Clough Proverbs Lesson 80
DI #4: The Executive Function
This morning we
continue with our study of the fourth divine institution and we’re once again
reminded of the fact that this institution indicated in this blue sector of
this chart is an institution that was founded after the fall, and because of
the fall. The fourth divine institution
is that part of the world, that part of the created world, a particular part of
man’s social life that is decreed to be the place where there is law and
justice and punishment. Those are the
features of the fourth divine institution.
Those features must always accompany the fourth divine institution. Government is always involved with law. And so in our study we have suggested that
the Bible can be summarized along the modern lines of first the legislative
branch. And last time we dealt with the
legislative branch as something under God’s law, that God is the sole lawmaker
in history because God alone has omniscience necessary to design adequate
legislation.
We saw in the
principle under divine viewpoint law that only on a divine viewpoint basis are
the three dilemmas of law put together, stick together and run together. The first element that men have always fought
for in law is the problem of happiness, the problem of something that give
pleasure; on the other hand they want something that works, that has success
and they want something that is righteous.
But on the divine viewpoint basis and on the divine viewpoint basis
alone is the right, the successful, the happy.
All three of these elements fall together inseparably once the
legislation comes from an omniscient Creator God who is righteous, who makes
the laws fits His righteous nature, who also, because He is Creator can make
laws that work and therefore are successful, and because He’s Creator He is
also the God who when He legislates, He legislates laws that make people
happy. These three parts fit together in
divine viewpoint law.
Another element of
divine viewpoint law is that it involves what is called by, at least Abraham
Kuyper, and many of the Dutch people, sphere sovereignty, that is that God’s
order can be divided up into compartments and these compartments are these
divine institutions: one, responsibility, labor; two, marriage, sex; three,
family, authority and education; four, law and punishment; and five, tribal
diversity throughout the world. These
are spheres, spheres which cannot be transgressed without shattering the nature
of creation. And the reason that we are
in trouble today is because man has made the institutions out of balance. The fourth and fifth divine institutions are
so heavily exaggerated; why 95% of the population that the first, second and third
divine institutions are withering away and dying. Socialism and welfarism always destroy the
first divine institution. When Big
Brother makes all the decisions for you, then Big Brother exercises his
volition and you don’t your. And by
inheritance taxes, which is nothing but a socialist attempt to destroy the
third divine institution we have the destruction of the great families of this
country. When a father, who earns money,
cannot give it to his son without paying taxes that’s an interference. Inheritance taxes are totally
anti-biblical. People say well,
inheritance taxes were given to help contain families, to help compensation of
power but that’s prejudging, that’s assuming that just because a person has
wealth they will misuse the wealth. They
are, therefore, guilty before they are proven guilty. And so in heritance taxes are a form of
judgment and it is a judgment that is unbiblical.
So sphere
sovereignty is a very vital point. Many
of you younger people probably are going to go through a transition, to some of
you as fast as it seems to, then all of us will be in it, in which the whole
human viewpoint structure of what we’re now living in is going to collapse
around us. And those of you with doctrine,
who understand the concepts and the divine institutions may be in positions
where you can rebuild all over again, lay the concrete slab and start building
up from that, rebuild everything on the basis of the Word of God because human
viewpoint institutions are not long for this world. Sphere sovereign, then, is the second
element. Not only do the three elements
of happiness, success and righteousness coalesce in one, not only do we have
sphere sovereignty, but also under the divine viewpoint concept of law we have
the law of a sanctifying agent. Law has
a purpose unto God and that is to reveal to man the depth of his sin. Even Gentile law that is not directly related
to Israelite law does the same thing.
Law reveals man’s sin.
Now what we have
told you is nothing new. Someone came up
to me the other day and said that the were reading the institutes of John
Calvin and they suggested everybody in LBC ought to do this because they
discovered that much of what is taught here isn’t new, that John Calvin himself
taught this centuries ago. Not just
Calvin, you can read Augustine, Augustine taught the same thing, The City of God, read it. It talks about demonology, Augustine in The City of God has a whole complete
demonology, book after book after book when he analyzes the
Let me go back
into history just to reinforce this on your mind, this doctrine of legislation
before we move to the next sphere. When
the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, during the coronation of Queen
Elizabeth in 1953 had a big long ceremony and when the moderator of the general
assembly of the Church of Scotland walked up to the queen and he gave her a
Bible, he said the following thing, and you can say all right, these people
aren’t fundamentalists and they don’t really know what they’re saying, but the
fact that they had this as late as 1953 in the coronation of the Queen of
England shows that what we just taught about law is something that’s thoroughly
embedded in the Western tradition. It’s
the humanist and the anti-biblical people that are the innovators, not us.
