Pondering Proverbs - Leadership (7)

 

“A divine decision is in the lips of the king; his mouth should not err [be unfaithful] in judgment. A just balance and scales belong to Yahweh; all the weights of the bag are His concern [work].” Proverbs 16:10 – 11.

 

There are two dichotomies of death in the church, one is the clergy – laity dichotomy, the other is the sacred – secular dichotomy. While not to diminish the special vocational call of ministry in the Word to the Church, this special vocational call is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry,” it is not to do all the ministry in the Body – far from it! Does not the very notion of a body teach us this? See Ephesians 4:11 – 16, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12.

 

Service within and to the church is not the only sacred work of life, for all work ought to be sacred, offered unto God, be a form of worship, service to others, and be a place of our transformation into the image of Jesus Christ. In other words, the work of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker ought to be a form of worship. As Paul writes, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men.” (Col. 3:23).

 

Every time well-meaning pastors speak to their people of secular work they unwittingly degrade the vocational callings of their congregation.

 

Now, why are we focused on this regarding Proverbs 16:10 – 11? Because the way we live and work is sacred, the way we treat others is sacred – whether we are kings or just getting started in our vocational lives. Whether we are pastors or evangelists or accountants or carpenters or farmers or computer programmers, we are called to serve God in our work and to worship Him. God is Creator, and our work is to emulate Him – are we not made in His image?

 

Proverbs 16:10 – 15 speaks to us of kings, of those in leadership and authority, of the way those in authority ought to think and act, and it begins by saying, “A divine decision is in the lips of the king; his mouth should not err [be unfaithful] in judgment.”

 

How might we think about the idea that “A divine decision is in the lips of the king”? Does this mean that it is always in the lips of the king? How can the second part of the verse help us think about this? “His mouth should not err…” We have the potential for being on the mark, as well as the potential for being off the mark. We also have the potential for getting some parts of a decision right and other parts wrong.

 

One of the ways we can strive for righteous decision making is by using a “just balance” in all that we do – not to be swayed by selfishness, favoritism, or a host of other elements that can distort our judgment. We want to learn to fly by the instrumentation of God’s Word as opposed to what we see, for our sense perceptions can deceive us and lead to spatial disorientation, which in turn may lead us to crash the plane with great loss. We don’t want to judge based on the way things appear to be, we want to judge based on the way things really are; and while our first impressions can be right, they are not always right. While the story people tell us the first time may seem like it is right, the story others tell us as we delve into a matter may bring other elements of a situation to light.

 

And…as smart as we think we are, we are nevertheless human, we have our limitations – we are not God, we are not omniscient and we cannot be omnipresent; often we will never know the entire truth of a situation – and so we look to our Lord Jesus for wisdom, we look to His Word for guidance, we listen to trusted mentors and counsellors as we grow in vocation and holistically as men and women – and hopefully we don’t look to our own understanding, even when we think we have understanding, but look to Christ in all things, acknowledging Him and allowing Him to direct our paths of thinking and action (Proverbs 3:1 – 12).

 

I’ll close this reflection by suggesting that there are (at least) two key elements to keep before us when we ponder decision making. One is that all of our decisions ought to be divine decisions, for we are the daughters and sons of the living God and our lives are in Christ Jesus, our elder brother. We are not to go off on our own and do what we want to do the way we want to do it, making up our own rules and principles and agendas – we belong to Jesus Christ and God is our Father. We have been “bought with a price” and we ought to clearly live as those who no longer belong to themselves.

 

The other key element is to live “under authority”. This dovetails with the above element. I cannot stress this enough in our lawless society and lawless professing church. The centurion (Matthew 8:5 – 13) saw that Jesus was “under authority” just as he, the centurion, was "under authority." I have never seen anyone understand this when reading this passage – never. Show me a man or women in authority who is not accountable to someone else, or to a group of people – and I’ll show you someone who is dangerous to himself and others. And let’s be honest, there are those who are accountable on an organizational chart but in reality, not only don’t think they are accountable, but often ensure that governing boards of directions or trustees are simply “yes” people.

 

And for professing Christians, we are always accountable to God and ought to live under His authority – and without submission to Him any authority that we may have is all the more likely to result in pride, selfishness, and ultimately abuse of power.

 

No matter the level of responsibility that we have been given, it is an opportunity to learn from Jesus how to use authority in our daily worship, in our service to others, and in our witness to Him.