In this description given by Samuel of what this human government would be and do to the Jews, God clearly describes what it does and is to all people. Every human government uses the substance, the time, the service of the subjects to enrich, gratify the appetites and lusts, and to promote the grandeur and glory of the rulers. And it is not true that in democratic or any other kind of governments the people themselves are rulers. They choose the rulers, at the instigation of a few interested leaders, then these rulers rule for their own selfish good and glory as other rulers do. The picture here drawn is not that of the worst and most despotic forms of governments, among the ignorant and degraded, but as it would and did exist among the Jewish people, with the best rulers that could be found. The substance of the people is, under forms of law taken now for the personal gratification and the display of our rulers just as Samuel told it would be in the Jewish nation. The licentiousness, the lewdness, the wars growing out of rivalry of different aspirants to rule, and of the desolation and bloodshed growing out of national rivalries are not mentioned by Samuel. He gave a picture of the mildest and best human governments as contrasted with the Divine. The rulers of the human oppress the subjects for their own benefit. The ministers of the Divine government deny themselves for the good of the subjects.

Jesus declares this:

“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them (their subjects) and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give himself a ransom for many” (Mat. 20:25).

Here the inherent distinction between the two governments is marked and emphasized. Man in setting aside the government of God and forming one of his own, cut himself off from the blessing, the service, the strength, the help that God bestows on the subjects of His government, and took on himself the burdens and oppressions and oppressors imposed by the human governments. But it is a decree of the Almighty that when man chooses his own way he shall eat of the fruit of that way.

“Because I called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early but they shall not find me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: they would none of my counsel; they despised all of my reproof. Therefore shall they eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices” (Prov. 1:24).

So long as men refuse the rule of God, God ordains they shall be ruled by their own governments and eat the fruit of their own ways and be filled with their own devices. Showing clearly that when men turn from the government of God to their own inventions and governments, then God ordains these governments as means of punishing them for their rebellion, and while this punishing them, they are God’s ordinances for this work and none should resist them. In doing so they are resisting the ordinance of God.

But it is not in man to form government in which the selfish element will not prevail, and which will not be used to tax and oppress the ruled for the glory and aggrandizement of the rulers.

The above post is an excerpt from the book, Civil Government by David Lipscomb. Follow the link to learn more about the book and purchase your copy today!

Man refused to be governed by God. First as an individual he violated the specific command of God. “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” This leaven of disobedience wrought the rejection of the Divine government, and was transmitted from the individual to the family, to the tribe, to the race. “While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.” When man was off his guard the enemy of God and man implanted the seeds of distrust and disaffection, and the heart, the mind and the life of man became disloyal to God.

“The serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4-5).

The act of individual disobedience culminated in the effort of man to organize a government of his own, so that he himself might permanently conduct the affairs of earth, free from the control of God, and independent of God’s government. The first account we have of organized human government, is

“And Cush begat Nimrod, he began to be a mighty one in the earth. … The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar” (Gen. 10:8).

Nimrod was the grandson of Ham, and the founder of the first government organized outside of the family institution, ordained by God from the beginning. Nimrod made other families tributary to himself, and established a kingdom of which he was the head. The declaration, “Let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth” (Gen. 11:4), shows the animus and the spirit of the movement, and that it was intended to resist the purpose of God to govern them and to distribute them over the face of the earth, and to maintain themselves in a government of their own organizing. The effort to unite themselves more closely that God’s rule united them, resulted in the confusion of their language and their division and dispersion. The design and purpose of this beginning of human government on earth was to oppose, counteract, and displace the government of God on earth.

The institution of human government was an act of rebellion and began among those in rebellion against God, with the purpose of superseding the Divine rule with the rule of man. Its founder was Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, whose family was accursed. In accordance with a well-defined principle of God’s over-ruling providence, the family of this founder has been the greatest sufferer by the institution which he originated. Josephus, with whatever credit he may be entitled to in reference to matters so remote, says that “Nimrod, the founder and leader, appealed to them that it was too humiliating and degrading for wise human beings capable of forming governments of their own, to submit to the government of another.” Josephus B. 1 ch. iiii says,

“When they flourished with a numerous youth, God admonished them to send out numerous colonies, but imagining that the prosperity they enjoyed was not derived from the favor of God, did not obey him. Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such affront and contempt of God … He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his own power.”

This is quoted to show the government existed before Nimrod, else he could not CHANGE it. Undoubtedly the government instituted by God – the family government – existed. He changed this by subjugating a number of families and tribes into one government under himself. The quotation so far as Josephus is authority in the matter, shows that the human government and dependence upon that government for good – was the means adopted to wean them away from fidelity to God and his government, and it was instituted for the purpose of supplanting God’s government.

The above post is an excerpt from the book, Civil Government by David Lipscomb. Follow the link to learn more about the book and purchase your copy today!