Government PART 4 - Power, Love and Wisdom

In your Bibles, 1 Kings chapter 3, we're continuing to think about civil government according to God's word.

1 Kings 3 · chapter mention

So let me read 1 Kings chapter 3, verses 1 to 15, and then I will pray for us.

1 Kings 3:1–15

Let's listen to God's word.

Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

He took Pharaoh's daughter and brought her into the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem.

The people were sacrificing at the high places, however, because no house had yet been built for the name of the Lord.

Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places.

And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place.

Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, Ask what I shall give you.

And Solomon said, You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant, David my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you.

And you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne this day.

And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child.

I do not know how to go out or come in.

And your servant is in the midst of your people, whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude.

Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?

It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this, and God said to him, Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right.

Behold, I do now according to your word.

Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you, and none like you shall arise after you.

I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honour, so that no other king shall compare with you all your days.

And if you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days.

And Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream.

Then he came to Jerusalem and stood before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings, and made a feast for all his servants.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this, your word.

We thank you for our Saviour, the King of Kings, who rules in perfect wisdom, power, goodness, and justice.

Please would you give us your mind, do your word in us, as we think about the kind of civil rulers and magistrates you desire to have over us.

Help us to think scripturally, pray scripturally, work and participate in your world scripturally.

And we ask that for Jesus' name's sake.

Amen.

And we'll come back a little bit later to what we read in 1 Kings chapter 3.

1 Kings 3 · chapter mention

So we're thinking these Sunday mornings about the Scripture's vision for politics, government, and nation.

The Bible does speak about these things.

It's not a neutral issue where we can just believe and do what we like.

And whilst it's not a salvation issue, it's not like the Trinity or the Atonement, it does matter.

I'm drawing uh heavily on two resources, which I'm mentioning each time.

David Thomas's Stuff from Christchurch Romford and James Baird's little book, King of Kings.

I thought it would be helpful to have a bit of a recap before we get into our topic for today.

The big point civil government is instituted by God.

So Romans 13:1, there is no authority except from God.

Romans 13:1

So God the King authorizes government in family, church, and over nations.

We're thinking particularly about that last bit.

Civil government is instituted by God.

So even in our setup, even in a democracy, power is exercised not because the people grant power to our rulers, but because God grants power to them.

Now, implications of that.

Therefore, Christian people are commanded to submit to the authorities who are over us for God's sake.

Now it's not wrong for us to use the powers given us to seek change, nor is it wrong to pray for a godly revolution and for the overthrowing of tyrants.

But our basic stance as Christian people is to go a long distance even under unjust rulers.

Until such time as we can't.

That is to say, there are times because of God's authority over us as the King of Kings when we must disobey civil magistrates.

If they seek to lead us into what God forbids, or if they forbid us from what God commands.

Other great implication of the fact that civil government is instituted by God is that government must obey God and they must promote the public good.

The state is the servant of God for the common good, and remember, God in Scripture gets to define what good means.

We don't get to define that.

He defines what good means.

The Bible says that all kings everywhere are to serve Jesus, who is King of kings.

They're commanded to promote true religion and true righteousness.

That was true not only in the Old Testament of Israel's kings, it was true of Gentile kings as well.

The Bible teaches us that false religion destroys a society.

Now all people and all governments are religious.

We are worshippers, we cannot not worship.

Our government promotes a religion.

Every government promotes a religion, whether it's conscious or unconscious.

And our government promotes a religion which is by and large a false one.

And that is therefore terrible for the public good because false worship hurts people.

Positively, everything good is built on Christian foundations.

True freedom is found in trusting and obeying Christ.

Good flows from that.

Satan would have us think that independence is the route to goodness.

But actually it is not.

And just note lastly, sort of a basic point, but it's really pertinent to this.

Godliness is an obligation for all people everywhere.

So everyone everywhere is commanded to repent and believe, to love God and to obey God.

And that's true of people who have power.

And if you have more power, then you have even more obligation to do that.

