Every time I am introduced in these United States, I recall introductions In Angola, where my wife and I lived for eighteen years. On such occasions, we were introduced in prayer, which was safer. And the man introducing me inevitably said, “Oh, God, Ulangeesi (phonetically) Cole has come to teach us. As you know, he has no wisdom whatsoever of his own. If you don’t help him, and give him words, we will go away as empty as we came. Amen.” Then the platform was opened up. It was hard to go downhill, because downhill was where you began.

My wife Naomi and I went to Angola in 1948 after a year in Portugal.  We went there convinced that we were responding to a call of God. Thirty-eight years later, I still believe it was a call of God and that we served the Lord in Angola as servants of God. It was that thought that sustained us for many years. What we did not realize at the time, but what l now firmly believe, is that many Portuguese counterparts of people sitting at these tables–I’m talking about elected and appointed, mainly appointed, officials–were also servants of God. Not many of them, if any, understood that. They went out there for other reasons than to serve God. I never met a Portuguese official who thought of himself as a servant of God. The concept would have seemed very strange to them. They went to make their fortunes, or they went to improve their lot over what was possible in crowded Portugal. Like young men everywhere, they were drawn to the frontier, but when they got there, they found that those who had gotten there first were bent on civilizing the frontier. In fact, that was one of their favorite words. The Portuguese described, and justified their presence in Angola, as well as in Mozambique on the other side of the continent, by saying that they had a civilizing mission, while there were many jobs in the government bent on civilizing territories fourteen times the size of the homeland. And so there were a lot of people who went there to make their fortunes and found positions in government.

When they used the term “civilizing mission” they used a term that was very dear to me, “mission.” If there are any black Africans present, they probably are squirming in their seats, resenting the term “civilizing.” I don’t blame them. I merely use it because that was the term that was used by the government at that time. But the word “mission” was dear to us because we were missionaries and thought we had a mission from God. And in using that term, the Portuguese themselves subconsciously made the point that I make, and that is that officials in government are servants of God. They have a mission to accomplish. Does that sound far-fetched?

Well, a minute or two ago, we heard Romans 13, and that’s a passage that’s very familiar to us Christian people for a couple of reasons, primarily because it tells us how we are to respond to government, especially when government is not very congenial. We lived in a country that was not very congenial at the time.

In the late 1960s when we came back from Angola, we found this country full of half-crazed professors who were telling their students to rebel, and they spelled America with a “K” and, as a consequence, a lot of people in a lot of churches spent a lot of time thinking about Romans 13 and its implications. I suppose it was discussed and written about more than at any time in our history except, perhaps, during the Revolutionary War, when a lot of very sincere people felt that the American Revolution was not justified.

Or, if it had been discussed during the Civil War period when people were being drafted in that most awful conflict. I don’t know whether it was studied more in those times than in the 60s or not. I do know that I myself had wrestled with the passage during our years in Angola. In 1960, the Rebellion broke out, and it was murderous and bloody. But the official response was equally murderous and probably a little bit bloodier. Quite a bit bloodier. The rebels, who were seeking to wrest control of Angola from the Portuguese, used Bible language, and they called upon Africans everywhere to rise up and to destroy Pharaoh and to turn Angola  into a new promised land for themselves. On the other hand,  the state was the state, and the people who had studied the Bible as Christians knew that they were told by that passage in Romans 13, and in I Peter.2 and by implication in many other passages, to be subject to the powers that be, that is, the governing authority. So, what was the Christian to do?

Well, I’m not going to try to answer questions like that today. Caesar and Christ are not in conflict in these United States. Caesar protects our rights to worship according to conscience. Christian people like me are sometimes disappointed in decisions handed down in the courts, but we have no just complaint We have never been ordered by any court to do what we know is wrong. If a lower court were to make that kind of decision, the decision would be reversed in a higher court. The lower court decision would be struck down. Conceivably, the day may come when courts pass, or rather concur, in unjust legislation, or in legislation that pits Caesar against Christ. And if so, we Christians will tell the courts and the nation at large two things: first, Jesus Christ is Lord, and we must obey Him. Our first obedience is to Him. That’s where we stand, that’s where we will always stand.

