The Government of God

1.21.2012

Exodus 1.22 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you are to cast into the Nile, and every daughter you are to keep alive.”

Governments often fear size in some respects. Governments usually don’t know or celebrate the provision of God and fear running out of stuff like food, soldiers, supplies; and the list goes on and on. Some governments resort to rationing. Most governments only see people as things and do things like give orders to kill baby boys or baby girls in order to keep the population under control so they don’t run out of stuff.

Human governments tend to be pragmatic at the expense of human life; the very young, the elderly, the sick and frail, and the poor all tend to become expendable. Instead of looking for ways to preserve life they tend to look for ways to reduce the masses because masses are a drain on resources. Historically, governments have an excellent track record of putting things over people – that’s just the way they do things.

In China today, it is girls who are the targets. Girls are targeted because girls get pregnant and have babies and when your job is to manage a country of one point something billion people, you need to control how many girls have babies and how many babies those girls have. The Chinese government supports forced sterilization. The Chinese see limits to their resources and many in China cannot handle the thought of an infinite God with infinite resources. There are many others on the earth today who see the global population as a problem and something to be rigidly controlled.

So Pharaoh’s population control efforts were put into place and yet the Israelites continued to have babies. So rather than fight the problem head-on, Pharaoh decided to turn the Israeli’s into machines – if you won’t control your urges and energies, the I will make you use them to build my infrastructure. As long as there have been governments, they have viewed the common population as resources to be used, rather than people to be valued.

In Isaiah 9 is this: For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this. (Vv. 6-7 NASB) Thank God!

Only God has the wherewithal to care for every person in every nation; and give all of us all we need, all the time. And the government will rest on His shoulders and He will care for all for He will value all as priceless and indispensable. And what we need is Him, and He’s more than enough for everyone forever.