“A Nation Under God: Godly Leadership”
Jer. 22:1-5, 11-17
If the character of our government is to be good, we must put good characters in office. Abigail Adams, wife of the second president of the United States, wrote her husband a letter in which she made the following observation: “[A] true patriot must be a religious man. I have been led to think…that he who neglects his duty to his Maker may well be expected to be deficient and insincere in his duty towards the public. Even suppose him to possess a large share of what is called honor and public spirit, yet do not these men, by their bad example, by a loose, immoral conduct, corrupt the minds of youth and vitiate the morals of the age and thus injure the public more than they can compensate by…generosity and honor?” Unfortunately, as President Rutherford B. Hayes once said, “Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office seeking.” That’s one of the reasons decisions regarding who to vote for can be so difficult. Just what do we look for in a godly leader?
First, a godly leader has a DEDICATION TO RIGHTEOUSNESS. Jer. 22:3 – “This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right.” As Proverbs 16:12 puts it, “Kings detest wrongdoing, for a throne is established through righteousness.” Godly leaders HAVE A HEART FOR GOD AND HIS WAYS. They value and pursue righteousness, striving to do what is right by God’s standards. They choose daily to cooperate with God. There’s some interesting insight in 1 Sam. 8. The Israelites went to Samuel and said they wanted to have a king “such as all the other nations have.” Through Samuel God warned them that if they got a king like other nations they would become like other nations and stop following God’s standards. Verse 18: God said, “’When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.’ But the people refused to listen… ‘We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations…’” God was making it clear that unless the leader has a heart for God, the people will not have a heart for God.
This dedication involves A COMMITMENT TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT. Consider David. Twice he had opportunity to capture and kill King Saul – and who could blame him? Saul was unjustly pursuing David. But David knew that doing so was not right by God’s standards and so he refused to do so. He knew he was accountable to God. Leaders of nations are ultimately accountable not to the electorate, the lobbyists, or the campaign contributors, but to God. A. W. Tozer stated, “... there can be no tolerance of evil, no laughing off the things that God hates."
Remember Daniel – he was told to eat what the king served but (1:8) “Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.” Godly leaders must act on godly principles. When godly principles cease to matter then religion, truth, honesty, and integrity begin to disappear.
Godly leaders must also have an ATTITUDE OF SERVITUDE. Jer. 22:13-17 – “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor. He says, ‘I will build myself a great palace with spacious upper rooms.’ So he makes large windows in it, panels it with cedar and decorates it in red. “Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the LORD. “But your eyes and your heart are set only on dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood and on oppression and extortion.” Godly leaders see POWER AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE, NOT TO SEEK PERSONAL GAIN. Godly leadership must be for the benefit of the followers not the enrichment of the leader.
John Maxwell has put the contrast between godly and ungodly leadership very well. Godly leadership pursues love and service to others rather than power and prestige; seeks to improve the welfare of the people rather than their own welfare; sees others as brothers and sisters rather than as enemies and competitors; determines to meet needs and grow the cause rather than remove or kill the opposition. (1)
Servitude also sees POWER AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE FAITHFUL. President Woodrow Wilson said “If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.” Mother Teresa was on a street corner in Calcutta, and three bodies were lying on the street. She began working with one person and a visitor asked, “Aren’t you upset that you can’t get to all the bodies?” She responded, “No. God created us not to be successful, but to be faithful.” Such was the spirit of Joshua. Near the end of his life he challenged the Israelites (24:14-15): “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” Godly leaders are concerned with serving and being faithful.
The third characteristic of godly leaders is their DESIRE FOR JUSTICE. (Jer. 22:3) “Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.” To act justly is to SECURE AND PROVIDE HELP FOR THE OPPRESSED AND THOSE WHO HAVE NO VOICE and who have therefore have not been treated fairly. Proverbs 31:8-9 (GNT) – “Speak up for people who cannot speak for themselves. Protect the rights of all who are helpless. Speak for them and be a righteous judge. Protect the rights of the poor and needy.” Isaiah 58:6-10 states that justice is liberating the oppressed, sharing resources with the needy, providing shelter for the homeless, supplying clothing for the naked, and ceasing accusing and judging others.
Jesus reminds us that doing justice is really A MATTER OF LOVING GOD WITH ALL THAT WE ARE AND LOVING OUR NEIGHBOR AS OUR SELVES. He then defines our neighbor as anyone near us who is in need. Godly leaders are aware that God measures societies by how they treat the people at the bottom. (2) Therefore they seek not only to provide for them but to build them up and equip them to live in health and wholeness.
The fourth mark of a godly leader is a SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE. There is a prophetic parable in Judges 9. We’ll call it the parable of the trees. The trees decided to have a king so they asked the three most qualified first – and all three refused to serve. The olive tree felt his olive oil – used for food, medicine, and lamp fuel — honored God and was too precious to give up. The fig tree felt his cherished fruit – a key agricultural product highly valued – was too necessary to give up. The vine felt it’s wine – used for not only the main beverage but also for the temple sacrifices – was too precious to give up. So the trees asked the lowly bramble bush to be king and rule over them. The bramble bush is a far cry from the quality of the other three trees. It grows uncontrollably, is useless and fruitless. All it can really do is burn quickly. And while it offered shade, it had no shade to give. But because it was asked to rule, it accepted.