Here’s what was
said to the queen as she was given her Bible in 1953, (quote): “Our gracious
queen, to keep your majesty ever mindful of the law and the gospel of God, as
the rule for the whole life and government of Christian (?) we present you with
this book, the most valuable thing that this world affords.” And I’ll read you the first line again so you
catch it; to the queen, this is to keep your majesty ever mindful of the law
and the gospel of God, as the rule for the whole
life and government of Christian (?).
Now doesn’t that imply that the Bible was intended to be, under this
western tradition, the fountainhead of wisdom for the design of law? Law was to flow out of chokmah, that was based on Mosaic legislation and New Testament
principles.
Not just in
Now you couldn’t
have it more clearly put that in the early days of this country our legislation
was perfectly designed out of the Bible.
So therefore, the application, as we said last time, for Christian
citizens you must be familiar with at least the book of Deuteronomy, and
hopefully you’ll do some reading in Exodus and Leviticus, and you will reveal
as a voting citizen and you have the opportunity to send letters to your
Congressmen, to your representatives, that you understand something of what the
Bible has said in these categories.
You’ve got enough illustrations.
Soon we will have a book available in the library, The Institutes of Biblical Law which you can use as a handbook of
you want to, but you must know the biblical principles. That’s when you get chokmah or wisdom so that you don’t have to rely upon men to make
laws.
Now the wisdom of
this shows up. Throughout history and in
our own country there have been two groups of people who have been very
scrupulous to design their way of life after the Bible. Unfortunately neither of these groups are
Christian, which just simply shows you that most Christians simply see the
gospel as something very personal but you’re never to apply the Word to each
and every sphere of life. One group is
the orthodox Jewish community. And in
the orthodox Jewish community do you or do you not have economic
prosperity? Do you or do you not have
family stability? Do you or do you not
have a minimum juvenile delinquency rate.
Does it strike you as odd that the orthodox Jewish community who
practice living by the Mosaic Law seem to prosper, socially, financially and in
their families? The other group that has
practiced particularly biblically principles in the economic field are Mormons,
and who is prospering now. Who owns half
of Marriott? Who owns significant parts
of Safeway? The Mormon Church; the
Mormon Church is one of the most powerful and wealthy religious groups in the
world. Why? Because they save, because they don’t get in
debt, because they follow biblical economics and the result; they prosper. Why do they prosper? They follow God’s law.
So instead of
following God’s law what are we doing?
We rely upon human viewpoint or what the human conscience cranks
out. Human viewpoint
standards—foolishness. For example, in
1971 the New Hampshire House of Representatives had the following lawmakers in
their bodies: one man convicted of using the mails to defraud; another man was
arrested after stealing an ambulance while drunk; another man who was making
laws for the state of New Hampshire was convicted of statutory rape of a
mentally retarded 15 year old girl. Now
with people like that making laws, who would you rather have? Moses’ law, antiquated though it may be, or
those kind of people making the laws?
Obviously the Bible affords a better standard.
Now let’s turn to
the next sphere of government. We’ve
gone from the lawmaking to the law enforcing, the executive function. To see this let’s turn to Deuteronomy 17:14,
we’re now moving to the second great area of government. First we dealt with the legislative, now
we’re moving to the executive; then we’ll move to the judicial. Now these categories are somewhat artificial,
the last two. Some of the materials,
both in Deuteronomy and in Proverbs today will strike you as overlapping in the
sense that I can’t define the executive and judicial as nicely as I’d like to
because in the Bible they are mixed. The
law enforcer often was the administrator of the execution of the punishment.
Now in Deuteronomy
17:14 you have the classic statement about the power of the executive branch of
go. “When you have come into the land
which the LORD thy God gives you, and shall possess it, and shall dwell therein,
and shall say, I will set a king over me, like all the other nations that about
me,” the king is the executive, he is the top executive of the nation. [15] “Thou shall in any way wet him king over
thee whom the LORD thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shall thou
set king over thee; you may not set a foreigner over thee, who is not thy
brother. [16] But he shall not multiply
horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he
shall multiply horses; forasmuch sanctification the LORD has said not you, Ye
shall henceforth return no more that way.
[17] Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not
away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. [18] And it shall be, when he sits upon the
throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him,” and then a very important
point, “he shall write himself a copy of this law in a book out of that which
is before the priests, the Levites; [19]
And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life, that
he may learn to fear the LORD his God, and to keep all the words of this law
and these statutes, to do them, [20] That his heart be not lifted up above his
brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand,
or to the left; to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and
his children, in the midst of Israel.”
All right, so
right away we’re told a very important principle about the executive branch of
government under divine viewpoint. In
divine viewpoint the executive branch of government is always under law. The executive branch is not a law unto
itself; it must always be under law. The
king of Israel had to be under law, contrary to the kings of the ancient world;
Pharaoh was a law unto himself. Pharaoh
had no code, there was no law code, this is an interesting point, in all the
archeological work done in Egypt it’s very astounding that not once… not once
has there ever been found any law… not once!
