Title: It Depends on” How You View Things
Author: Rev. John
Last saved by: Andrew Nugteren

CONTENT IN THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD
Romans 13:1-7;   Ecclesiastes 4:13-16; 5:8-9 (text)

INTRODUCTION
We are often told, and Scripture makes quite a point of it, to be content in regard to material things. Hebrews 13 tells us, "Let your way of life be free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for he himself has said, I will never desert you, nor forsake you."

Our text this morning is telling us to be content in regard to political affairs and not to have too big ideas about how we, or our current favourite, could make such a better job of things. And I expect it refers to rule everywhere – in the Church, at work, at home, as well as in the State.

Maybe it is rather appropriate that the subject should come up for us at election time. Would we really be better off under a Labour-Alliance government than National-Act? Would seven or eight Christian Heritage Party members in the House really make a great impact or restrain public wickedness?

And, of course, last weekend Australia rejected republicanism – or at least, the kind of republicanism that was offered as a choice to the Queen in the referendum. That question is sometimes talked about here; how should we think about it? Would it make a difference if we dropped the monarchy? Would we be better off? I'm not going to get into that question too much today. Romans 13 teaches us that "the governing authorities are established by God and that he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God" – and Paul was speaking about Nero, not Elizabeth!

However, within the powers that be, within our system of government, there are office-bearers, holders of authority, that we can, we have a right and perhaps duty to change – the whole 120 of them, in fact. So within that framework, we can certainly ask questions about what we should expect from a change of government.

And it is more from that angle that our text in Ecclesiastes is speaking. It is not looking at the question of the rights and wrongs of changing governments and when, perhaps, even a revolution might possibly be right. It is looking at the question from a purely practical point of view. It is putting to us the question: what difference would a change make anyway?

Before we go to all the bother, and maybe bloodshed, just stand back and be realistic about the whole business for a minute. How much should you expect from human government or from one's rulers in whatever sphere of life? And man being what he is, how much improvement should you expect from any change?

And we are not lacking in modern examples. How many changes and restructurings has our Social Welfare Department undergone in the last dozen years and yet, according to the Herald this week, they are still getting it wrong big time? Ditto for the health system, hospitals, education, prisons, ad nauseum. And yet everybody who is not presently in power is still superabundantly confident that they will get it right. Has MMP really improved the workings of our political system? Has it really made politicians more accountable?

And so, in a roundabout way, by showing up the shortcomings of man, our text is directing our eyes to God, and above all, to rest in him. Not only to provide our daily bread. But also, through the authorities that – ultimately, by whatever human means he uses – he sets up to rule us as he sees best. So then, from the very practical point of view that Ecclesiastes takes, what does he say?

1.	A LAD WILLING TO LEARN IS BETTER THAN AN OLD KING WHO KNOWS IT ALL
Both parts of our text, 4:13-16 and 5:8-9, are difficult to translate. Ecclesiastes is very terse poetry and like all such literature in any language, is sometimes difficult to understand, let alone translate. The NIV in both our paragraphs has given interpretations. It may be right in the first instance; it has quite missed the boat in the second, as has the AV. Therefore we will follow the NASB. It is more difficult in some ways, yet I believe it is more correct.

There is this king. He has ruled for a long time – from the human point of view, too long, for he thinks he knows all the tricks and will not now listen to advice. It is time, as Labour said at some previous election, for a change. (I seem to recall we got one but everything stayed the same nevertheless. Even National couldn't think up anything different from VAT; it could only call it GST and upped the rate two and a half percentage points!)

Well, at any rate, there is this old king – now foolish and deaf. Did the Preacher have David in mind? Who more humble, more Christ-like even, when he began than David? Yet when he became old, be became big-headed and wanted to know how great his kingdom was, so he conducted that census. Even hard-nosed, politics-savvy Joab pleaded with him not to – for it was sin. Sin often seemed not to worry Joab, but this time he said, "May your subjects be 10,000 times whatever they are, but don't do this thing." But he wouldn't listen. He conducted the census and brought a plague upon the land.

