Government Begins at Home – The Kingdom Curriculum IX (2)

Government Begins at Home

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16

“You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, according to your tribes…” Deuteronomy 16:18

The Importance of Local Government

Children who learn to honor their fathers and mothers will have an easier time translating that respect to their peers, neighbors, and people in general. This is why parents need to work hard at training their children to show proper deference to and respect for their authority, being careful not to exasperate them by pointless rules or harsh discipline along the way (Eph. 6:4). In the safety, security, love, and order of the home, children will learn that proper rule and just authority are also crucial to a safe, secure, loving, and orderly community life as well.

I find it extremely interesting that when God began crafting a form of civil government for His people, to ensure that His blessings would be obtained among them, He did not begin at the national level. Indeed, it would be many hundreds of years before a formal national government would be established in Israel (although God was already making provision for this, even in the days of Moses, Deut. 17).

Instead, God began at the local level, among the tribes, where judges and officers–most of whom would have been parents–would exercise a kind of parental oversight of the community as well. Tribe by tribe, family by family, village or city by village or city, the people were instructed to select leaders from among those proven to be of a character disposed to understand and seek the blessing of God. It’s a measure of the topsy-turviness of our own day that we give more importance to national elections than local ones, and participate more vocally and actively in national issues than in local ones. Perhaps we would know more of the blessings of God in our local communities if we took more care in the election of local officials and in giving attention to matters of concern to our own communities.

Local politics and governance are the training ground for many national leaders. The more consistent we are to insist that our local politics mirror the wisdom and justice of God’s Law, the greater will be the likelihood that future rulers of the nation will govern according to the principles they learned at this foundational level of civic leadership.

Daily meditation in God’s Law is the mark of a righteous person (Ps. 1). Order your copy of The Law of God today, and begin to discover the beauty, goodness, and truth of God’s Law for yourself. Go to www.MyParuchia.com, point your browser to “Publications,” then click on the drop-down option, “Waxed Tablet Publications.”

—

In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore.

T.M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.