To repent, to believe, to love God, to love your neighbour, and then to use your power, to use your influence to bless and serve God and others.

Now, what does that mean in practice over the page?

Civil governments everywhere ought to govern by the law of the Lord, as summed up principally in the Ten Commandments.

So the laws of a nation ought in some way or other be trackbackable to the Ten Commandments, and they ought to promote Christianity as the true religion.

There are all kinds of ways in which civil authority can do that, through laws, through social customs, national holidays, speeches, monuments, buildings, the personal example of a ruler, a leader.

And through those means, the civil magistrate will be seeking to do one of three things to promote or to tolerate or to forbid.

In particular, they have to promote especially piety and the church.

There are some things they will have to tolerate.

That is, there are some things that are not to the public good but have to be put up with.

Because they don't have the competence to restrain that thing, or trying to restrain that thing would not be conducive to the public good.

Some things absolutely must be forbidden or denied.

Now the state, the civil magistrate, is not tasked with preaching the gospel or running the church or acting on behalf of the church, but government does have a duty to create an environment in which the gospel of Christ can flourish.

See that in 1 Timothy 2, 1 to 2.

That does mean they should never promote false religion, though they may need to tolerate it.

What about compulsion?

There's an important distinction to be drawn here between the heart and our outward behaviour.

There is no human authority that can reach the heart, that can directly reach the inner man.

Only God can do that.

One implication, we believe in freedom of conscience.

No one can compel belief.

But there is a place for compulsion in external things, even in religious practice by the state, because some religious practices are not for the common good.

Statement from John Calvin that sort of sums up what we've been trying to show.

All have confessed that no government can be happily established unless piety is the first concern.

Now, the topic today, what is necessary in order to do this?

What is necessary in order to govern well?

To put into practice the shape of civil government that is given in Scripture, what is needed?

And we're going to see there are three ingredients power, love, and prudence.

I think firstly, this requires power.

Now we might think to ourselves, surely the way of Jesus is the way of love.

It cannot surely be the way of power or even political power.

Well, don't forget though, Jesus is the God of the Bible.

He's the God of the Old Testament as well as the God of the New Testament.

He's the creator who made all things good.

He ordained civil government with its various powers.

Think of the Lord Jesus Himself.

All of His glorious attributes, the things about Him that we love and are blessed by, they're actually of no use to us without His power.

A king needs power, and wonderfully the King of Kings has great power.

So don't forget that political power among mankind is a good gift from Jesus Himself.

Now we know, don't we, though, blessings can turn into curses.

The greatest blessings can turn into the greatest curses.

Sex is a wonderful gift from God.

When twisted, it becomes a monster that devours us and others alive.

Perhaps that's all the more reason why Christians should pray for and work towards and seek political power.

And we should certainly pray that the Lord would give us rulers who are Christians, who have the Spirit of God in them, who are who are not yet perfect, but who are set on that path of sanctification, enabled by the grace of God to use power and influence in a godly way.

And that way, well that way is the way of love.

Power is used to love others as we love ourselves.

Matthew 22, 39.

So let's think secondly about the requirement for love.

Quote here from James Baird.

To follow the way of Jesus, we must use our power to secure for others the goods that we desire for ourselves.

In the realm of politics, we should focus on securing particular kinds of goods, namely public goods.

For ourselves, we want peace, prosperity, good order, justice, liberty, and piety.

Hence, if we want these things for ourselves, then we should use our power to acquire them for others as well.

Now what does that look like in practice?

The seeking of these public goods, these good things that bless a whole community, a whole nation.

Well, in our setup, which is a democracy, all citizens have some measure of political power.

And we can secure, we can seek to secure those different kinds of public goods by voting.

It's a privilege that we have.

Electing of MPs, local councillors.

We also have the power of persuasion.

We can try to bend the ears of our friends, families, neighbours.

It's not a wrong thing to do.

We can respond directly to things that concern us.

Write a letter.

Some of us may serve.

Some Christian people have been given a special calling to the vocation of government.

