”I say: Keep the king’s command, because of God’s oath to him. Be not hasty to go from his presence. Do not take your stand in an evil cause, for he does whatever he pleases. For the word of the king is supreme, and who may say to him, “What are you doing?” Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing, and the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way.“
Ecclesiastes 8:2-5 ESV
Your author has argued, in the vein of Leupold, that today’s passage is best translated as referring to the Great King, God, and not to an earthly monarch. We’ve reasoned that the context of Ecclesiastes overall, and that of Chapter 8 itself, centers on God’s radical sovereignty in the face of life’s often inexplicable happenings.
Nevertheless, we can still very well consider the passage from a more “under the sun” vantage point too. We can see it as a sort of Romans 13-ish lesson, informing us that we ought to get used to the fact that earthly powers rule over us. We can see it as an admonition for God’s people to be resigned to the vast power of an earthly ruler and not to be revolutionary, as it were. If we do that, however, several hard lessons emerge.
First, in 1 Samuel 8, as Israel comes to the Lord’s prophet demanding a king like the surrounding pagan nations, in contradiction to the Lord’s command for Israel, we have the greater context of kings and rulers.
”Finally, all the elders of Israel met at Ramah to discuss the matter with Samuel. “Look,” they told him, “you are now old, and your sons are not like you. Give us a king to judge us like all the other nations have.”“
1 Samuel 8:4-5 NLT
The big fact of this is that the elders simply state the plain and brutal truth that Samuel’s sons, Joel and Abijah, weren’t like him. Samuel appointed them as judges but the Scripture tells us (verse 3) that they were greedy and accepted bribes, thereby perverting justice in the land. Samuel was sorely upset that the people were rejecting his sons, and the Lord’s order of civil society, but this is what happens when sin settles in. Instead of repentance when we’re confronted with sin’s consequences (the perversion of justice and government corruption in this case), we very often turn to pragmatic solutions instead.
Secondly, this shows us that if we won’t follow the Lord and be faithful, we will necessarily become slaves. Sin is a slave maker. The world will forever speak, along with the cunning hiss of the Serpent back in the Garden, of human freedom. “Take, eat…” is the alluring offer of sin; she’s a seductress who’s always promising ease and freedom through sin. She comes and touches us in those moments of frustration or boredom and whispers the truth of a particular circumstance but not the truth about the world. Sin flourishes when the context is dropped, when we see right now as everything and lose sight of the Lord. The best lies are always wrapped in some measure of fact, after all. You’re hurting. You’re broke and can’t pay your bills. You’re lonely. You’ve failed in some way. You’ve been wronged.
The power of sin lies in its power to deceive (John 8:44), but the power of faith is to see God’s will and goodness through all the smoke and fire of life (Romans 1:17). The Tempter’s trick is to point out an obvious frustration and then steer us to “solve” it through unfaithfulness. It’s the classic sleight of hand. He promises freedom but delivers the worst kind of slavery.
”They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you.“
2 Peter 2:19 NLT
Watch how Satan tempts the Lord in the wilderness. He pointed out our Lord’s hunger. It was obvious. The Tempter comes after our weakness, our weariness and frustrations. No enemy is successful trying to scale the fortified wall of one’s bliss. The great adversary, Satan, is the father of smart tactics. He says, in essence, to Jesus, “you’re hungry…but the Son of God shouldn’t be hungry.”
He points out a want or a worry and uses that to malign the Father. After Jesus rejects this attack about bread, Satan brings Him to the temptation of presumption. It’s always this pattern!
Lack of faith on one side, or foolhardiness on the other. Sin swings us to extremes.
We see the pattern everywhere. Hedonism or cruel asceticism. Gluttony or privation. A spendthrift or a miser.
The lie is that men can ever be absolutely free. We’re either ruled by God and His word/law – that is, the law of faith – or by sin. The full truth is that we either accept the yoke and burden of Jesus (Matthew 11:30) or succumb to the brutal tyranny of sin.
What do we think the addictions to drugs, alcohol, and sex are? They’re sin’s cruelty. They promised instant relief from frustration and despair, or from boredom, or pain, and they delivered shame. He who will not wait on the Lord will invariably wait upon the whims of tyrants.
”Samuel was displeased with their request and went to the Lord for guidance. “Do everything they say to you,” the Lord replied, “for they are rejecting me, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer. Ever since I brought them from Egypt they have continually abandoned me and followed other gods. And now they are giving you the same treatment. Do as they ask, but solemnly warn them about the way a king will reign over them.”“
1 Samuel 8:6-9 NLT
The truth is here. If we’ll have the courage to see it.
Many Christians today would try to reform the country through politics rather than through the gospel. Like Israel’s elders, we see injustice in our land and miss the fact that sin begets sin. The people decry the corruption of their leaders but the Lord tells Samuel that the leaders are corrupt because the people are. Sin always causes conflict – internally and externally. We see that here. The people hated the leaders and the leaders hated the people. A righteous king is a rarity because it’s from sin’s impulse to be one’s own god that the lust for power comes in the first place.
Right now we live in an America where the leaders clearly hate the people. The president, Joe Biden, a decrepit and corrupt man who has enriched himself and his drug-addled son, Hunter, through his power, has orchestrated a veritable invasion at the southern border. Law abiding citizens need to have ID for this and that, to drive, to fly, to buy a prescription, but millions have come from other countries illegally. Are there potential terrorists walking in from Mexico? One is foolish to doubt that, but this is what comes from a so-called Christian country that hasn’t been bothered by public schools telling generations of its children that God is a liar. That we’d think we can get “our guy” in Washington to stop our national descent into madness while the schools teach Darwinism has always been a fantastical lie.