There was no law in Egypt.
Pharaoh was the law. All you have
is Pharaoh said, Pharaoh said, Pharaoh said.
Egypt hat the ultimate Big Brother government. Egypt was a total totalitarian welfare state. Egypt had the most stable government of the
ancient world. The average Egyptian
loved the stability; instead of Henry’s “give me freedom or give me death,”
most men throughout history have always said “give me security or give me
death,” and all Egyptians liked that.
And that’s why there was only one revolution against the Egyptian
government, and who did it? The
Jews. And even they didn’t want to go,
God had to kick them in the rear to make them rebel against the welfare state
of their generation. So apart from the
Jews Egypt had a very stable government and had the acclaim of everyone in
it. Why?
Men always like security rather than freedom. They would rather have the fourth divine
institution than the first.
So the executive,
then, in the Bible, is under law, not like Egypt, Big Brother government where
Big Brother determines what is and is not correct. Here God’s standards control the executive
branch. Now again, to quote from a
famous document of history, that will soon be in our library, this is a rather
rare document, we had to send to Harvard to get a Xeroxed copy if it since
there are only six copies in the United States original, it’s the law works of
Samuel Rutherford. Samuel Rutherford was
a great Puritan who in 1644 wrote a book called Lex Rex, and in this book Rutherford attacked the concept that the
king was over the law, and it’s the classic Christian statement down through
the centuries that law, now king, reigns, and that always as Christians, in
whatever society we are we fight for the establishment of law and not men as
ultimate authority. And his argument in
a series of 44 questions. I’m reading
part of the 22nd question in which he attacked the king. This is during the war when the Scottish and
the Parliamentarians were fighting against the Royalists. And the Puritans were anti-monarchy; the
Puritans were against centralized government.
They were against Big Brother government, as Bible-believing Christian
have always been and at least the communists recognize it, that’s why they
always attack Christians. So question 22
in Rutherford’s argument and part of I want to read reads this way:
You’ve just read
Deuteronomy 17, to show you that Charles Clough is not the first person to
apply Deuteronomy 17 to the problem I read Samuel Rutherford in 1644, a few
years ago, who said: “He who in his
first institution,” see, he even used the word institution, “is appointed of
God by office, even when he sits on the throne to take heed to read on a
written copy of God’s law that he may learn to see the Lord is God and to keep
all the words,” he is quoting John 17, “Therefore the king is not of absolute
power, the king is not above law. But
Deuteronomy 17:18 and 19, the king, as king, when he sits on the throne is to
do this, therefore, the assumption is clear that this is the law of king as king
and not of a man as a man. But as he sits
on the throne he is to read on the book of the law, and verse 20 because he is
king his heart is not to be lifted above his brethren. And as king, verse 16, he is not to multiply
his horses, so politics and (?) is good,” and then he goes on and describes the
point.
So Samuel
Rutherford, the book, Lex Rex. You can obviously see how popular it is,
there are six of these copies in the United States at the present time. You have the classic Christian statement of
political power and obviously it’s a symptom of our society that books like
these are buried deep in the bowels of Harvard’s library, that they’re not
being read and obviously you see what you see in the government. One of the greatest things that could happen
to day would be some publisher to publish books like this in modern paperback
form and give people real Christian literature to read, not this myth stuff.
The first
principle, then, of the executive branch is that it is under law. Deuteronomy 17 is the classic statement;
Samuel Rutherford, the Puritan applied this to the King of England.
The second
principle about executive power in the government is that the particular office
of the executive branch functions to a partial degree as God. In other words, it is…, and we write this very
carefully, it is partially, and we put partially, a God-substitute. The Bible recognizes this. Why?
Because before the flood there was no government, therefore there was no
immediate judgment in society, therefore there had to be a government that judged
immediately. You see before the flood,
here is the problem. Before the flood if
you had, say somebody went out and killed somebody, we have this murderer; now
the murderer couldn’t be judged by anyone in his family. Remember Cain, Adam could not execute capital
punishment against Cain; Cain had the mark of Cain that prevented civil justice
from functioning because there wasn’t any agency of justice. The father could not administer that kind of
judgment upon his son.
Therefore, the
only deterrent to crime in the ancient world of the pre-flood day was the
promise that ultimately God would judge… ultimately God would judge. That didn’t work and so for 1600, over 1600
years men functioned in an age of conscience in which there was no human
government to force him to obey the law.
People who advocate anarchism, as people have since the last century,
anarchists are basically naïve people who fail to read their history well. You always must have government. Now when government comes in Genesis 9, after
this, in the postdiluvian civilization, you have government then punishing,
government then takes part of the future judgment of God, brings it into the
present. In that sense government is
partially a God-substitute.
