The Statesman stands out in his vision. As analysts have pointed out:

The great difference between the real statesman and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for immortality (Edmund Burke).

A politician thinks of the next election, a statesman of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of his country. The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician is satisfied to drift (James Freeman Clarke).

The Statesman is the rare individual who does not think like everyone else does. The Statesman stands out against the majority who are politicians. Considering how rare they are, to whom can the Statesman turn for advice and guidance with confidence? There may be no human to whom the Statesman can turn with confidence that they will give him the help that he seeks in support of his vision.

We all need someone we can trust, from whom we can seek wise counsel as a check on our human wisdom to ensure that there is no human error in our plans. We all need someone we can trust to literally hold us by the hand, someone we can trust to guide us and support us. Because the Statesman is often operating in a direction diametrically opposed to the norm, on whom can he count for support? Statesmen are human beings largely travelling into uncharted territory. As a human being, when is a time when you felt fully secure? I sincerely hope this takes you back to childhood, when a loving parent held you by the hand. As an adult, how can we capture that same sense of security? As we consider this issue, let us consider the truly helpless in our societies. When no human is available to help them, the One they must reach out to is the same One the Statesman must reach out to – Almighty God Himself. Clearly, in order to do this, we must gain confidence in His ability to meet our needs.

Although the context is different, God made clear His basic principle when He said to one He addressed as “My servant”:

I am the Lord, I have called You for a righteous purpose, and I will hold You by your hand. I will keep You and appoint you… (Isaiah 42:6).

Although this is part of a passage that points to Jesus, it has wider application that, I submit, applies to all of us. And God clarified, seemingly to a broader audience that He addresses as His servants:

Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold on to you with My righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10).

“I will hold on to you with My righteous right hand.” – This is God’s way of supporting those humans who are His instruments. Applying this to the Statesman, God said of King David, whom He referred to as “My servant”:

My hand will always be with him, and My arm will strengthen him (Psalm 89:21).

I believe this is what made David, perhaps one of the great Statesman of all time, and can help us to be a Statesman. Listen to the ways King David expressed this understanding of God holding him by the hand throughout his life:

I follow close to You; Your right hand holds on to me (Psalm 63:8).

Your right hand upholds me (Psalm 18:35).

You will extend Your hand; Your right hand will save me (Psalm 138:7).

Your right hand will hold on to me (Psalm 139:10).

It was his continual understanding that God was holding him by the hand, as hopefully your father did for you as a child. Let us attempt to glean truths from the promises we began with in Isaiah’s writings:

I am the Lord, I have called You for a righteous purpose, and I will hold You by your hand. I will keep You and appoint you… (Isaiah 42:6).

Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold on to you with My righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10).

First, there is the promise: that He will “hold us by the hand”. There is an interesting choice of words here. The reality is that when we are held securely by the hand, we still may stumble. This is not a promise that we would never face obstacles or never trip over them, but that we will not and cannot fall. When we stumble, we cling even more tightly to the hand that is holding us, and this is what God intends. Just to clarify, when we place our hand in God’s hand and we stumble, it is possible to fall, but only if we let go of God’s hand – if we intuitively attempt to right ourselves and, in the process, let go of God’s hand to regain our balance. But it is at times like this that we must cling all the more tightly to Him.

Then, observe the purpose: “a righteous purpose”. From this, we learn that the endeavour God supports in holding us by the hand is “a righteous purpose.” We recognize that the only purpose we can be sure is a righteous purpose is the one He directs us to take. As we undertake that “righteous purpose”, note what He provides: “I will strengthen you; I will help you”.

What does it mean to allow God to hold us by the hand? What does it mean to hold God by the hand? We have seen King David’s expressions as Statesman, where he emphasizes to God “I follow close to You”. President Abraham Lincoln expressed it in a similar way:

I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.

This is Lincoln, as Statesman, describing God holding him by the hand and his holding onto God’s hand. We were designed by our Creator to need Him and, in the process, to grow more deeply into an intimate dependence upon Him. One reminder is the prayer of the psalmist:

Open my eyes so that I may contemplate wonderful things from Your instruction. I am a stranger on earth; do not hide Your commands from me (Psalm 119:18-19).

