Believers Who Keep the Good King’s Command
1Who is like the wise man? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? A man’s wisdom makes his face shine, and the hardness of his face is changed. 2I say, “Keep the king’s command!” because of the oath to God. 3Don’t be hasty to go out of his presence. Don’t persist in an evil thing, for he does whatever pleases him, 4for the king’s word is supreme. Who can say to him, “What are you doing?” 5Whoever keeps the commandment shall not come to harm, and his wise heart will know the time and procedure. 6For there is a time and procedure for every purpose, although the misery of man is heavy on him. 7For he doesn’t know that which will be; for who can tell him how it will be? 8There is no man who has power over the spirit to contain the spirit; neither does he have power over the day of death. There is no discharge in war; neither shall wickedness deliver those who practice it.
As people go through life, nothing is more important than judging rightly how the world works and responding in the right way, and judging well how things will unfold and how they will end. Fortunately, believers already know from the Bible God’s plan and the conclusion that follows from it, so they respond well without being swept away by their feelings.
Look at what happened to Stephen. Stephen knew the will of God, so even when he was persecuted for preaching the gospel he was sure that God was with him. That is why Stephen could show a face as peaceful as an angel’s before the people who were throwing stones at him. He believed without doubt that heaven is real, so he did not cling to the world, and that is how he was able to respond as he did.
Believers are not people struggling to survive in the world; by the grace of God they are God’s people, set apart from the world. Because they know this, they have room in their hearts to keep, as a matter of course, the moral laws people ought to keep. The apostle Paul urged those who believe in Jesus Christ to submit to the authorities of the world, if only for the sake of the gospel. Believers must do this so that they can spread the gospel. Of course, this does not mean submitting to those who persecute the faith. If we are persecuted we will have to stand against it, but we must keep the moral laws that have been set in place for human life.
The duty to pay taxes is a law that every citizen is naturally bound to keep. But if someone breaks the law out of greed for money and is judged by the authorities, a person who cannot keep even the petty laws of the world would not be able to preach the holy gospel of God. In the same way, if a believer cannot preach the gospel because they have not kept the laws of the world, they are committing the sin of hindering God’s work. That is why the apostle Paul says to submit to the authorities of the world for the sake of the gospel.
Ecclesiastes 8:3
3Don’t be hasty to go out of his presence. Don’t persist in an evil thing, for he does whatever pleases him,
When a relationship is good, no one hurries away, whether the other person is a king or a friend. Someone who is hasty to go out of the king’s presence is showing disloyalty, the kind of thing a person does when the relationship has gone bad, and it can provoke the king’s wrath. A king can do as he pleases with a person’s life, and unless they are ready to die, they must never fail to show him courtesy. The king has the power to do whatever he wants, so betraying the king and defying his command is foolish.
Disobeying the king’s command always brings judgment. So it is the duty of those who serve a king to carry out what he has entrusted to them as well as they possibly can. If they do it carelessly or half-heartedly, the one who failed to carry it out fully must bear the responsibility for having ignored the king’s authority. What God, who is king, has commanded you is not something you may do if you feel like it and leave undone if you don’t. When you became a believer, you already swore an oath to serve God as king, so you must obey the Word whether anyone is watching or not.
Solomon received great blessing from God, but he ended up acting in pride, making himself king of Israel in God’s place. Job 41:33-34 describes Satan. It says that on earth there is not his equal, that he is made without fear, that he sees everything that is high, and that he is king over all the sons of pride. Those who exalt themselves and those who are proud are all Satan’s servants. Under the influence of this evil spirit, Solomon made himself king of the world, and then he threw away all the grace and the mission God had entrusted to him and ruled the people with a hard and fierce face. He oppressed the people with absolute power, and once he had sunk into lust and pleasure, in his pride he did not keep the promise he had made with God.
Satan saw God being worshiped and wanted to be worshiped by people, and Solomon, under the influence of that evil spirit, loved to be worshiped by everyone. Until then Solomon had ruled the nation by the grace of God and lived a prosperous life, but because he became proud he wasted his years. Only when he realized that he was a weak human being who could not know what would be did he learn that he must rely on the Almighty. As he watched people bow to those in power to the point of groveling, and those in power crush the weak by force, he understood that the power and knowledge of the world are not true wisdom.
Human beings are frail creatures who cannot help but crumble before the passing years. Even the mightiest warriors had their backs bent by the years, their eyes dimmed and their hands and feet set trembling. Only then did Solomon learn that a life of submission to the Word is a life of worth, and that the one who lives it is truly wise. Look at the world now. People abandon the word of the living God and serve idols made of dead stone and wood, and human beings, as if they were gods. So fewer and fewer people earnestly long for the wisdom and holy grace of God.