To see this turn
to Psalm 82:6, in Psalm 82:6 God addresses the princes, and he calls them gods,
“I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High.” In other words, the title given to princes,
or the executives, are gods, and the Bible is quite careful when it speaks of
Elohim; it’s not an accident this happened.
God refers to the executive powers because the executive powers do part
of God’s work today, that is, they execute judgment, partially, and fallibly,
but they do execute it.
Now, further
passages that show the divine nature of the executive branch and here’s where
it kind of mixes up with the judicial, but if you turn back to Exodus 21:6,
part of the law, translated in the King James as “judges.” “Then the master shall bring him unto the
judges. He shall also bring him t the
door,” etc. We won’t go into the details
but just notice that the master brings his slave to the judge but in the Hebrew
the word for “judge” is “Elohim,” or the god.
He brings him to the god; why does he bring him to the gods? Because these are executives and to some
extent the judicial people are carrying out part of God’s own duties.
Turn to Exodus
22:8, “If the thief be not found, then the master of the house shall be brought
unto the gods [judges],” so in Exodus 22:8 you have the executive people again
called gods. In Exodus 22:28, “Thou
shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people.” And it’s talking about the executive branch,
again called gods. So you see the
seriousness which government has taken.
Does it strike you now, many of you have studied history and you never
got it together in divine viewpoint framework and therefore history is a pile
of facts and you learn the dates and vomit it back on an exam and you just are
tired of that kind of stuff. The reason
you’re tired of it, you’ve never learned to hook it all together. But does it dawn on you now why, when the
Bible was honored in the early days of America that people were very government
conscious and were very serious about how they designed the governmental
institutions, because this seriousness came to the from Scriptures.
In John 10:35
Jesus comments on this passage.
Oftentimes this is used to show Jesus did not claim to be God; it’s
precisely the opposite, He did claim to be God and this verse proves it. First look at verse 33 to get the
context. The Jews were having an
argument with the unregenerate Jews.
“The Jews answered them and said, For a good work we’re not stoning you
but for blasphemy; and because that you, being a man, make yourself God. [34] Jesus answered them and said, Is it not
written your law, I said, You are gods?”
Now verse 35, Jesus exegetes it; He says, “If He called them gods, unto
whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, [36] Say ye of
him, whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blaspheme;
because I say, I am the Son of God?”
What Jesus is saying here is that if the executive branch performs some
of the duties of God and is therefore called the place of the gods, then I, who
am the God-man and the executive par excellence, then why do you blaspheme
because I claim I am God. Jesus was
therefore claiming to be God, precisely the other way. In this passage to, in verse 35, Jesus says
“If He called them gods, unto whom the word of God came,” what does that
teach? It goes back to the first
principle of the executive branch. What
did we say it was? The executive branch
is under law. Who is it that’s called,
Jesus says—those who have God’s law, the standards, those to whom the law comes
He calls god, not god in themselves who make the law, these gods receive the
law, they are under the law, they obey the law, they are submissive to the
law. So the executive branch is under
the law as well as divine in nature.
Now we turn to the
book of Proverbs. Now we are prepared to
understand some of these Proverbs. Turn
first to Proverbs 16:10; we have a rather startling sentence. “A divine sentence is in the lips of the
king; and his mouth transgresses not in judgment.” Certainly you read verse 10 you say wait a
minute, doesn’t verse 10 teach the infallibility of the executive? After all it says “divine sentence” and it
says “his mouth transgresses not in judgment,” aren’t those the phrases that
would refer to infallibility, that the executive is perfect in all that he
does? Is that what the Bible is
teaching? In the book of Proverbs, any
given Proverbs you have to decide between two ways how to take it. First, a proverb can be prescriptive or it
can be descriptive. And you’ll find
proverbs that are both, proverbs that describe real life, what it’s like, or
proverbs the way life should be. For
example, “the wise man is one who does” thus and such. That’s descriptive but it’s also prescriptive
in the sense it’s telling you that if you want to be a wise man then you’re
going to do that. Same here, verse 10 is
a prescriptive proverb. It is
prescribing the behavior of the king ideally, what he should be doing as the
executive under the fourth divine institution.
“A divine sentence,” this is the word for the Word of God. Now look at what this is saying, “The Word of
God is in the lips of the king,” the Word of God, “his mouth transgresses not
in judgment.” In other words, again this
is teaching the divine function; it prescribes by force part of the Word of
God. The Word of God says “thou shalt
not steal,” and the executive branch is there to physically enforce God’s
Word.
