Our new summer series, “Majoring on the Minors: The Big Messages of the Bible’s Small Books” (Habakkuk, Hosea, and Malachi) couldn’t have come at a more opportune time! What tremendous truths from these minor prophets to joyfully anchor us in the middle of a shifting society.

Incidentally, you can listen to a preview of all these books in a special podcast here. Or you can hear a more detailed and specific message weekly from each book by going here.

Of course, Q and A are part of each teaching series at FFC, but one question escaped last week. So here’s Pastor Carlos’ insight to this question that arose from Habakkuk 2 regarding the “righteous living by faith” in a culture where the authorities oppose God and his Word.

Q: How does this stack up to Scripture telling us to obey governments?

A: Scripture is very clear that we are to submit to our government (Rom 13:1-7). However, if the government commands us to directly disobey God, then we have the responsibility before God to respectfully refuse and obey Him. This is exactly what happened in the book of Acts when Peter and John were commanded by the governing authority of Israel, the Sanhedrin, to stop preaching Christ. They respectfully disobeyed the government in order to obey God (Acts 4:1-31; cf. Acts 1:8). Furthermore, God detests the perversion of truth. As followers of Jesus, we must therefore reject the perversion of truth (Isaiah 5:20; 1 Corinthians 13:6).