Whether the Preacher is reflecting on David or not, there is this old king and then there is a young lad in jail. Why was he in jail? Was he a revolutionary? We don't know. He was also poor. Apparently, he had no legal claim and therefore no preparation or education for kingship. Did the Preacher have in mind Jereboam to whom God gave the ten tribes from Rehoboam? Whatever, somehow this young lad came to power. Maybe the old king died. Perhaps the lad's supporters mounted a coup or a revolution. We don't know and it doesn't matter. He was installed and he was better than the old king. 

Proverbs tells us that wisdom comes with age and therefore we are to respect the grey-headed. While that is a general rule, there are exceptions. It is not necessarily true that you can't put an old head (as it were) on young shoulders. Just occasionally, parents, our children are right and we need to be humble enough to admit it. I suspect this sort of thing is pretty rare – it certainly wasn't the case with Rehoboam – but Ecclesiastes here tells us it can happen. Better a lad willing to learn than an old king who knows it all.

2.	EVEN IF THE YOUNG KING IS BETTER, PEOPLE WILL NOT BE SATISFIED
	- at least, not all of them or not forever, at any rate. "I have seen all the living under the sun throng to the side of the second lad who replaces him," says verse 15. There is a bit of a question here. Is the second lad – literally, "the lad, the second" – the second king, ie, the lad taken out of prison to replace the old king? Or is he a second lad again who replaces the first lad who replaced the old king?

We can't be sure. But the point is obvious. Whether it is a second king, the first lad, or a second lad and hence a third king that is spoken of, the point is the same and it is plain. "I have seen all the living throng to the new king's side" (whichever new king). "There is no end to all the people" who hail him and place their hope in him (16). But there is an end to their acclaim, to their approval. There is an end to any new king's popularity. 

In a democracy, where the people (supposedly) rule, vox populi vox Dei, the voice of the people is the voice of God. But God Demos changes his mind often; he is no rock who never changes, that is for sure. One day vox populi cries ”Hosanna;" and the next it is, "Crucify him" – if the crowd at Christ's Triumphal Entry was the same as that at his Shameful Exit. And if not, even if we are to understand the verse to say that the generation that put the new king in power remains happy, another generation soon comes along – twenty-five years doesn't take long to pass! And that new generation, the ones who come later, will not be happy with him. So Winston Churchill roused Britain to begin, continue and win World War II. Nobody could have been more popular. Yet he lost the election that was held immediately after the War. 

"This too is vanity and striving after the wind" (verse 16). The second king, or the third, will eventually go the way of the old and not necessarily because he is so bad; simply because he is old and people grow tired of him. So maybe the problem in the beginning was not so much with a stubborn old king as with the people. Maybe the problem in your home, young people, is not so much your parents as you.

But, but, you sputter There really is something wrong with the present king, or PM, or party in power – whatever the form, the reality is the same. Democracy can be as absolute as any monarchy, almost, ever was. Power is power, whoever wields it, however they get it. But if you must, if you persist, that this time "there is something very, very rotten in the state of Denmark," well then, let us have a look. I thought you would probably persist. That is part of the Preacher's point in this text. That is why I also included chapter five, verse eight and nine.

3.	EVEN TYRANNY IS BETTER THAN ANARCHY – OR A WORSE TYRANNY
Let's read those verses. "If you see oppression of the poor and denial of justice and righteousness in the province, do not be shocked at the sight, for one official watches over another official, and there are higher officials over them. After all," – actually, I'd like to read that, for I think it is better, "Yet still" or "All the same, a king who cultivates the field is an advantage to the land."