Now admittedly
most policeman and most government and most citizens for that matter don’t
really know what they’re doing, but you, if you’re a Christian today, should
know what they’re doing. You have the
Word of God, they don’t; they don’t read it, you do. And you should understand when you see a
policeman or government is why they’re functioning the way they’re
functioning. Their calling, whether
they’re actually in practice fulfilling that calling is another story, but the
calling of the policeman, the calling of the mayor, the calling of the
government, the calling of the President is to actually enforce partially God’s
Word. That’s what he’s for, and that’s
why the executive branch is important.
And Deuteronomy 17, remember, what was it that the king was to read so
this could be true, verse 10 could be true, “a divine sentence could be in the
lips of the king?” The divine sentence
couldn’t be in the lips of the king if the king didn’t do what? Study the Word of God. Have you ever checking in before you vote for
a candidate next time, how much study of the Word of God has he done. You might write him a letter and ask
him. Don’t be shocked.
Proverbs 20:28,
another verse on the same line, showing that the executive function performs
part of God’s work today, indicated by technical terms here. It says, “Mercy and truth preserve the king,
and his throne is upheld by mercy.” If
you read that one way you’re going argue the mercy and the truth of verse 28
refers to what the king does; that’s qualities of his personal character. No, that’s not what verse 28 means; the
“mercy and truth” in verse 28 are what God does through the king. The “mercy and the truth” are words that are
taken from 2 Samuel 7 in the Davidic Covenant.
Remember the king here is a king who is the son of David, and when it
says “Mercy and truth preserve the king, these are terms that speak the fact
that God raises him up and takes down.
So the sovereignty of God is in view.
God is sovereign and therefore mercy, love, sovereign love is the mercy,
and God is immutability and immutability plus sovereignty is the word for
truth, amen. So “mercy and truth preserve the king,” the
word “preserve” is imperfect tense, which means it habitually preserves it,
moment by moment by moment by moment by moment preserves it. So if an executive is to be sustained it must
be by mercy and truth.
Now does this ring
a bell with anything you ever read in the New Testament, in particular one
passage in the New Testament tells Christians what to do about government as
believer priests? We won’t turn there
but the section I’m thinking of is 1 Timothy 2, remember what it says,
Christians to pray for executives.
Why? Because of this
principle. In order for the executive to
function in Satan’s world, what’s Satan trying to do to any executive? Destroy him, there’s a battle going on. Here’s the fourth divine institution; here’s
Satan and here’s a man, we’ll call him an unbeliever, but nevertheless,
unbeliever though he be, he be stuck in the power structure, he is an executive
in a governmental function; maybe Mayor, Governor or President. All right, he’s the executive; it doesn’t
matter whether that man is a believer or not, once he functions as an executive
because the framework in which he’s functioning is the fourth divine
institution, and it is that institution that comes under fire because Satan wants
to take over the fourth divine institution.
When the antichrist finally is victorious in history, how has he pulled
it off? By securing a base inside the
fourth divine institution.
So Satan is
interested in destroying or taking over the fourth divine institution. There’s a constant tension here. Now what, in a fallen world prevents Satan
from taking over the government? Grace. Now we don’t earn it and you don’t deserve
it; you can believer or unbeliever inside the fourth divine institution, it
doesn’t make any difference. As fallen
creatures we are under God’s wrath.
Satan is the god of this world and Satan could, were it not for common
grace, take over any government any time he so pleased. The only slender thread that saves a
government from falling is the thread of common grace. That is why 1 Timothy 2 lays it on you and it
lays it on me to pray for this institution.
If you don’t, then this institution may collapse and wherever you have
the fourth divine institution collapsing you’re going to have sorrow. When any of these divine institutions
collapse you have sorrow. “…his throne
is upheld by mercy,” the same teaching in verse 28.
Proverbs 21:1,
this shows you something else very peculiar about the executive branch of
government. “The king’s heart is in the
hand of the LORD, as rivers of water; he turns it whithersoever he will.” Now the word in the Hebrew that’s emphasized
or the phrase that is emphasized is the “rivers of water” and the word is
p-e-l-e-g, most of you recognize that as the proper name of a patriarch,
Peleg. The word means to divide and it
meant to dig an irrigation ditch. So
certainly in this part of the country this idiom should communicate. Digging an irrigation ditch channels the
water; the farmer moves the water by means of irrigation ditches, we say
irrigation pipes. Instead of peleg we’d put pipes; the water is
channeled by means of the irrigation ditch and so the analogy in verse 1 is
between the water that is moved and the king’s mind and God’s sovereignty.