That is, they might seek office or help those who are seeking office.

And if a Christian person is good at governing, then he should aim to do it and to do more of it.

To govern, to seek power, and to use it well in ways that please the Lord.

And it's good for Christians to unite together to consolidate their powers, to expand their capacity to secure more public goods.

And all of that is loving.

We are praying for and working towards the kind of life together that is good.

And as Christians, especially, we desire more of one particular good, namely true religion, the advancement of the gospel, because Christianity benefits everybody.

It's extraordinarily good for the public.

So most of all, we will want to pray for and seek to elect people who will promote true religion, who will enable and help the church to flourish and get on with being church.

Remember that false religion, in whatever form it comes, is deeply harmful.

It's not just wicked, but it's harmful.

So we should pray and work for false religion to lose influence.

That's a loving thing.

We want laws and leaders who seek to promote false religion to fail, you know, for their plans to crumble into dust, for them to lose elections.

Power and love, though, are not enough.

We need something else.

Prudence.

William Blackstone was a great jurist back in the 1700s and a Christian.

He's still highly influential in English and US law.

He said that these three qualities, which we've just described, were needed for right political action.

So here's a quote from him.

What's needed is wisdom to discern the real interest of the community, goodness to endeavour always to pursue that real interest, and strength or power to carry this knowledge and intention into action.

Now, sadly, many people value one of those things while dismissing the others.

Maybe they love certain ideas, but they're repulsed by the thought of political power.

Or they have acquired the strength to win battles, or they're seeking the strength to win battles, but they're only out to serve themselves.

Or they have strength and godly intentions, but they do not have the prudence and the wisdom to shape action.

So we actually need all three, and this is what we ought to pray for in those who rule over us.

This is what we need in ourselves as we seek to exercise any influence that we may have.

We must be good, that is loving, not acting out of self-interest.

There is a need for strength and power.

Love means nothing if you can't turn it into action.

But also prudence.

And Blackstone would have said actually the prudence is really, really critical.

It's almost the most important of these things, these things.

So think of the story of King Solomon that we read in 1 Kings chapter 3.

1 Kings 3 · chapter mention

How it was that God blessed him greatly because he asked for wisdom above all things, acknowledged his lack of wisdom.

I do not know how to govern this great people.

I don't know how to discern what is the right course of action, what is the wrong course of action to avoid for this great people.

So give me the wisdom that I need.

And that was a desire and a prayer that the Lord loved to hear and then to grant.

When we think about wisdom, we don't mean cowardice.

Now you could you could say, you could sorry, you could see how wisdom could tip into cowardice.

It could tip into a a copping out, a not taking action because you're afraid of stirring up the pot, and that's not what we're talking about.

It might be that prudence is a better word, it's like the old-fashioned word, prudence.

Prudence in government is about knowing what to do and what not to do.

It means knowing the difference between what is right in principle and how to do what is right in practice.

Not everything that should be done must be done at this very moment or in this particular circumstance.

That's another, I think, really helpful little quote, back of the handout from James Baird.

It's to do with timing, isn't it?

You know what's right to do in principle, but when is the right time and place?

What's the right manner in which to seek to achieve this good thing?

Now to get this right, we, or any person who's trying to exercise power or influence, needs to understand three things.

First, the law of God.

So God's moral law as summed up in the Ten Commandments, God's standard for all human behaviour.

But also, second, the craft of government.

So in the particular situation we find ourselves in, what does it take to win hearts and minds?

What does it take to make things happen?

Third, the nature of our people.

No two groups of people are exactly alike.

So what would work best in our particular context?

Now, of course, we must never abandon God's moral law, which binds all people everywhere, but the way in which we seek to uphold God's moral law in politics, it will look different depending on the condition of a particular society.

Now, just pause to consider one final question.

What is a right concern for politics and government?

And hopefully you can see why it's a good thing to ask that question.

Because there is a danger here.

You can care too much about civil government politics.

It could be idolatrous.