The clay cannot ask him who fashions it what he is making, and the work he makes cannot say that he has no hands and so has made it badly. We must know that when people, who are like clay, treat lightly the God who made them and governs their lives, they end up with no choice but to become servants of Satan.
The world praises as wise whoever is useful to it, so if you love the world more than God, the world will surely praise you. If at that moment you are not dazzled by the praise but discern carefully, you will see that the world’s praise is mockery aimed at God. In these last days it matters so much to discern well spiritually. The power of the world, and the wisdom and wealth people have, are all things God has entrusted to us, and depending on how they are used they can give life to souls or kill them, so we must be careful. If, like Solomon, you use the wisdom you received from God to exalt yourself, in the end you will drive yourself and other souls into hell with that very wisdom. We can become truly wise when we first admit that even our own life is not ours.
What have you received from God? After many years had gone by, Solomon realized that nothing in the world was his, and he came to regret the time he had spent without meaning. He looked at his face now that he had true wisdom, and at his face back when he had been caught by an evil woman, and he saw how great the difference was. When he thought that he himself had to take charge of the nation and the people and rule them, his face turned hard and fierce; but when he learned that he could entrust even his human zeal to God, his heart grew peaceful and his face changed and began to shine.
1 Kings 18:3-4
3Ahab called Obadiah, who was over the household. (Now Obadiah feared Yahweh greatly; 4for when Jezebel cut off Yahweh’s prophets, Obadiah took one hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.)
Anyone who believes they are one of God’s people will make the same choice Obadiah made. True to his name, which means one who serves Yahweh, Obadiah showed his loyalty in the most dangerous of situations, where he could have been killed, by willingly offering his own life to save the prophets who served Yahweh.
He held a high office under King Ahab, who worshiped Baal, yet he was using that high position to save the prophets of Yahweh. Had he been found out, he could have been put to death; but he did this because saving the prophets was God’s work. Ahab’s wife Jezebel was hunting down and killing Yahweh’s prophets, so in that desperate situation he did not spare his own life to save them. If Ahab or those who followed him had found out at that time, not only the prophets but Obadiah too would not have escaped death. Even so, he hid a hundred of the prophets Jezebel was persecuting, and provided everything they needed at his own expense.
Though Obadiah was in a dangerous situation where his life was at stake, he was being loyal for the sake of the kingdom of God, so his heart would have been full of joy. Because of the peace in his heart, his face would have been like the face of an angel, and it would have been full, because he was sure that God would take care of his future.
Your face when you have strayed from the Word and your face when you are full of the Word are different enough to be seen with the eye. It is surprising, but true: spiritual fullness can darken a person’s face or make it shine. It is very easy to find out whether you are inside grace or outside it, because you can examine your faith just by looking at your own face in a mirror, without asking anyone else.
The word of wisdom never once left Solomon. But when Solomon became proud his face turned hard and fierce, and when he repented and turned back it became gentle and peaceful. Sadly, though, while Solomon ruled with a strong hand, the people did not rise up against him or defy the king’s will. But when Solomon was born again as one who was truly wise and ruled with goodness, the people took the king’s commands lightly, behaved rudely and challenged his authority.
If the people had behaved like that before, he would have raged and ruled them by force. But now he could treat foolish people with a good heart, leaving them in God’s hands, just as God had waited for him. He knew that God would deal with sin even if he himself did nothing, so all he did was regret his own sin in having failed until then to serve God as king.
You can see this often in the world too. When people meet someone kind and gentle, at first they respect that person as a good person, but as time goes on you see them treat that person carelessly rather than with respect. Foolish people, even if they have no heart to obey, fear those who use violence and threats and give in to them. People treat the good carelessly and give in to the wicked because they do not know what it is to be respected and treated as a person.
This happens all the time at home, in the church and in society. When parents give their children freedom so that they can grow up cheerful, you see the children go too far and behave in a disorderly way rather than respecting their parents. So, though it grieves them, the parents have no choice but to rebuke them and hold them back. Then you see the children listen well, because they are afraid of their angry parents.
God too has given us freedom to live the life of faith of our own accord, and yet we can see ourselves sinning because we do not fear a God who does not rebuke us. God told us plainly what we must do and what we must not do, yet people treat lightly a God who does not rebuke them at every moment, and then they meet great suffering. I hope you will know what a great blessing it is to obey God of your own accord.
When I founded the church, I vowed that I would not use the blessings of the world to make church members afraid through the Word or lead them by force. As I vowed to God, for more than twenty years I have been doing my best to help you devote yourselves of your own accord. I have worked to make your relationship with God a personal one, so that you would live as God’s children of your own accord. But church members think that as long as they come to church, or simply do what the pastor tells them, they will be blessed; yet it is by believing in Christ that a person can be blessed. If you truly believe in Jesus Christ, you come to have true hope. That makes you a holy believer with nothing to rebuke, and such a person cannot help but be blessed. If I told you that you must give large offerings to be blessed, and that your children will be blessed only if you work hard at church, you would probably serve faithfully and work hard to be blessed. But that kind of faith is useless faith that falls at the smallest stumbling block.