And the second thing that we will tell the courts and the legislators and the nation at large is that men and women in public office who pass legislation are servants of God first, public servants second, and as servants of God, they ought to do what God wants them to do. Well, what God wants them to do is laid out in the Bible. I would like to reassure legislators and others in this room this morning that we didn’t ask you to come to this breakfast to give you instruction.

We don’t have a list of political requests to which we affix the words, “Thus said the Lord.”  We are a mixed group.

In any church in which I have ever been, there were always Democrats and Republicans. I speak on the radio frequently, and every once in a while I am awed by the fact that I never open my mouth but that many of my warmest friends disagree with me. So, we have no instructions for you. But what God wants you to do is what you, yourselves, wanted to do when you first sought public office.

Paul lays it out rather plainly in Romans 13. He says an official is God’s servant–in the King James translation the word is “minister”, which is simply a Latin word for “servant” If it had been translated from that Vulgate edition, we would have gotten the word “servant” as we have in many modern translations. An official is God’s servant to do you good. He is God’s servant, an agent of justice, to bring punishment on the wrong-doer, and that is exactly what you wanted to do from the beginning. You had a two-fold program.

First, a program that would benefit the people, and secondly, the maintenance of law and order. That’s the platform on which all candidates campaign. They promise to do good. Their concept of good may not be the same as yours, but they promise to do good as they understand it, and we trust them to have an adequate concept of good. And the second thing is to catch all the criminals still on the streets.

Well, successful candidates usually try. They try because they are idealistic people. They are also sincere people. I know a few politicians, as well as quite a few appointed officials, fairly well, and my respect for them is genuine.

Most of them succeed. Good government in the United States is taken for granted. Of course, cynics sometimes say, well, it’s a rotten system, and they spell America with a “K”.

Or they say judges are all corrupt and politicians–you can’t trust them any more than you can trust a used car salesman.

I don’t believe that I sometimes wish we could round up all the cynics who continually harp about the miseries of this country and ship them abroad. I can think of any number of places where we could send them. But after a year or two, good guys that we are, we’d let them come back, provided they have their tails properly tucked between their legs.

Since the Founding Fathers we have had good government in the United States. Am I naive? Am I talking as a PR man for politicians and others in DuPage County? The answer is, We preachers are seldom naive. We know that some politicians are justly accused of corruption. We know that because we ourselves are exposed to similar temptations and in some instances, we also succumb to those temptations.

What are those temptations? The first one is loss of idealism. If you lose that idealism that led you into politics at first, you become a political hack, no matter what your standing in the political pecking order. Preachers who lose sight of their heavenly calling, even as politicians–preachers who lose sight of the fact that they were called by God–begin to do their work routinely, without that passion that is so necessary if a man is to function as a true servant of God.

Another one of the temptations to which politicians are exposed and to which they sometimes succumb is loneliness.

When a man reaches high office, he often loses his true friends. They avoid him because they are afraid he will think they have their hands out or are exploiting an old friendship. And so he makes new friends, untested friends, who will ask him for the favors that his true friends would never ask him for. And they will never give him good advice.

They will flatter him. They will become sycophants in order to get something from him. As a consequence, sooner or later he is accused of having cronies. That’s not what he wants; that’s not what he needs. Preachers are in the same fix. Many men avoid pastors and preachers. Why? Oh, well, they think of preachers as too holy for comfort, or too hokey. Besides, preachers know nothing about the workplace.

You’d be surprised what preachers know and have experienced. Well, loneliness is a killer, and it can make a man lower his standards, whether he is a politician or a preacher. A lowering of standards is inexcusable in pastors, but it’s regrettable in politicians.

