Lord of All Leaders
The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. Proverbs 21:1 ESV
Octavius was a member of the triumvirate that ruled Rome after the death of Julius Caesar. A victorious warrior and shrewd politician, he eventually became sole emperor of the Roman Empire, taking the imperial title of Caesar Augustus. He was so enamored with his achievements that he persuaded the Romans to worship him as a god.
Scripture, however, presents him as a tool in the hand of the Lord Most High. Augustus assumed he was in control when he followed “the custom of conducting a census every fourteen years.”[1] In God’s eternal timeline, one particular census coincided with the birth of Jesus Christ.
Eight hundred years earlier, the prophet Micah had proclaimed the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (5:2 NIV).
But Mary, the young woman God chose to give birth to the Messiah, lived in Nazareth (Luke 1:26). As the baby’s birth neared, what would possibly motivate her husband, Joseph, to take her on a long, dangerous journey to Bethlehem, his birthplace?
Luke 2:1–3 says, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. … And everyone went to his own town to register.” Rome’s emperor issued the census decree to serve his own ends—to fill the empire’s coffers so he could build more roads and pay his armies. But God used the census to bring the Messiah into the world at the appointed time in the appointed place. Augustus had no idea he was but “a stream of water in the hand of the Lord” (Proverbs 21:1).
We sometimes fret about world events and the actions our leaders. But every leader is under God’s authority. Nothing on earth occurs without God’s knowledge or permission. Trust him to use whatever leaders do or don’t do to fulfill his will on earth.
Dig Deeper
Read Psalm 2. What is God’s attitude about the plans and schemes of human rulers? What should leaders, and every other human being do, according to verses 10–11?
Psalm 148 celebrates God as the sovereign of the universe. Who and what is praising God in this psalm? What praise are you offering God today?
In Colossians 1:13–18, what does Paul emphasize about Jesus? How does that encourage you to trust God even when the world seems out of control?
Denise K. Loock
[1] Charles Swindoll, Swindoll’s Living Insights Commentary: New Testament, Luke (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2017), 43.