Investing too much emphasis.

So here is a good thing, but you've made it the only thing.

Here is an important thing, but it's become an all-consuming thing.

Here is something that really matters to God and scripture.

You certainly shouldn't diminish it or ignore it, but it becomes something that drowns out other responsibilities under and before God.

The political, earthly powers, they are not more powerful than the spiritual.

So here's a bit of an encouragement.

If you want to tap into real power, join a church.

What is the thing chiefly which Almighty God is doing in these heavens and earth?

He is building his church.

And we know it is perfectly possible for a Christian to get wrongly gripped by matters of human government and influence.

Either as a spectator looking on, you kind of get sucked into.

Probably unhelpful corners of the internet.

It fills your heart and mind.

Other things get drowned out.

Or you get wrongly gripped as a participant.

And yet there is also a right concern for these things.

God does care about what we might call natural things.

He cares about natural things like human government, like human families.

Think of it like this: here's an analogy.

When we trust Christ, we join his supernatural family, but we do not leave our natural families.

We gain a spiritual father, but we don't lose our natural fathers.

And in the same way, when we become citizens of Christ's heavenly kingdom, we do not lose our natural citizenship.

The natural and the supernatural fit together.

They do not contradict each other.

Or put it another way: grace redeems nature, it does not destroy it.

So there is a proper care and a proper concern for earthly power and government.

Let's think about what that might mean in practice.

The word politics comes from the Greek word polis, which means city, and it refers to the art of living together in community.

That's what it's supposed to be about.

The art of living together in community.

We see this idea in Jeremiah, for instance, where God commands the Israelites to seek the welfare of the city.

Jeremiah 29.

Now, at the time, God's people they were living as exiles, exiles in Babylon.

They were under God's judgment.

The New Testament would tell us that Christian people, we fundamentally live as exiles.

We are not yet in our heavenly home.

Yet God told the exiles to do things like marry, make babies, plant gardens, build houses.

They were to be involved in the life of the city, to do the ordinary things of life.

Elsewhere in the Bible we get examples of people like Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel, also in exile, these four Hebrew men.

They served as political advisers to foreign kings, to Nebuchadnezzar and Darius.

They remained faithful to the Lord under pressure and under persecution.

They kept on speaking the truth of God.

As a result, in God's kindness, both of those Gentile kings ended up promoting true religion to their kingdoms by means of official proclamation.

But life in exile required and requires prophetic witness.

Those men, they did not shut up about God's expectations for civil leaders.

Some of them were thrown into a furnace.

Daniel to the lions.

God's people will be vindicated, although that vindication may not come until the life to come.

Or think of Esther using her extraordinary place in life to speak truth to power at enormous personal risk.

Or Joseph.

We'll want to pray for, we want to pursue a genuinely Christian government.

It's what we should do.

May feel a million billion miles away from where we are.

Maybe the Lord will grant extraordinary progress.

Maybe he won't.

Maybe our experience will be more like lions and furnaces along the way.

Either way, the Lord will vindicate his church.

Maybe in this life, maybe in the life to come.

And that's fine, isn't it?

Because our citizenship is in heaven.

Anyone have a question?

The definition of the English word prudence.

It is knowing what is the wise thing to do.

And it has to do with things like uh timing, when is the right time?

And manner.

It's the manner of action.

So it's not what does the moral law of God say, as in what is right or wrong.

It's more to do with okay, given this thing which is absolutely and always right or wrong, in the light of that, how do I work out what is the wise thing to do?

Is it the right moment?

Is it the right manner in which to do something?

Thank you.

I mean, just a very brief comment on your first bit.

Thinking about political involvement is a bit scary because it feels like it's kind of an all or nothing thing.

I don't know.

I I don't know if I completely agree with that.

I think every Christian ought to have a prayerful concern for the life of the community and the life of a nation.

And maybe it's okay, I make sure that I receive briefings from the Christian Institute who do and are called to understand and participate in a particular way.

And I can be informed as a Christian.

