The Lord does whatever pleases him throughout all heaven and earth, and on the seas and in their depths. [Psalm 135:6 (NLT)]
You will be secure under a government that is just and fair. Your enemies will stay far away. You will live in peace, and terror will not come near. [Isaiah 54:14 (NLT)]
Every nation has some system of government and I wonder what system is used in God’s Kingdom. Since He doesn’t govern by committee or with a privileged ruling class, it isn’t an oligarchy or an aristocracy. He is a King, has a Kingdom, and can exercise absolute power, yet His is not a monarchy. His power didn’t come from conquest or birthright, no one gave Him the crown, and no royal scion will follow Him; His reign always has been and forever will be. With all those Old Testament rules, perhaps His is a dictatorship, albeit a benevolent one, in which God exercises absolute power for the good of the population as a whole. That sort of rule, however, would be a one-size-fits-all government. A God who has numbered the hairs on our heads and written our names on his hand knows that one size can never fit all of his unique children.
God’s Kingdom isn’t like our nation, a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” with its three branches of government and the checks and balances that come with it. In God’s government, all three branches are rolled into one; He makes the rules, implements them, and decides how they are to be interpreted. There’s no need for checks and balances; God can’t step over the boundaries because He has none. His reign is not dependent upon re-election or approval rating, the majority does not rule, His word is law, and the only being God needs to please is Himself. He didn’t consult with Adam and Eve about the forbidden fruit rule nor with Sodom and Gomorrah about their destruction. The Ten Commandments were not created in committee, voted on by the Israelites, ratified by Moses or tested by an Israelite court. God doesn’t need our advice, consent, or support to make the sun rise or set. Clearly, He runs neither democracy nor republic.
With any sort of earthly government, the ruler’s power is limited to his life span and his nation’s border. God’s power, however, is unlimited. He is the eternal Sovereign God over the entire universe. His is a never-ending government of love, forgiveness, righteousness, peace and justice. Unlike other forms of government, His is truthful, dependable, and free of any corruption or bureaucracy. I don’t think there is a word that describes God’s reign except, perhaps, “perfect.” After all, God is God and we are not.
Yesterday I wrote about Albert Einstein. The physicist was famous for his ability to replace complex scientific ideas with real-life scenarios called gedankenexperiments (thought experiments). For example, imagine that you have an identical twin. Immediately following birth, he is launched into space and travels through the universe nearly at the speed of light. When he returns, he’d be in his teens while you’d be planning your retirement. Time moved slower for your twin because the closer to the speed of light something travels the slower time moves for it. Never having studied physics (and not caring to start now), I think his scenario demonstrates the theory of relativity!
In Pieces of Eight, columnist Sydney Harris tells the story of a dinner party at which an elderly Albert Einstein was seated next to an eighteen-year-old girl. Unaware of his identity, she asked the famed professor what he did for a living. “I devote myself to the study of physics,” he responded. Shocked that he still studied physics at his age, she told him she’d finished her physics studies the previous year! Without a doubt, Albert Einstein knew more about physics than anyone else of his time and yet he continued to study physics until his death. Harris’s explanation is that the physicist recognized that what he didn’t know far outweighed all that he did.
Back in January, many people made resolutions to read the Bible. If you pledged to read the entire Bible this year, good for you. Like many who make that resolution, however, you may already have fallen behind schedule and are tempted to quit. Having tried to do it in a year, I feel your pain. After finally getting through Leviticus, Jeremiah nearly did me in with his doom and gloom. It’s not just the reading that takes time; it’s the understanding, the digesting, of what we’ve read that can slow us down. After all, there’s no point of reading it if we don’t understand it! I could read the words in a college astrophysics text but, if I didn’t understand them, I’d know no more about astrophysics on the last page than I did on the first. This year, I’m reading the Bible in chronological order and, in spite of my goal to do it in a year, it will probably take longer. For those who are discouraged or soon will be, I thought I’d rerun a previous devotion for you.
On the days his restaurant is closed, a French chef friend works in his kitchen to make gallons of demi-glace. Hundreds of pounds of veal bones get roasted along with carrots, celery and onions. After deglazing the roasting pans with wine, he adds tomato paste, seasonings and water and simmers the concoction. At some point, he strains out the solids and continues simmering (and straining) the hot broth. More than twenty-four hours later, his stock has a rich brown color and a gelatinous consistency. After all of that simmering, less than one gallon of thick sauce remains for every ten gallons of liquid he added. Chef packages and sells this richly concentrated sauce to other restaurants that use it as the “mother sauce” or backbone of their own sauces.
Write them [God’s words] on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that as long as the sky remains above the earth, you and your children may flourish in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors. [Deuteronomy 11:20-21 (NLT)]
Devotions of the Heart 