The Permanent Things: On Fearing God and Spurning Revolution Text: Proverbs 24:21-22
Introduction: The Itch for Upheaval
We live in an age that is constitutionally restless. Our entire culture is afflicted with a kind of spiritual fidgeting, a deep seated conviction that the next good thing can only be arrived at by first demolishing the last good thing. The modern spirit is a revolutionary spirit. It wants to tear down fences without first asking why they were put up. It wants to reinvent the family, reinvent morality, reinvent humanity itself, and it calls this sorry business progress. It is a spirit that is always meddling, always agitating, always "given to change."
But this is not a new problem. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes tells us that there is nothing new under the sun, and that includes the perennial temptation to trade in the stability of God's established order for the intoxicating, but ultimately disastrous, thrill of rebellion. The book of Proverbs is intensely practical, a father's instruction to his son on how to live skillfully in God's world. And a central part of that skill is knowing what to hold fast to and what to shun. It is about knowing the difference between reformation and revolution, between building and dynamiting.
The wisdom offered here in this passage is profoundly counter cultural. It does not tell us to follow our hearts, or to speak our truth, or to join the latest movement for radical change. It commands something far more foundational, and therefore far more radical in our day. It commands a dual allegiance, a double fear, that acts as the bedrock of a stable and blessed society. This passage is a warning against political and spiritual fickleness. It teaches us that true stability is found in fearing the right things in the right order, and that associating with the agents of chaos is the fast track to ruin.
The Text
My son, fear Yahweh and the king; Do not associate with those who change, For suddenly their disaster will rise, And who knows the upheaval that comes from both of them?
(Proverbs 24:21-22 LSB)
The Twin Pillars of Order (v. 21a)
The instruction begins with a foundational command, establishing the twin pillars upon which any sane society must rest.
"My son, fear Yahweh and the king..." (Proverbs 24:21a)
Notice the order. The order is everything. First, you are to fear Yahweh. This is the beginning of wisdom, the absolute starting point for all reality. This is not a cowering, servile dread, but rather a reverential awe. It is the sane recognition of who He is and who you are. He is the Creator, you are the creature. He is the sovereign Lord, you are His subject. To fear God is to live with a constant awareness that you are not your own, that you live and move and have your being in Him, and that you will give an account to Him for everything. If you do not get this right, you cannot get anything else right. Without the fear of God, the fear of man becomes a snare, and all your other loyalties will become disordered and idolatrous.
Second, and flowing directly from the first, you are to fear the king. Why? Because the king holds a delegated authority. As the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 13, there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, to resist the governing authorities is to resist what God has appointed. We fear the king, not because he is inherently awesome or personally divine, but because we fear the God who established his office. The king is God's minister, his deacon, appointed to punish evil and to praise good. This command therefore demolishes two opposite errors at once. It demolishes the anarchist, who says he will have no king but himself. And it demolishes the statist, who makes the king into a god.
Our fear of the king is always conditional upon our ultimate fear of Yahweh. When the king commands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, our duty is clear: we must obey God rather than men. But this is not a license for a rebellious spirit. A true fear of God produces the best kind of citizen, one who obeys the magistrate for conscience' sake, right up to the point where obedience would mean disobedience to the Most High King. This dual fear is the essential framework for liberty and order.
The Folly of the Fickle (v. 21b)
Having established the foundation of stability, Solomon now warns his son against the agents of instability.
"...Do not associate with those who change," (Proverbs 24:21b LSB)
The Hebrew here points to those who are fickle, who are given to upheaval, the revolutionaries. This is a warning against running with the mob that is always discontent, always agitating for some new thing. These are the people who believe that all problems can be solved if we just tear down the existing structures. Their creed is "whatever is, is wrong." They are defined not by what they want to build, but by what they want to burn.
We must be careful here. This is not a command to be a stodgy traditionalist who opposes every and all change. The Scriptures command reformation. We are to be constantly reforming our lives, our families, and our churches to bring them more into conformity with the Word of God. That is a kind of change. But it is a constructive change, a change that builds on the foundation that has been laid. The revolutionary is different. He does not want to reform; he wants to erase. He does not want to repair the house; he wants to bulldoze it and live in the rubble.
In our day, this spirit is rampant. It is the spirit of deconstruction. It is the spirit that attacks the created order of male and female. It is the spirit that despises our heritage and seeks to cancel our history. It is a spirit of perpetual adolescence, always throwing a tantrum against the wisdom of its fathers. Solomon's advice is blunt: do not meddle with them. Do not join their committees. Do not march in their parades. Do not give them aid and comfort. Why? Because their project is doomed, and if you tie yourself to them, you will share in their fate.
The Double Barreled Disaster (v. 22)
The warning concludes by explaining the consequences of siding with the revolutionaries. The consequences are not mild, and they are not from a single source.
"For suddenly their disaster will rise, And who knows the upheaval that comes from both of them?" (Proverbs 24:22 LSB)
First, notice the timing. Their disaster will rise "suddenly." Rebellion against God's order is like building a house on a sinkhole. It might look fine for a season. The parties might be grand. But the collapse, when it comes, will be swift and catastrophic. Revolutions are notorious for devouring their own children. The very instability they unleash cannot be controlled, and the men who ride the tiger of revolution to power are usually eaten by it in the end. The history of the French and Russian revolutions is a bloody commentary on this verse.
But the most sobering part of the warning is the source of the upheaval. "Who knows the upheaval that comes from both of them?" Both of whom? From Yahweh and the king. This is the critical point. When you join with those who despise God's ordained order, you are not just making a political miscalculation. You are picking a fight on two fronts. You are inviting judgment from both heaven and earth.
You make yourself an enemy of the king, the civil magistrate, who bears the sword to execute wrath on the evildoer. The state will bring its power to bear against you. But far more terrifying is the fact that you make yourself an enemy of Yahweh. You have not just broken the laws of man; you have defied the God who ordained that there be laws of man. You have positioned yourself against the very structure of reality. And God is not mocked. The upheaval He brings is a calamity that no one can calculate. To rebel against the twin pillars of order is to invite a double portion of ruin.
Conclusion: Allegiance to the Unchanging King
The world offers us a constant stream of new revolutions, new movements, new ways to throw off the old restraints. And every one of them promises a glorious utopia on the other side of the chaos. But the wisdom of God tells us that the path of the revolutionary is the path of sudden disaster.
Our stability does not come from finding the right political movement. Our stability comes from fearing the right persons. We fear Yahweh first and foremost. And because we fear Him, we have been delivered from the ultimate fear, the fear of death and damnation, through the work of His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the true king, the one to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given.
Our ultimate allegiance is to Him. And it is this unshakable allegiance to King Jesus that makes us the best of citizens on earth. We are not fickle. We are not given to change. We serve a king whose kingdom cannot be shaken. We are not called to be revolutionaries who tear down, but rather builders of a heavenly city, whose influence is to spread throughout the earth. Our task is to be faithful in our stations, to fear God, to give honor to the king, and to refuse to associate with the architects of ruin.
The world will continue its restless agitations. But we are to be a people marked by a settled peace, a deep stability that is rooted in the fear of the Lord. For we know that while the kingdoms of men rise and fall, the kingdom of our God and of His Christ shall increase, and of its peace there will be no end.