And here is the
peculiar thing; you can have a man, we’ll draw a throne here, and let that
throne be his executive office. Now
let’s take a man, say Cyrus; let’s take another one, let’s take Ashurbanipal,
the Assyrian. Both of these men, say,
grew up as unbelievers, never knew anything in the Word of God, had no personal
relationship with God whatever. And
they’d had their own little hassles with sin and so forth. Now, one day Cyrus takes the throne, or
Ashurbanipal, or anybody else in the ancient world, Sennacherib, any one of
these great kings, sits down and now he sanctions, one day starting a certain
time when he receives the scepter, now he functions as executive. Now what this verse says is that beginning at
the time that the king functions God, as the sovereign Lord of history, begins
to work on him in a certain way, so that God leads history through these
men. God sows the seed as power lust
through satanic intermediaries. The
point is that, for example, take Hitler.
Hitler comes to position as executive.
All right, in that position God had Hitler perform His work for Him
which was to condemn the nation of which he was President, he was popularly
elected, God had a thing going for Germany and Hitler was his boy to do
it. And this verse says as good kings
and bad, he doesn’t say the good king’s heart or the bad king’s heart, it just
says “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD.” So God is in sovereign charge and He moves
men. He moved Cyrus to offer the
gracious decree to bring the Jews back.
He had Hitler do his work and so on.
The point is,
Proverbs 21:1 says that the executive, of all the people in government, is one
who is affected very deeply by God’s sovereignty, probably at a subliminal
subconscious level. So much for the fact
that the executive is a divine office or has a special relationship to
God. If you want an illustration of this
I would suggest Isaiah 8:12-14.
A third principle
of the executive is the subject, follows directly from the second, if the
executive… if the executive is fulfilling part of what God would do if God were
here now, then doesn’t it stand to reason that the subject, the citizens of a
country, should respond to the executive, in his lawful area, as they would
respond to God. It follows from the very
fact the executive is performing parts of the functions of God, therefore the
citizen should respond to what to what the executive does as though God were
doing. This is not tolerating all sorts
of evil in government, don’t confuse it that way. But what it is saying is that every citizen
must respect divine institution number four and in particular the executive
power. We have a right to criticize on
the basis of issues but we have no right to undermine the authority of the
institution itself.
Proverbs 16:12,
this is Romans 13, in 16:12, “It is an abomination to kings to commit
wickedness; for the throne is established by righteousness.” Now again if you read verse 12 by itself it
looks like verse 12 is saying “It is an abomination for kings, for kings, to
commit wickedness,” and that’s not right.
Verse 12 is talking about it’s an abomination to kings for you to commit
wickedness, for us as subjects. “It is
an abomination for kings to commit wickedness,” that means the king functions
as he does in Romans 13. He who has the
sword of God, he is the minister of God and his throne is established in
righteousness. That means the standard
behind the fourth divine institution is God’s standards, justice.
Verse 13,
“Righteous lips are the delight of kings,” now see verse 12 is talking about
over sins, verse 13 is talking about sins of the tongue, and “righteous lips”
means people that aren’t always conspiring to overthrow the government, aren’t
always undermining the authority, “and they love him that speaks right,” the
King James has got this all screwed up here, “he loves those,” the subject
should be singular and the object should be plural, “he loves those that speak
right,” speak upright. This is talking
about the citizens who are speaking in divine viewpoint.
Verse 14, here
again shows you the citizen’s fear or respect for the king, “The wrath of a
king is as the angels of death, but a wise man will pacify it.” The word “pacify” is the same word for the
covering of the ark, caphar, c-a-p-h-a-r,
and this is the word to cover over in atonement, or to propitiate, and this is
not talking about compromise again. The
concept of verse 14 is that ideally this is the way the fourth divine
institution should function and therefore as Christians we are to be concerned
with how we act toward government.
People who are always anti government of all sorts are anti God. That is why you could tell the radical
movement of a few years ago; you could tell it immediately, no matter how good
its motives, it was essentially satanic in orientation. Any group that are pro anarchists are
directly from the pit of hell, no matter how many clergymen lead the ranks or
anything else. “The wrath of a king is
as messengers of death, the wise man will pacify it,” in other words, he will
be a point of concern to do right with the executive branch, insofar as the
executive branch is right. But verse 14
looks at it from the ideal prescriptive way.
Verse 15, “In the
light of the king’s countenance is life, and his favor is as the cloud of the
latter rain.” Now the “cloud of the
latter rain” are the spring rains, the climate of Israel is somewhat like it is
here, you have the fall rain and the spring rain. The spring rain was necessary for the wheat
that was grown in the spring and it was an idiom of prosperity. Now this is very interesting because verse 15
intimates a certain principle about government.
If the executive branch is functioning correctly one sign of that
functioning will be business prosperity.
And conversely, where you do not have business prosperity in a divine
institution you can say there’s something wrong with the executive branch. The “cloud of the latter rain” is an
agricultural idiom for business prosperity; the favor of the executive, this is
not talking about illegitimate favor, this is talking about legitimate favor,
this is the cloud of the latter rain, prosperity, business.