Why am I so hard on preachers, harder on preachers than politicians? Because we claim a special relationship with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. I said earlier we went to Angola convinced that God had called us. Not every politician makes that claim. I wish they-did. Most politicians are good men. They’re men of honor. But I’m convinced that if they were to commit themselves to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, they would be better men than they are. This is not to say that all Christian people are better than all non-Christian people. Many of us are worse. In fact, if we weren’t such problem people, we never would have come to Christ in the first place. But having come to Christ in the first place, we’re better than we would have been if we had not come to him. And when you find these good, honorable men in politics, you covet them for Christ. At least, I do, convinced that they are better men. Why? Because they’d bring to their service a new awareness. First, the awareness of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Think how that would affect a man’s service in politics. And second, they would be aware of their standing as servants of God. Not just public servants, always looking over their shoulders to see what the voters are thinking, but people who look first to heaven, acknowledging that they are servants of God. It would bring a whole new dimension to the word “service.” Service in the service of the King of Kings.

Not every official wants to be a servant of God. Quite a few politicians would sneer at the concept. Some of them may be laughing right now, thinking I am naive. I’m not naive. I served in the U.S. Army for three years. I used to work with my hands–I used to work for a living, believe it or not I did, indeed. I was a lowly telephone installer. They taught me how to use tools, and I’ve always been grateful to the Bell Telephone Company. I still have a set of Kline cutters that I’ve had for 45 years. I’m not naive. I think that one reason why–there are many reasons–but one reason why some officials are not willing to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ is expressed very neatly by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, one of my favorite commentators. What he said is that they’re not prepared to meet the moral demands which Christ would make on their souls. Nevertheless, the concept is clearly stated in the New Testament–we heard it already.

It’s also in the Hebrew Bible. We Christians call that the Old Testament. And in the Hebrew Bible on one occasion, God called a man named Cyrus a “Pagan King”. And he said to Cyrus, “You have not known Me.” Nevertheless, God called him His anointed, using the same Hebrew word that is used for the Messiah, Christ Himself. And God said, “I have given you a name, I have called you by name. I’ve given you a title, and I will arm you,” in order to do things that God wanted to be done. And apparently the man Cyrus stood willingly.

There was another king, a man called the Pharaoh. And God said, “For this cause I put you on the throne, not somebody else,” in order to accomplish His purposes. God said, “I raised you. I could have put anybody on that throne in Egypt but I put you there, because I wanted you to do a little bit of dirty work; I wanted you to make the people of Israel want to leave Egypt, and that’s why you were there.” Here was a man boasting in his own powers. He did the will of God.

Unwillingly. Nevertheless, he did it. Well, you can’t extrapolate; you can’t say that every functionary, every official, does the will of God. Nevertheless, in office, by virtue of their office, they are God’s servants. The office confers servanthood on them. They are public servants; they are also primarily God’s servants.

So the implications for believers has already been spelled out. It is submission. We are a law-abiding people.

We vote for those whom we prefer. Some vote Democratic; some vote Republican. I have voted both ways in my career. Fence straddling, I suppose you’ll say. But we vote for the person we prefer. And we support the winner, whoever the winner is. He can count on our support. That doesn’t mean we agree with everything he does, but he can count on our support. We don’t tell him what to do. Some people do. But most of us don’t.  We trust the man to do what he thinks is right.

The implications of this truth of servanthood for lawmakers are also fairly clear. First of all, servanthood, and second, responsibility before God, will hold you accountable, and that is the main theme of the 82nd Psalm which we heard. All Psalms are poems, and the 82nd is no exception. It uses yery graphic imagery. The imagery there is God on the bench and all of earth’s rulers in the dock before Him, and He is examining the way they have conducted the business of ruling. He calls them gods. It’s an odd expression. Why is it there? For this reason: They are exercising divine functions. That’s why he calls them gods & we understand where the concept of servanthood comes from in the Bible.