What I want to ask of you is this: that you always stand on faith in Christ, and obey the Word of your own accord and devote yourselves of your own accord. The people must know that the Solomon who has realized his own folly and rules with wisdom is far stronger than the Solomon who ruled by force. The reason is that God, who loves Solomon, himself deals with the people who defy Solomon’s commands. Solomon, who used to lead the people by his own will, has now laid everything down and become a holy child who entrusts everything to God, so the people must not take lightly a Solomon who does not rebuke them. For there is a vast difference between what people see and what God sees.
If the born-again Solomon speaks sternly to the people, it is out of love and concern, so they must obey without fail. If he does not rebuke the people when they are going the wrong way, it is not because Solomon is mild by nature; he keeps silent because he knows they will not listen even if he counsels them. We must know that the rebuke of people who are not born again is violence, but the rebuke of a person of faith is love, and we must receive it with a thankful heart.
Ecclesiastes 8:5-6
5Whoever keeps the commandment shall not come to harm, and his wise heart will know the time and procedure. 6For there is a time and procedure for every purpose, although the misery of man is heavy on him.
Solomon said that the wise who walk with God can be at peace, because as they go through life in the world they judge the times clearly and well. Anyone living in the world can meet suffering, but that is something that cannot be helped while we live. Wise believers discern the time and procedure well and decide accordingly, but the people of the world cannot discern the time and procedure, and so great misery can come upon them. That is why we need a faith that obeys the Word. Only if we have the wisdom to discern what to say and do, and whether a thing is something we may do or something we must never do, can we escape great misery on the last day.
Isaiah 48:18-19
18Oh that you had listened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea. 19Your offspring also would have been as the sand, and the descendants of your body like its grains. His name would not be cut off nor destroyed from before me.”
In spite of Israel’s disobedience, God taught them without wavering and worked to lead them on the right path. But Israel disobeyed God’s word. Seeing Israel like this, God says that he grieves that because they disobeyed he could not give them greater blessing.
God said that if Israel had obeyed, the peace in their hearts would have been like a river, their righteousness would have overflowed like the waves of the sea, and the blessing promised in the covenant with Abraham would have come upon them, so that they would have received the blessing of offspring as many as the sand. But God also said that there would be no peace for the wicked who disobey. This means that Christians who live by faith, now and at the end, are under God’s protection and will receive eternal blessing, but there is no peace for the wicked.
Whether believers live a life of obedience to the Word or live by their own judgment is up to each person, but the outcome will divide into salvation and judgment, so we must believe in Jesus Christ now. The evil spirit works day and night to hinder salvation, but believers who obey the Word are not deceived, because they have the ability to judge with the wisdom they received from God. So we must strive to live within the grace of God. Yet the wisdom believers have is like a flashlight in the dark. It is a small light that shines only on what is right in front of them, so we must not rely on that light but rely on Christ, whose light is as bright as broad daylight. Only then can believers choose the right time under a bright light, judge rightly and live wisely.
Ecclesiastes 8:7-8
7For he doesn’t know that which will be; for who can tell him how it will be? 8There is no man who has power over the spirit to contain the spirit; neither does he have power over the day of death. There is no discharge in war; neither shall wickedness deliver those who practice it.
People do not know what will be, and there is no one who can tell them how it will be. However much good medicine and good food people take because they want to live long, when the time God has set arrives they must leave the body behind. In war, there are those who hide in caves because they want to live and still die, and there are those who are ready to die, who stand on a fierce battlefield where bullets rain down and still live. So life depends on God, and in every matter the final decision is God’s to make.
Human beings are weak and powerless, so they have no power over the day of their death, nor can they put it off. A human being is a frail creature who cannot keep even the dearest loved one from breathing their last, and who cannot give their own life to someone else. If even our own life is not ours, then we must live relying on God, who is the owner of that life. If Yahweh loves those who obey the Word, and loves the good who use their wisdom to save life, then we must live as people who fear Yahweh.
While God is being patient, look back over your life, and if there has been a time when you disobeyed, you must repent now. For, as Solomon said, God can do whatever pleases him, and he can also cast you into great suffering. The command of the good king is grace given to save us. Solomon, who realized this, is now asking us to live as children who obey God.
Those who live in obedience to the Word need not be anxious about the end of the world. The faithful have been forgiven their sins by the blood of Christ and saved by faith in Christ, so they need not worry about receiving God’s wrath. None of us knows the future, but we know what will happen after our own end and the end of the world, so we must live now by a wise faith. You are believers who have the wisdom of God. So I hope you will never forget to give thanks to God, with hearts that fear Yahweh.