The brutal syncretism of Darwinism with Christ has left our land tottering on the edge of the cliff. To be part-Christian and part-humanistic in epistemology and philosophy, is to commit spiritual adultery. Yes, it’s so easy to eat the great sweets of hatred of the Woke Left, to fill up on the junk food that is condemnation of their obvious sin, but not have a true diet of faith ourselves.
We’ve failed to understand that if we don’t see God and His word/law as our supreme King, then we will live in some kind of tyranny. Right now we have the ignominy of living under the corrupt wisdom of the kleptocrat, Joe Biden. Which ungodly tyrant rules isn’t the case. They may change garb but they’re all the same. They all declare that someone or something else is the true king rather than Jesus Christ.
The modern state tells us that the separation of church and state means that we can’t bring Christianity into politics. And we accept this. The government, even while at times paying lip service to the Lord, legislates and plans as if it is the supreme law and not God. Implicit in this is the supremacy of secular humanism…it, humanism, is the “religious” presupposition of the land and not Christ.
This is the king.
Humanism.
Americans today, and Christians are tragically caught up in this, presuppose the sovereignty of their own word/law rather than God’s. To say that we can’t bring Christianity into politics is to say we can’t bring it into ethics, which is to say that God isn’t, in fact, truly God. We’ve watered down Christianity so much that unbelievers have very little to be offended by, but God has much.
Our adultery is in accepting the myth of neutrality, which is that secular society can’t be governed by God’s word but by something else. What would that be? What law or ethic is there that protects unbelievers from Christ?
It’s the false god of humanism.
It’s our generation’s mark of the Beast and many of us wear it proudly, even if unwittingly on our foreheads!
This is the “other god” that we’ve gone off after in our adultery. And here we are wailing for Donald Trump to save us. Whether he is a good president for our time or not isn’t the point, though he’s as better than Joe Biden as a bad cold is better than having smallpox. No nation can survive leaders that literally hate their own country and for that reason alone Mr. Trump, despite his legendary flaws, is better than literally anyone the evil Democrat party can usher forth at present. But America doesn’t need to “make America great again.” She needs to “make America repent again.”
She needs to make America godly again. That’s the true MAGA movement. To rally behind Donald Trump is to miss the point because trying to ameliorate the consequences of our sin without repentance is to further the problem’s intensity. We must reject the grand fallacy of the separation of church and state when it means that Joe Biden is literally protecting sinners from Jesus Christ!
How ghastly a notion!
And yet we have stupidly assented to it. Do we realize that to nod approval to this separation myth is to say that government is supreme and that Jesus Christ is the tyrant and the backbencher? Do we think He will bless us and deliver us from our trouble as we merely change our lies rather than repent?
Samuel should have disciplined his sons. He should have called them to account so that the name of the Lord was not slandered and sullied. Likewise, our church leaders and teachers must be bold and call for God’s people to come out from Babylon and to submit to the Bible’s teaching. We’re shot through with sin in our pews – men and women of the world rather than of the Spirit. What we need is bold preaching along with robust church leadership and membership. The Lord calls us to His lone plan for making men good – the church militant, that is, the gospel centered church of voluntary submission to the obedience of faith. To try and reform men and culture through politics is a rejection of Christ!
The gospel centered church and the gospel centered home will make America great again for the simple reason that it’s this that the Lord commands. There is no peace or love in sin. There’s only joy and freedom in Christ.
And the people, unlike Israel’s elders, must repent too. We must not let our churches fall to shambles of doctrine while seeking earthly kings to fix the mess. To rage against President Biden but fail to call effete and wimpish pastors/elders, not to mention the greedy wealth-peddlers, to account in the Lord’s name is a fool’s play. This great passion for politics rather than the bride of Christ just shows us how we’re doing the same thing Israel did before us.
So, yes, make America great again by making her godly again. And to be godly is to be repentant and walking in faithful obedience to Him who saves us. There is no other way. None. Only when we believe this will we be delivered from the judgments of sin that are currently sweeping over the land we love. This predicament has been a century or so in the making…in fact, the battle goes back to the Garden. We need our politicians and leaders, yes, but how are they to lead unless they are taught? And how are they to be taught the gospel of Jesus Christ if the church won’t preach the Word about sin and repentance and righteousness? And how are they to understand leadership if they don’t understand authority – that is, God’s authority?
The days of ignorant Christians, full of emotion, driven by worship bands rather than sound doctrine, tossed to and fro, uneducated in systematics and apologetics, has brought us to this steaming pile of sin. America’s borders are open because her heads are empty. Unless and until we see again that Jesus Christ is the way, the life and the truth we will succumb. Unless men and women stand firm on the sound principles of the word-law, they won’t stand at all. God’s word is beautiful, yes. He is our Heavenly Father, yes. And he is our loving Savior, yes. But He is also truth incarnate. His church must be true…they must be the philosopher-kings Plato sought in his secular humanistic dream!
We will tear down the walls of Jericho only when we know the truth in faith, and love the truth so much that our salt seasons all, and our light (in Christ) radiates over and across every nook and cranny of life.
”To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast? For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.”
Isaiah 28:9-10 ESV
Christians, stop being intellectual know-nothings. Stop being afraid. The truth is ours in Christ. The “wisdom” of the world is on display. So-called scientists that are afraid to speak the truth about basic biology. So-called economists that think trillions in debt is okay. And so-called leaders that say crime is okay but punishment of it is sin. All of this is because the church has collapsed and joined the world.
We should and must live for this mantra alone:
”For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.“
Romans 11:36 ESV
Recent Comments