Proverbs 20:2, a
similar principle. This is an idiom that
is built upon later on in 1 Peter 2, “The fear of a king is like the roaring of
a lion; whoso provokes him to anger sins against his soul.” Why?
Because the king is part of God’s divine office performing part of God’s
divine function which is judgment. And
to attack the institution is to attack God’s justice. Let me show you how Peter handles this. Turn 2 1 Peter 2; he deals with the problem
of suffering but he warns Christians in the middle of this argument about
suffering, (?) of your relationship with the government, 1 Peter 2:17, and here
you have again the biblical directive, if you read these you won’t have to
(quote) “pray about it.” There are lots
of Christians praying about God’s will in their life; there are lots of things
in the Word of God you don’t have to pray about because they’re very clear,
don’t waste your time and God’s. God has
given these to us in the Word and we are to understand them and move on.
1 Peter 2:17,
“Honor all men. Love the
brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.” Notice how close they are aligned; “Fear
God. Honor the king,” respect. [18] “Servants, be subject to your masters
with all fear; not only to the good and gentle but also to the perverse. [19] For this is thankworthy, if a man for
conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. [20] For what glory is it if, when you are
buffeted for your faults, you shall take it patiently? But if, when you do well and suffer for it,
you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.”
Now his point is
that Christians can hurt themselves spiritually by a bad attitude toward
government; by a bad attitude toward authority.
This is why we are having very weak believers in the younger generation
because the younger generation has very little respect for authority and the reason
the younger generation has little respect for authority is because the older
generation never used authority along divine viewpoint lines. So the younger generation has never been
exposed to authority that is used correctly.
But that is no excuse. If you are
a Christian today and you cannot have proper respect for authority and that
includes things like the flag of the United States, and that includes various
institutions, such as the military, then you are going to hurt yourself
spiritually and you’re going to be a deformed Christian. You can’t expect to grow in the Christian life
by having your little quiet times and you hand-holding prayer meetings when you
go right out of those same meetings and run down the military, and run down the
flag and run down a few other symbols and tokens of our authority. You can’t do that because it’s not lining up
with the Holy Spirit and you’re going to suffer the results. You may not like it, I didn’t write this,
don’t blame me, I’m just telling you what God wrote. God said you’re going to suffer for it and
you’re never going to grow spiritually and you’re never going to get with it
until you get with it in the area of respect for these institutions.
One final point on
the executive branch and the government taught in the book of Proverbs;
Proverbs 19:10, and that is the kind of man for the office. There’s a warning about the kind of man that
shall fulfill the office in the executive branch. The principle carries over to the Christian
life. “Delight” it says in the King
James, “is not seemly [fitting] for a fool; much less, for a servant to have
rule over princes.” Now the word
translated “delight” is a strange word and all I can say is that in recent word
studies this word is now considered now to not mean delight but it is now
considered, on the basis of archeological evidence to be used in another
context, control or administration. And
what it is saying is that administration or the ability to manage doesn’t fit a
fool, and a fool is our old friend kesil,
a kesil in the book of
Proverbs is one who’s been on negative volition, who has therefore experienced
a darkening of his heart because the Holy Spirit has turned away from him of
constantly telling him what is right and what is wrong, he doesn’t pay any
attention anyway, so he backs off. That
leaves a vacuum and in comes human viewpoint.
Human viewpoint fills his mind and therefore doubt starts and a few
other things. Finally he winds up with a
tremendous hatred toward God and a hatred toward those who remind him of
God. And finally he walks around in deep
frustration, never able to get any joy, he’s in emotional revolt, he lives on
the basis of his emotions, on the basis of his feelings, it’s not what is right
and what is wrong, it’s how I feel. And
if I feel good then it’s right and if I feel bad it’s bad, not whether the Word
of God says it’s right or whether the Word of God says it’s bad. These people are on emotional revolt.
So you have all of
these people, the kesil
and it says here, then, that the ability to manage isn’t going to be found in a
kesil. So one of the warnings given in Scripture is
if you have an unbeliever in the status quo of being a kesil that means he’s rebelled against
God-consciousness, he’s heard the gospel, he’s rejected that and rejected that
and rejected that and rejected that, his mind is filled up with human viewpoint
politics, he’s always thinking in terms of political gimmicks, always thinking
in terms of something human viewpoint, then it’s not fitting that he can manage
a thing; he’s disqualified from the office.
Parallel in verse
10, “much less for a slave to have rule over princes.” What’s that mean? It means… the word “slave” as it’s used here,
refers to one with a mental attitude of a slave, mental attitude slave; in
other words, this person is not truly free.