I can be helped to sort of see through I don't know, the daily news that we get given is not really the news that matters.

It really isn't.

And so I think we can we can all be informed without completely this being the chief calling on our lives, and it won't be for the vast majority of us.

I think it is an absolutely right kind of extrapolation.

As in these categories of promoting, tolerating, forbidding, wherever we have influence, and different ones of us will have different sorts of influence at home or the workplace.

It's not just this doesn't just apply to office, you know, political office.

And these are exactly the right kinds of categories to be thinking in and talking about with one another.

And you really need the wisdom of Solomon sometimes, don't you?

And there might be, and there will be books in the library that actually they ought to be taken out and burned.

But if you went and hypothetically went and burned those books tomorrow, there would be an uproar and it would probably prove counterproductive.

So that there is something you have to tolerate.

They're not good things, in fact, they're evil things.

But this particular moment and place and time, the best you can do is toleration.

And there'll be there'll be equivalent things for all of us, insofar as God has given us power or influence in different spheres of life.

So how is how it helping people to understand that Christianity is good for society?

Well, a couple of books I've mentioned, I think well worth reading.

So uh easier and digestible and more clearly Christian, Glenn Scrivener's The Air That We Breathe, much more heavyweights, amazingly not coming from a technically Christian point of view.

Tom Holland's book, Dominion, he's about a quarter of an inch away from being a Christian, just going through 2,000 years of Christian history and just demonstrating actually everything that we really like comes from the Bible.

So there are good resources out there, Glenn Scribbren are much easier to digest.

That's such a good encouragement.

We have representatives, use them, write to them.

So RMP, wouldn't it be great positively?

We wrote to Alex Burkhart and said, thank you recently for voting against assisted suicide.

Whatever moved him to do that, got be praised.

Can we commend you and encourage you?

Because it's going to come around again, equally when things concern us.

Right.

So I'm going to write a letter to Brentwood Council fairly soon.

That's on my to-do list.

Um recently, and I think for the first time, there was a Brentwood Council-sponsored pride celebration.

And I want to write to them and say, hey, this is wrong.

We shouldn't be doing this.

It's both morally wrong, it's a waste of money, you shouldn't be involved in this sort of thing, and your plans to do it bigger and better next year.

Hey, I really object to that.

So I guess this is this is something that we can all be doing, isn't it?

As Christian people.

So example, okay, so examples, either recent or not recent, of good godly leadership that has uh impacted on society.

That's a great question.

Who might we give?

Yeah, so historically, if you go back in go back in history, we can find plenty of places and times of godly Christian rulers.

You know, Abraham Kuyper, Prime Minister of Holland at the start of the 20th century, was also a reformed theologian.

Um, did immense good uh in Holland.

Uh much more recently, in our country.

Uh, Miriam Cates, Tory MP, lost her seat at the last election, but explicitly and openly an evangelical Christian and was unashamed uh about speaking in and from that uh position.

Uh about four years ago, I had the privilege of meeting uh a lawyer, Christian lawyer in the States who clerked for uh US Supreme Court Justice called Amy Coney Barrett, and he helped write the opinion that struck uh Roe v.

Wade from US federal law.

So I guess there are high-level examples, there are little local examples.

We can think of counsellors much closer to home who, as open Christians, seek to influence uh their particular patch and spear with and for the Lord.

And we want to seek more such people and pray for those folks who find themselves in that place.

Um, we're out of time.

Uh let me pray.

Father, we are citizens of heaven first and foremost, and we praise you that you grant to us uh citizenship of uh the Lord Jesus, realm and kingdom.

You also make us citizens of this country in this particular place and time, and we want to live here wisely and well.

We want to love you, we want to love our neighbour, we want to seek the common good.

Um please would you continue to teach us what this looks like, both in theory and in practice?

Um, help us in our praying, our conversations together, and in our acting.

And we ask that for Jesus' name's sake.

Amen.

Amen.

God willing, next week we'll think about issues around nation and nationhood.