I submit that this must be the mindset for the Statesman allowing God to hold him by the hand.

Application to the Statesman: Do I recognize my own need to have someone I can trust and I know will hold me by the hand? Do I trust the Creator of my life and this world to play that role in my life? Clearly, He wants to hold my hand. Am I willing to hold His? What steps would I have to take to do this?

Let us each actively work to tighten our grip on our Creator’s hand through increasing our knowledge of Him through His instruction and strengthening our trust in Him.

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God made an astounding promise to Abraham, the father of ancient Israel:

all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you (Genesis 12:3).

This promise is repeated numerous times. Let us seek to understand what it was that made this promise applicable to other nations:

Abraham is to become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him so that he will command his children and his house after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. This is how the Lord will fulfill to Abraham what He promised him (Genesis 18:18-19).

What was it that God asked of Abraham as the basis of installing His blessing upon the nations? Simply stated, it was:

to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.

We learn more as God repeated His promise to Abraham’s son Isaac:

I will be with you and bless you.… I will confirm the oath that I swore to your father Abraham…. all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring… 

As God proceeded with Isaac, He provided more insight into the key to that blessing:

… because Abraham listened to My voice and kept My mandate, My commands, My statutes, and My instructions (Genesis 26:3-5).

Clearly, the uniqueness of Israel may only partly be understood by the human mind. It was the people through whom His Saviour for mankind would come. Israel was also to be a visible teaching lesson to all the nations. God’s interaction with Israel would be a visible demonstration of God’s character as it applies to nations. Israel would be an object lesson for every other nation of the blessings God desires to bestow upon every nation, with the clear understanding that each nation would listen to His voice and obey His instructions.

God provided a clear measuring stick for Israel which we must understand applies to our nations as well in evaluating whether our nations are experiencing God’s intended blessings:

Now if you faithfully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all His commands I am giving you today… All these blessings will come and overtake you, because you obey the Lord your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. Your descendants will be blessed, and your land’s produce, and the offspring of your livestock, including the young of your herds and the newborn of your flocks. Your basket and kneading bowl will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out… The Lord will make you prosper abundantly with children, the offspring of your livestock, and your land’s produce in the land the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open for you His abundant storehouse, the sky, to give your land rain in its season and to bless all the work of your hands … you will only move upward and never downward if you listen to the Lord your God’s commands I am giving you today and are careful to follow them. Do not turn aside to the right or the left from all the things I am commanding you today, and do not go after other gods to worship them (Deuteronomy 28:1-14).

Can our vision for our nations be any greater than this? Let us continue with God’s clarification:

But if you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all His commands and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and kneading bowl will be cursed. Your descendants will be cursed, and your land’s produce, the young of your herds, and the newborn of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out…because of the wickedness of your actions in abandoning Me…. You will sow much seed in the field but harvest little, because locusts will devour it… All these curses will come, pursue, and overtake you until you are destroyed, since you did not obey the Lord your God and keep the commands and statutes He gave you. These curses will be a sign and a wonder against you and your descendants forever. Because you didn’t serve the Lord your God with joy and a cheerful heart, even though you had an abundance of everything,… If you are not careful to obey all the words of this law, which are written in this scroll, by fearing this glorious and awesome name—Yahweh, your God— He will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses (Deuteronomy 28:15-59).

As we get to know the character of our God, we recognize that He desires to show love and bestow His blessings upon every human being. His desire is to bless and not to harm. His character is expressed:

“For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration— “plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).

However, He only asks that we give Him His proper place in our lives individually and as nations. Israel was intended to be a visible demonstration of what our Creator would do for the nation that would obey Him.

As we evaluate our nations using the measuring stick of blessing and withholding of intended blessing from our Heavenly Father, where does my nation lie? If I perceive that my nation is not receiving the blessing He intends, what steps can I and my people take? God gave this prescription to the God-fearing people in ancient Israel:

If I close the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the grasshopper to consume the land, or if I send pestilence on My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves, pray and seek My face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:13-14).

This must also be considered the prescribed course of action for those of every nation.

The post The Statesman Considers Our Creator’s Hand upon the Nation appeared first on CENTRE FOR STATECRAFT.