What does that refer to? Let’s go
back to the soul, what the soul looks like, the conscience, the mind and the
emotion. When a person is free, you are
free and I am free when our mind is responding to the conscience and our
emotions are responding to the mind.
That’s the state of the soul that’s beautiful. That’s the state when we’re free, we know
what is right, what is wrong, and we do it.
And you can live in Siberia and be this kind of a free person because
it’s all inside. A person who is a slave
is one who has gone on negative volition for a long time, the result is they
have not listened to their conscience, they’ve erected scar tissue between the
mind and the conscience, the mind now is going around in a circle because it
has no standards, the emotions are out of control because they only respect the
mind that’s strong, and so the person takes a lead on the basis of emotions.
In other words,
the first part of verse 10 and the second part of verse 10 are parallel, and
they warn about ever having a person in an executive position who is in the
status quo of being a kesil. This person will be filled with human
viewpoint, part of the human viewpoint will be monetary indebtedness; kesil, when their executive
functions will always follow deficit spending.
Whenever you have a politician that constantly favors deficit spending
as part of his policy, then he’s a kesil;
he’s a kesil or his
advisors are kesils
because the concept of deficit spending is theft in Scripture, as we covered in
the first divine institution. It’s not
just bad economic theory, it’s thievery, and to put it in technical language,
deficit financing on a government basis is essentially grand larceny, just
formed by the government. It’s larcenist
for the government with its fiat currency to regulate what your assets are and
we have many people in our congregation who are taking another look at where
they’ve invested their funds and they’re taking a long hard look at what’s
happening. And we have a book, Introduction to Christian Economics and
we have a lot of men who are reconsidering this thing in the light of divine
viewpoint, because they’re not satisfied in holding wealth in the form of cash
because if you do then you are the slave of whatever the Federal Reserve system
says it’s worth, and however many dollars they issue. In other words, it’s not what the dollar is,
it’s what government says it is. And if
you want to be free you’ll want to have your assets in something else other
than Big Brother fixing the value.
So this is the
concept of a kesil, he
will have deficit financing, as one example and the reason why kesils get elected is because
we have a lot of voters who are kesils,
they’re in debt and they don’t see anything wrong with the government in being
in debt. So we go ahead and vote issue
after issue and push us further into debt.
“…have rule over
princes,” the slave, the one with human viewpoint also is the one who hates
God. And therefore there will be an
inherent rebellion against the divine institutions. And you’ll always spot a kesil in politics because he’s always trying to come up
with (quote) “new radical programs.” And
if you look at these “new radical programs” you’ll always find that they are
out to destroy these institutions. We’ll
have all sorts of welfarism; welfare destroys, not all welfare but the kind of
welfare we have, if you want true government welfare look at the Mosaic Law, no
one starved ever, in the nation Israel.
They had a perfect welfare system, now like we have today, however. But the welfare we have today destroys the
first divine institution. The economic
systems that we have today destroys the first divine institution. The concept of our foreign policy and the
deployment of the military destroys the fourth divine institution. The concept of justice against capital
punishment destroy the fourth divine institution. So everywhere you look today you’ll find
people advocating programs that have as their objective a destruction of these
institutions: inheritances taxes, progressive income tax, are all out to
destroy the third divine institution, to penalize someone because they’re
wealthy, what is wrong with being wealthy.
Now we are so imbued with this concept that it is evil to be wealthy. Nonsense, where in Scripture do you ever get
that concept? You know where you get
it? Growing up through school, it was
taught to you in the (quote) “social studies” courses, subtlety insinuated that
not until F.D.R. did this country ever have true social justice. These kinds of things. And that’s where you pick this up.
But look again
because Scripture commands… one of the greatest believers of all time was David
and David had considerable wealth. Does
God condemn David for being wealthy? No. We have the man who took Christ’s body down
from the cross, Joseph or Arimathea, one of the most wealthy men in Palestine
at the time. Did God condemn Joseph or
Arimathea for being wealthy? No, He uses
Joseph of Arimathea to provide the wealth to bury His own Son. So the concept of penalizing somebody because
they’re wealthy is also from hell.
Wealthy people are the ones that run the society, basically, they are
the people that contribute, they are the people that have worked and have given
their money in large sums before there is any tax incentives to do it, and from
a great many social institutions.
So don’t run
around in the name of Christianity like a lot of new evangelicals are doing and
saying oh, it’s a sin to be wealthy, we’d better straighten everybody out with
progressive income tax, tax the people that make more money. You know how the tax system in Israel
worked? 10% whether you made a buck or
whether you made a million, it was straight across the board, same rate, no
such thing as progressive tax rates. The
tax rate was the same regardless of how much property you owned. God is directly and constantly
proportionate.
We’ve seen God’s
laws over the executive and over the legislative and next week we’ll deal with
God’s laws over the judicial.