You get the point? So the poor are oppressed; so justice and righteousness are denied. What did you expect? It is the kingdom of the world. And we don't do so well in the kingdom of God sometimes. That official you're having trouble with – don't be so hard on him. He might have a job and he might have authority and power over you. But make no mistake, he's just meat in a sandwich. There is someone watching over him. And he can't let the first official do justice in your case – for that would admit that the system was wrong and he's got someone else above him breathing down his neck in turn. Indeed, it may even be the underlings watching over their superiors who may well dob him in, as happened with Daniel in Darius' reign.

We're inclined to think it's a great thing to have a position of authority. And with authority goes responsibility – to maintain justice and defend the poor and the orphan and the widow. But you are sadly mistaken, my friend. In the kingdom of man my sole responsibility is to cover my own backside and the one at the top makes sure I know it. 
#	so Herod in Jesus' day had his brothers and ex-wives and sons killed to preserve the throne to himself;
#	so Svetlana Stalin, by the time she was twenty, had no brothers or sisters, no aunts or uncles who had not been shot, imprisoned or driven insane;
#	so Stalin had his top officers of state dance before him for entertainment – and woe betide if any refused; - if he had that sort of power over them, you don't think any of them are going to stick their necks out for some nobody like you, do you? This, by the way, was the gentleman who was overthrowing the oppression of the terrible Tsars and ushering in the People's Paradise.

National Programme, Radio New Zealand, 9^th November, 1999

Do not be shocked at this, says the Preacher. It is not accidental; it is not occasional. It is endemic; it is intrinsic to power held in the hands of sinners.

So how does this affect us today? Think about a few of our dissatisfactions. 
#	You think monarchy and aristocracy is bad? Wait till you remove them and replace them with people whose only right to office is their ability to appeal to our lowest instincts (they promised me more and I don't care whom they have to take it from). And that is supposed to be a better claim to rule than mere birth.
#	You think the Lords of the Privy Council as a final court of appeal is bad? Wait till you get an appeal court whose members were appointed solely because they happen to think according to the fads of our present government. They might be old fuddy-duds, but they owe their position to no-one, least of all to public opinion. And if they can think, they can think therefore for themselves on the real issues at stake and not because they have a certain ideological agenda that got them the job in the first place. Ask some Americans about that.
#	You think men are bad bosses and elders. Wait till you get a woman boss. "No one is more secretive; no one is less open in their style of management; no one is more concerned about their own position and less concerned about their employees as people than my female bosses." I quote a woman friend who holds a PhD and speaks from some years of experience. I do not want to engage in a battle on that front. It is just that those are the attributes women say men lack and that they can bring to management – all denied in practice, at least in this example. Perhaps we shall just acknowledge equality on this score.

Does this mean we should never try to improve things then, when they are bad, when injustice is done? The Preacher has already told us that the young king was better than the old one. But he is also warning us now that it need not turn out that way. It is just that power is power, whoever wields it. Let us go back just a few chapters in our Bibles. "Under three things the earth quakes, and under four, it cannot bear up: under a slave when he becomes a king, and a fool when he is satisfied with food, under an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she supplants her mistress" (Proverbs 30:21-23).

Want an example of that? In yesterday's Herald I read about Michael Knight, a Labour politician in the New South Wales Government – will that do for "a slave become a king"? This is what I read.
  In a land where sport is a passion beyond religion, Michael Knight and his colleagues have committed the ultimate heresy – taking Olympic seats from the battlers and handing them to the rich…. Blocks of tickets to the most sought-after events had been set aside for MPs and their guests. Embarrassed officials were forced on Thursday to return more than 500,000 tickets for sale to the public…. They were to have been the people's games, the most accessible to the common herd of the host nation in the Olympics' modern history and a beacon of probity. Instead… the organising committee secretly allocated hundreds of thousands of tickets for wealthy buyers at home and abroad and lied to Australians about it.

Lord Acton said 100 years ago, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." Very, very few people escape that – in any sphere of life. So the Preacher says; get used to it; don't expect the world to be better than the world.