Jotham’s point was that while Gideon and other qualified people had turned down the offer to rule, the people were not satisfied. So they backed someone who would rule – even if he was not qualified. But THE PRICE OF LEADERSHIP IS SACRIFICE. None of the three highly qualified trees were willing to serve – they did not want to give up, or sacrifice, their current job, or status, or contribution. Still today many highly qualified people refuse to lead, and often for understandable reasons. And I can understand people’s hesitation. Who wants to give up the comfortable, the successful for the troubles, trials, and pressures of leadership? The costs of leadership are financial, emotional, physical, spiritual, and personal. But if too many who are qualified refuse to lead the door is wide open for those less qualified – and they are all too willing! The best leaders are those who are already busy leading in some capacity, with therefore something to sacrifice. The bramble bush had nothing to sacrifice; because he had never been a leader, he had nothing to offer! A. W. Tozer wrote: “A true and safe leader is likely to be one who has no desire to lead, but is forced into a position of leadership by the inward pressure of the Holy Spirit. ...I believe it might be accepted as a fairly reliable rule of thumb that the man who is ambitious to lead is disqualified as a leader.”
Yet godly leaders recognize that SURVIVAL AND SUCCESS ARE NOT THE PRIMARY GOALS OF LEADERSHIP AND POWER. The apostle Paul provides great insight which we find in Acts 20:22-24 – “And now, in obedience to the Holy Spirit I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit has warned me that prison and troubles wait for me. But I reckon my own life to be worth nothing to me; I only want to complete my mission and finish the work that the Lord Jesus gave me to do…” The only issue that counts is doing what is right – living and leading by God’s standards, marching to God’s orders.
The fifth characteristic of godly leaders is that they have a PASSION FOR PRAYER. Look at Nehemiah. Although an Israelite, he served a foreign king. The book of Nehemiah opens with this scene (1:1-4 CEV): “During the month of Chislev in the twentieth year that Artaxerxes ruled Persia, I was in his fortress city of Susa, when my brother Hanani came with some men from Judah. So I asked them about the Jews who had escaped from being captives in Babylonia. I also asked them about the city of Jerusalem. They told me, “Those captives who have come back are having all kinds of troubles. They are terribly disgraced, Jerusalem’s walls are broken down, and its gates have been burned.” When I heard this, I sat down and cried. Then for several days, I mourned; I went without eating to show my sorrow, and I prayed…”
For a godly leader, PRAYER IS THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS. Nehemiah did not know what to do until he consulted God. Godly leaders know that there is a limit to human wisdom. There are mysteries humans cannot understand, puzzles they cannot solve, solutions they cannot discover. Horoscopes, fortune tellers, and personal advisors are not adequate. Isaiah 47:13-15 reminds us “You are powerless in spite of the advice you get. Let your astrologers come forward and save you—those people who study the stars,
who map out the zones of the heavens and tell you from month to month what is going to happen to you. They will be like bits of straw, and a fire will burn them up! They will not even be able to save themselves—the flames will be too hot for them, not a cozy fire to warm themselves by. That is all the good they will do you— those astrologers you've consulted all your life. They all will leave you and go their own way, and none will be left to save you.” Through Jeremiah God condemned the false prophets and concluded by stating (23:22) “But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds.”
Yet prayer can only be the first order of business when it is also THE FIRST ORDER OF LIFE. Daniel was one of the greatest godly leaders in the Old Testament. Because of is exalted position within the foreign government, associates of the king were jealous of him, but they couldn’t find any fault in him that would allow them to bring him down. So they tricked the king into issuing an edict that forbade anyone from praying to any god or man for 30 days. Why? They knew that prayer to God was the first order of Daniel’s life and that he would defy the edict – which he did. Daniel, in other words, did not pray to defy the edict; he prayed because prayer was the anchor of his life. It was his normal action. It must be so for godly leaders.
A nation can only be godly when her leaders are godly. While we are tempted to select and support candidates based upon their positions, we must never forget that their positions will only be consistently godly if they themselves are godly. But I hasten to added one final thought. While we desire and need godly leaders in the key positions of national and local leadership, we, too are called to be godly leaders. As an employer, you must be a godly leader. As a parent and grandparent, you must be a godly leader. As a teacher, you must be a godly leader. As a youth leader or Consistory member, you must be a godly leader. As a student you must be a godly leader. If just one person follows you, you are a leader and must be a godly one. Godly leaders in all walks of life will be the foundation for building and maintaining a nation under God.
A television news camera was on location in southern Florida filming the widespread destruction of Hurricane Andrew. In one scene, amid the devastation and debris, stood one house on its foundation. A reporter went up to the owner and asked how he managed to escape destruction. The man replied, “I built this house myself. I also built it according to the Florida state building code. When the code called for 2x6 trusses, I used 2x6 roof trusses. I was told that a house built according to code could withstand a hurricane. I did, and it did.” So let us vote for godly leaders and let us be godly leaders and our nation will withstand all that comes against her and rises up within her. Indeed, “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.” (Ps. 127:1) Help the Lord build our nation. Let Him begin in us.
(1) John Maxwell, The Maxwell Leadership Bible, Thomas Nelson Bibles of Thomas Nelson, Inc., © 2002 by Maxwell Motivation, Inc., p. 539
(2) Mark Galli, ‘How to Pick a President’, (Kindle Locations 700-708, Christianity Today, Kindle Edition
