Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
"Some of the Bible's prophecies could not have been given with a right spirit if men had made them up." In the Law of Moses, Israelites were forbidden to speak evil of their rulers. Even when Jesus came, he commanded his disciples to do whatever the Pharisees demanded that they do because, he said, "they sit in Moses' seat" (Mt. 23:2). God demands that great respect be shown to those whom He anoints, and the wise among His people have always felt that. Young David, for one example, refused to harm the evil King Saul when he could easily have killed him.
The scene was in a cave where David and his men were hiding. King Saul, not knowing David was in there, stopped into the cave to rest. David's men encouraged him to kill Saul quickly, telling him that the Lord had sent Saul to that cave so that David could kill him. But David replied, "The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch forth my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord" (1Sam. 24:1-6). David's great fear of God carried over into respect for King Saul, even though, by that time, King Saul had been turned over to an evil spirit from God.
Paul warned the brethren to "know them who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake" (1Thess. 5:12-13). And he said, "Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account. . ." (Heb. 13:17).
At the same time, Paul himself reproved Peter to his face in Antioch because Peter was endangering that Gentile believers' faith. On certain occasions, God anointed men to put kings of Israel to death for their sins. No ruler, including David when he became Israel's king, was above the Law and judgment of God. And no Israelite was ever required to obey a king who would have led them to do evil in God's sight.
Paul's counsel to honor "the higher power" (Rom. 13) applies to no situation more than in regards to the saints' attitude toward men whom God anoints to serve them. The saints are to submit to anointed men of God only as long as those men are submissive to God. The saints' allegiance is to God, not to man. Then again, their allegiance is to men who "speak the things of God". God's people are not required to respect any man so much that they follow him to do evil, even if that man has power to raise the dead. No man has authority from God to lead His children into sin.
The common standard for all of God's people is to honor God by honoring those whom He sends to minister to them. On those occasions when someone is called upon by the Lord to rebuke one of God's anointed servants, it should be done with both courage and humility. The faithful prophets of Israel knew that God had commanded His people not to speak evil of their rulers. But what else could they do but speak evil of those rulers when God sent them to do so?
It was God's sarcasm, not Amos', when Amos accused the rulers of Israel of being so greedy for land that they panted like dogs after the dust on the heads of the poor (Amos 2:7). Hosea condemned the Israelites for being the kind of people who quarreled with God's priests (4:4); then, he proceeded to bitterly accuse those same priests of deceiving Israel with lies, refusing to listen to God, and of slaughtering innocent people (5:1-2). Hundreds of times, maybe thousands, God sent messengers to the rulers of His people with harsh condemnations of their conduct, even though the commandment of God was still in effect: "Thou shalt not revile . . . the ruler of thy people!"
This is why I mentioned in that Sunday afternoon sermon in 1979 that if the Old Testament prophets had devised those harsh prophecies on their own, then it would have been sin for them to speak them. Only God knows when to do what. Everything else is sin. In fact, when God sent a prophet to accuse or to curse one of Israel's rulers, it would have been sin for that prophet not to accuse or curse him, no matter what was written in the Law.
But, as is almost always the case, there is another commandment in God's Law that permits, indeed enjoins, the breaking of the first one. In Leviticus 19:17, the Israelites were commanded by God to reprove any other Israelite whom they saw commit sin. To refuse to do so, according to the Lord, amounted to hating your fellow Israelite. Therefore, in Israel, any Israelite who saw a ruler of God's people commit sin was already empowered by God to reprove that sinner.
Still, the wise man waited long before uttering any accusation against one of God's anointed men. What if God had told that man to do what he was doing, and it merely appeared that he was transgressing God's Law? Shemei uttered vile curses at David as the pitiful king fled from Absalom. He reviled David bitterly for sins that he erroneously thought David had committed. There was no fear of God in him as he attacked the weeping king, and for his folly, he suffered the terrible judgment of God. On the other hand, when Nathan was sent by God to condemn David for sin, Nathan was blessed for fearlessly rebuking the king.
Consider this puzzling event: God commanded Israel very clearly and sternly, "Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm!" Seemingly in accordance with this, when a prophet told an Israelite man to punch him in the face, the Israelite refused to hit the prophet. As a result, God sent a lion to slay the Israelite who refused to punch the prophet (1Kgs. 20:35-36). Then, the prophet found another man who, when the prophet said, "Smite me!", he did so, and was blessed by God. What would you have done?
The human mind cannot determine when to obey which commandment when two seemingly conflicting commandments are given. When should you reprove a ruler, and when should you be silent? When should you obey a prophet who is telling you to do something God sternly said not to do? Your only hope of always making the right choice lies not in your knowing the Bible, nor knowing any religious traditions, but in your knowing the mind of God. And the only access that you have to the mind of God is the holy Ghost.
Walking after the Spirit of God, you will never make the wrong choice. If you are filled with the Spirit, it will be easy to know what to do even in difficult times because "the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1Cor. 2:10). To be led by the Spirit is the saints' only hope of escaping Satan's lovely snares and doing what is truly right in the sight of God because "the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God" (1Cor. 2:11).