The challenges that those serving in Government face are daunting, often seemingly insurmountable.  A similar challenge was faced in my nation a century and a half ago. We, in the U.S., had a Civil War that split the nation into irreconcilable factions, seemingly ending this as a unified nation. The man who attempted to solve this was Abraham Lincoln. I believe the key to his success was the heart attitude he expressed on multiple occasions:

In the very responsible position in which I happen to be placed, being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father, as I am.

I hold myself in my present position and with the authority vested in me as an instrument of Providence.

He viewed himself as an instrument in the hands of Almighty God. When I hear those words, I think of the surgeon holding the scalpel – the surgical knife. In considering this analogy, one recognizes that it is not the scalpel that is so important but rather the hand holding it. The instrument does not do anything on its own, but makes itself dependent upon the hand holding it. When the surgery is completed, it is the hand that receives the acclaim, not the knife. At the same time, if anything goes wrong, it is the hand that receives the criticism.

I believe there is no more critical area in which to be God’s instrument than in Government, especially in building a nation to become the place where all are blessed as God intends:

so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity (1 Timothy 2:2).

God’s intent is clear that we are to be God’s instrument. Part of the mechanism for being guided by His hand is made clear within His instruction for the first Head of Government under His guidance

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left (Deuteronomy 17:18-20).

Each is to immerse in God’s instructions that they first write out in their own hand for their own use, and then meditate upon daily. This is fascinating in an age when traditional thinking calls for “separation of Church and State.” The Head of Government, and presumably all officials operating under delegated authority from the Head of Government, are to write out the Law of God from the Bible. This group is the only one I know of that is asked to write the Law of God for their use in fulfilling their responsibilities. I, as a Bible teacher, am not even asked to do this and no other group than Government decision-makers is identified as required by our Creator to do that. Furthermore, this reminds us of just how important Government decision-makers are in God’s plan and of His plan for them to be His instruments.

God Himself gave this insight in facing the challenge of knowing His mind in making decisions as His instrument:

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways. For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).

It is not enough to want to be obedient to God. We must recognize that our well intentioned wisdom is not adequate and we must seek His wisdom – His direct guidance. The mindset required is described by God in these words:

Mankind, He has told you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

Notice, God’s servant here focuses on the same characteristic as Lincoln when he described himself as “a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father” – that in order to be used, we must humble ourselves in the same way as the simple scalpel. As we seek to be God’s instrument, He facilitates this in several ways. He speaks to us:

Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you do not know (Jeremiah 33:3).

Then, we have the example of how God would behave as a human being through Jesus. Jesus is referred to as Emmanuel, which means “God with us”. Hence, an essential component of becoming God’s instrument involves studying the life of Jesus, then seeking to emulate His life, always asking “What would Jesus do if He were making this decision instead of me?” If, in every decision I make, I were to ask that question, who would in reality be living my life. It would mean Jesus living through me. In actuality, it means allowing Jesus to live His life through us, as expressed by His servant Paul:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:19-20).

Returning to the analogy with the surgeon holding the scalpel, the surgeon is dependent upon the scalpel responding exactly as he intends. The scalpel is rigid and inflexible so that THE INSTRUMENT perfectly carries out the will of the hand of the surgeon.  Anything less would likely spell disaster. In the same way, we must respond perfectly and quickly to His will. When we do not view ourselves as His instrument and respond accordingly, we risk great damage to our people.

As we carry the analogy of the surgeon and the scalpel a step further, we recognize that the care our Heavenly Father has for those who serve Him as His instrument far surpasses that provided by the surgeon. Our Heavenly Father does not use His instruments and then discard them. He reminds us:

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued to extend faithful love to you (Jeremiah 31:3).

There is no more satisfying place to be than in His loving hand as His instrument.

CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE STATESMAN.

• Do I view myself as operating under God’s direction, and upon His instruction, literally an “instrument in the hands of God”?
• Am I willing to trust the hand that is attempting to hold me as His instrument?
• Reflecting that President Lincoln referred to himself not only as “an instrument in the hands of God”, but as a “humble instrument”, am I able to humble myself before my ultimate Master?

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