My dear readers,

Proverbs 11:10 “When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting.”

Weddings, birthdays, and all kinds of celebrations make many “jump for joy”, including reunions with loved ones they have not seen for a long time or with those who have been delivered from some untoward situation but have returned home safely. Undoubtedly, these are good reasons for joyful celebrations.

However, for believers, their reasons for great joy, i.e., jumping for joy in the figurative sense, must be more than how the unbelieving world loves and enjoys all their earthly things and relationships. The world rejoices in all things temporal. God’s children are bound for heaven and know they are strangers and sojourners passing through this world on their way to their eternal home in glory. Can God’s children really experience true joy far away from their eternal home, in this foreign land, in the devil’s domain, surrounded by the devil’s deceptions, cunning devices and evil minions? Proverbs 11:10 says they can and they must!

When the Righteous are in Power – King Solomon wrote the Book of Proverbs for the nation of Israel, God’s people, who needed to live holily in Christ to be a holy witness for Jesus Christ. “the city” refers to any city in Israel, particularly the capital Jerusalem where the king lived. For the city to be affected, the impact has to originate with the city's leader. In the context of the Book of Proverbs and Israel, the king was the city's leader. Israel was not a democracy. As a monarch, the king had absolute power to enact laws and decrees that affected the daily lives of all who lived in the Promised Land. Therefore, when the king was righteous, he would pass laws and decrees that are just and right for the spiritual well-being of Israel and her witness for Christ.

A righteous ruler has received Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Saviour who suffered and died on the cross for his sins. He has experienced the cleansing power of Christ’s blood in his soul. He was once in bondage to sin, committing all things sinful in his thinking, motivation, words and deeds. The moment God made him righteous in Christ, he became a new creature with Christ’s nature. The sinful nature of being in bondage to sin has been completely eradicated and replaced by Christ’s nature. The two natures cannot co-exist in a believer's heart, whereby one moment he is sinfully depraved when the sinful nature surfaces, and the next moment he has Christ’s nature when the Spirit of Christ, who is also called the Holy Spirit, surfaces. This is a ludicrous disaster within the believer’s soul.

Christ has conquered death, has he not? Death has lost its sting, has it not? All sins (such as the bondage, the penalty, guilt and dominion of sin) have been washed away by the blood of Christ in every believer’s life. How then can the sinful nature remain? To teach that the sinful nature remains is to give excuses to professing believers to sin more and more and blame it on the sinful nature. They will reason in their minds that it is in their nature to sin and the sinful nature is the culprit. 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The king who was righteous in Christ would hate sin. He would punish sins and sinners justly according to the Word of God that is from God his heavenly Father. The nation would be Christ-like since the Israelites were to live their social life according to the Bible. 

All the laws and decrees that are right and good are found in the Holy Bible, God’s perfect Word. All that the righteous king had to do was to enforce the civil laws God gave to Israel. Through that enforcement, the righteous king would propagate biblical laws throughout Israel, thereby providing a Bible-based environment in which the world could see the holy image of Christ.  For example, one of the good laws the righteous king could enact is to ban idol worship, punish all idol worshippers, remove all places of idolatry, and destroy all the idols. The idol worshippers might not be converted to Christ, but at least, outwardly, they would all obey God’s Word, since the civil laws in Israel were ordained by God and based on the Ten Commandments (cf. Exodus 21-23). Israel would be free from idolatry, outwardly. For the inward, the righteous king would have provided an environment of holiness and righteousness in which sinners could be saved. For believers, they would rejoice greatly as they see the glory of God through all the good laws being obeyed throughout the year.

The believers in every city would jump for joy, for Israel was fulfilling her spiritual duty; God founded her to be a shining light for Christ in a world dying in sin and is spiritually blind. God would bless Israel and all who lived in it, including the surrounding nations, with salvation and grace.

When the Wicked is Deposed from Power – However, when the king of Israel was wicked and idolatrous, Israel suffered. Israel’s idolatrous witness was worse than the idolatry of the surrounding nations like the Moabites, Edomites and Ammonites because these Gentile nations did not shame the name of Christ in their idolatry. But Israel did. When the world is unable to see the holy Christ of the Bible from the witness of God's people, many sinners will die in their sin and be cast into hell. Instead of the light Christ shining forth from Israel, it shone forth the black light of idolatry, and all who believed in this idolatrous light remained in their sin and thought they were saved and would no longer end up in hell. Tragically, they were still heading toward hell upon death, all because of the wicked king.

But when the wicked king was deposed, and righteousness returned with a righteous king,  great joy would also return. When the wicked king ruled, the righteous could only endure and hold on to their faith, risking persecution from their own leaders for refusing to obey the idolatrous laws. They could not leave Israel, for there was no alternate Promised Land for them to hide as they waited for the wicked king to die before they could return. Today, believers can leave a church that has become rotten and seek out a God-honouring church to continue their study of God’s Word, worship, and service. God’s people in all the cities in Israel rejoiced because of the eternal and spiritual blessings that a righteous king brought. God is pleased. The Holy Spirit convicted and converted. Jesus Christ is magnified. Sinners were saved.

The application of the above teaching for the church witness is similar. When church leaders are righteous, all ministries will be managed according to the Bible and the church’s spiritual environment will be God-honouring. The Bible is the only rulebook, and Christ is truly the Head of the church, not in name only. All who come will be blessed, for the Holy Spirit will take the Word of God proclaimed in these ministries to sanctify hearts. Sinners who come will be given the gospel of Christ and be saved. Children of God will be blessed with God’s truth to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ Jesus their Lord. All who come will rejoice. All who serve and worship will also rejoice in the Lord for the many spiritual blessings they will receive from God in the church.

Are you very happy in Christ or in the things of the world?

Yours faithfully in the Saviour’s Service

Rev Dr Quek Suan Yew, Pastor