy Scripture says, opening it up and making it plain. The task has never been more clearly illustrated than in the ministry of Nehemiah in Nehemiah 8 where the people are met together under the Word of God. The ministry which the Levites fulfilled was to 'read from the book of the the Law of God, making it clear and giving meaning so that the people could understand what was being read' (Neh. 8:8)."

Eric J. Alexander
What is Biblical Preaching?

A Word for Preachers...Al Mohler on the Preacher's Authority

"Far too many pastors operate under the assumption that the authority they enjoy is their own, that they somehow earned or achieved it, rather than merely receiving it from the hand of God.  Similarly, the people in our churches are often fooled into trusting the wrong kind of authority, an authority that originates in man and man's abilities rather than in the call of God...The preacher's authority lies not in profession, not in position and not in personality.  It lies in the Word of God alone."
Al Mohler
He Is Not Silent