Ultimately the only judge over all the earth is God Himself, but He has conferred upon men and delegated authority to judge, and that’s why He calls them gods.  But what He does is this:  he says, “Your life is going to be examined.” He calls them before Him, and He describes Himself as the judge of all the earth. He said, “You will die like men and give accountability.” And so He lays out before them the kinds of things which they ought to do. This is the sort of thing that Jesus had in mind when he talked to Pilate. Pilate said, “Why don’t you answer me? Don’t you realize that I have the power to release you or to crucify you?” And Jesus stood there and calmly said, “You would have no power if it weren’t given you from above.” You understand the concept of delegated authority? The 82nd Psalm tells judges, lawmakers, legislators, how to do their business. God castigates them for corruption in the courts, for taking bribes and for cruelty to widows and orphans. The prophet Zephaniah, who was writing at about the same time, described them as ravening wolves. I’m  not picking on judges.

I believe that most of our judges are men of honor. Zephaniah didn’t single out judges. He talked about prophets, priests and judges. He said the whole society is corrupt, and I think that’s usually the case. When you have a corrupt judiciary, you have simply one single manifestation of a disease that affects the whole of society. I’m not picking on anybody. What I am saying is that the earth is the Lord’s and in various ways we are all His servants, and He calls the earth to repentance and to faith.

Have you answered that call? Have you turned from your sin and acknowledged a divine evaluation of your life and then put your faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord?

God calls some of us to vocational service as preachers or pastors. In some respects, it’s an awful job. Many a time in my life I’ve said, “Lord, if only I could go back to installing telephones or fixing cars or something like that,” The Apostle James says, “Be not many teachers, for we shall be judged with greater severity.” The man is an idiot who aspires to an office in the church. We go only as we are called by God and acknowledge that we are accountable.

God calls other men to be politicians. I don’t use the word in a pejorative sense-, I use the word politicians–I like the idea of politicians. I lived in a dictatorship for many years. There were no politicians there. Oh, there was office politics, that kind of thing. But there were no freely elected politicians.

So whether I say politicians, officials, functionaries, I’m talking about the same thing. God calls some people to that kind of service. Others He finds in office, people who don’t belong there. And we read about them from time to time, as when we hear of a Greylord investigation or something like that.  But because they are in office, they become, by virtue of the office, servants of God, and they are accountable. It is very serious business to become a functionary. It’s almost as serious as it is to become a preacher or a pastor.

Well, we who participate in this Prayer Breakfast do a lot more praying than is evident on an occasion like this. We work according to the clock. But I would like to assure all of those in office that we do pray for you. We do, indeed. It’s the minimum that we can do. It’s the minimum that we must do, because God commands us to pray. The Apostle Paul said, “I urge you first of all”–he doesn’t use that expression ‘first of all’ in many places. He said, “I urge first of all that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be given for all men, for kings and all those in authority,” and Paul said that in the context of the Roman Empire which was girding itself to execute him. We pray for you. We have no axes to grind, not now, not tomorrow, not the next day. We have no agenda. We didn’t ask you to come here to receive your instructions and then to start the new year properly instructed. The agenda set forth in Scripture, the same agenda you had for yourself before you ever saw the Bible, is the only agenda we have for you, and that is to do good.

That is to be intolerant of injustice and crime and lawlessness. What we need in the public and in the private sectors are men and women like the Christ of the Bible.

Bishop Sheen, to whom I referred already, describes that Christ. Listen to what he says: “We need a Christ today who will make cords and drive the buyers and sellers from our new temples, who will blast the unfruitful victories, who will talk of crosses and sacrifices and whose voice will be like the voice of the raging sea. But He will not allow us to pick and choose from among His words, discarding the hard ones and accepting the ones that please our fancy. We need a Christ who will restore moral indignation, who will make us hate evil with a passionate intensity and love goodness to the point where we can drink death like water.  What we need are men and women like that Christ.  What we need are politicians who, having recovered moral indignation for themselves, will make the rest of us hate evil with a passionate intensity and love good to the point where the absence of it in our society is intolerable.

If you will be that kind of governing authority, modeling yourself after that Christ, you will be a true servant of God. We shall be satisfied, and we believe God Himself will be pleased. Some day, who knows, you may hear Him say,  “Well done, good and faithful servant”