But the Preacher says something else as well. Yet for all the injustice under his rule, "a ruler who cultivates the field (plays the field of his underlings?) is an advantage to the land" (5:9). There might even be entrenched and systemic corruption, but the country works.

This is a hard text. Two other ideas are as follows;
Delitzch says, Literally, the verse says, "The advantage of the land is this; a king given to (serve) the field (arable land). " He comments, "The author thus praises, in contrast to a despotic state, a patriarchal kingdom based on agriculture."
	Ellul would have it, "A king is subservient to a field." Ie, power "is subservient to the need to preserve the land and conquer more of it."

#	Has Cuba been better off since its revolution 60 years ago?
#	Was Russia better off after its revolution 80 years ago?
#	And with organised crime, so we are told, more or less running its economy now, is it better off since its last revolution ten years ago?
#	Or the old Yugoslavia?
#	Or the African nations since they have shucked off colonial rule since the last War?

Please understand me rightly. I am not saying that none of these things should have been done or should not have happened. But our text says the present tyranny and its injustices may well be better than that which might result if you overthrow it: anarchy or a worse tyranny (Kidner). Think well what changes you propose in your wisdom. Take a good hard look at the world and think well of the consequences.

CONCLUSION
So what is the Lord saying to us in this, congregation? Simply put, he is telling us to look to him for hope and help and security and justice. Three points;

i)	If he has given you some position of authority, make his Word your rule, not popular opinion or public clamour. For popular opinion is just another word for the spirit of the age and "he who marries the spirit of the age will very soon find himself a widower" (Lewis). Seek your praise from God not from men, for even if you do a better job than the person you replace, you won't be praised for it for long!

Even if you become popular because you make the changes the people want, it will likely not last long. I can tell you of some ministers and elders who have found that out. They changed to accommodate the people but the people left anyway. And by that I am not saying ignore those over whom you have authority. I am only saying don't make them and their desires your rule. And especially would I say that to parents of young children. Too often parents of young children take far too much notice of their crying and their desires and I fear what they will reap in ten years' time. "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child" and it is your job to drive it out of them, not allow it to drive you.

ii)	The fact that our happiness with a new government, a new regime, or changes made in response to our petitions – the fact that our happiness is often so short-lived should surely cause us to wonder whether our problem really is what we were complaining about.

It should make us search our hearts whether our problem is really there; whether we are rebelling against the providence of God and his rule over our lives; whether we simply have a spirit of dissatisfaction; whether our righteous indignation at perceived injustice is so holy after all. Maybe it is just plain old-fashioned rebellion that the Israelites were guilty of and for which God laid low many of them in the wilderness.

Brothers and sisters, we need to learn to be content. Don't expect the world to be other than the world. Don't look for heaven on earth. All tears will not be wiped away in this life.  We need to look to the Lord more. We need to be thankful for spiritual blessings more and think about them more – what the Lord has done for us through his son, Jesus Christ. Don’t even rejoice so much that God uses you to do great works in his kingdom, let alone in the kingdom of this world, Jesus says, "Rather, rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Right now, through the powers that be, be they even a Nero, it is the Lord who is ruling us and for our good.

iii)	People of God, the problem is very seldom, if at all, the outward form, the kind of government we have, who is our boss. The problem is the heart. And if we think that if we change the form all will be well, we are completely missing the boat. The problem is not who pulls the levers of power. The problem is the heart of those who pull the levers of power. And whether they are reds under the bed or true blues (even blue-blooded), or red, white and blues together, or orange, the heart of them all is black.

And the more we think about the affairs of life in this framework, we are worldly. And the less we will see that the real answer to the problems of mankind – personal and corporate – is that he needs to be born again. For reformation brothers and sisters, and revival of our own hearts in love and thankfulness to the Lord, and then the conviction and conversion of the world, let us labour and pray.
Amen.

Rev. John Rogers, Reformed Church of the North Shore, 14^th November, 1999.