The Power of a King's Word

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
"The King's word has power." Ecclesiastes 8:4

"He who rules by moral force is like the pole star, which remains in place while all the lesser stars do homage to it." Confucius

Careful polishing can remove a flaw from a diamond, but an evil word once spoken can never be unspoken. Confucius


The King's word has power because it is supreme authority, whether the king is right or wrong. As Solomon wrote in verse 4, "Since a king's word is supreme, who can say to him, 'What are you doing?'"

If power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, no wonder so many kings' power goes to their heads. Even the greatest Jewish king, David, "God's friend", succumbed, and used his words of power for great evil.

In his youth, David even endangered his own life repeatedly to avoid harming King Saul, who was after his head, because David did not dare "harm the Lord's anointed." But then David fell under the spell of power. Yet what did David in was not the power but the life of ease and indolence that accompanied it.

2 Samuel 11:1, "In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army..." David was a king, yet he did not go off to war like other kings but "sent Joab out" with. And it must have been pretty serious, because he sent the entire army with Joab--but he stayed home--with devastating consequences. For it was while he lazed about the house that he saw a beautiful woman bathing, and even after he learned she was Uriah's wife, "he sent messengers to get her."

David did not invite Bathsheba. He used his kingly power and ordered his messengers to "get her." The messengers had little choice; neither did Uriah's wife. As Solomon wrote, "the king's word is supreme. Who can say to him. 'What are you doing?'

David slept with the wife of Uriah, his faithful servant, and then murdered Uriah to cover it up--and not only David but all Israel paid the price.

I've often marveled the Bible includes such stories. David, after wall, was the legendary hero who stood up to lions and bears to save his sheep, and slew Goliath with a stone, and risked death rather than kill the man who sought his life. Why ruin the legend by telling us about his sordid fall?

The Bible is chock full of such stories, and to me that is what makes it a book I can relate to, and believe in. They are stories of common people, quite often a nobody--the youngest son from the smallest tribe, like David--who was able to rise to great heights, and then blow it--but in spite of it all be forgiven and restored. These stories promise us that, if we are faithful, even we nobodies can be used, and if we blow it, we will be forgiven.

["Our stubborn passions shut our souls' door against God" Confucius ]

Several things strike me about the power of the king's word.

1. Earthly kings' words, even when wrong, have great power. Likewise, your word and mine also have great power, for we are, relatively speaking, rich. We are the economic royalty of the world. If you don't believe it--go abroad and see how most of the world struggles just to survive. But do we use our words to build up or tear down. Are we using our words to seek first the Kingdom, or are we, like David, lulled into complacency?

Our words have great power, for good or for ill.

2. There is one King whose Word has great power, and fortunately I can trust in His Word. It is the Word that was in the beginning, the Word of the God who called himself Love.

I cannot do much about the unreliable words of earthly powers, be they kings, presidents, humanists or religious leaders, but I can count on the word of One who called himself Love, and who said that He asked not for religion and rites but for us to love Him, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Not that is a Word I can understand!

Though my Father's Word has ultimate authority, He does nore make me obey, but I eventually learn that to obey Him leads to greater happiness than I could ever find doing things my own way. Even so, I quite often find myself asking God, "What are you doing?!" And if God were only a king, He might have my head for it, but He's also my Father, and not only accepts my impertinence but answers me, not as an earthly ruler who must be blindly obeyed, but as a Father who loves his child.

F.B. Meyer, in "Our Daily Homily (Morgan & Scott, London,1894, reprinted today by Zondervan as "Great Verses Through the Bible," writes of Ecclesiasted 8:4, The King's word hath power:

When our King speaks it is done. He spoke in creation, and power went with his word to call all things out of nothing. He spoke in his earthly ministry and power accompanied every word, inm giving eyes to the blind and life to the dead. He spoke, and the paralysed had power to walk. He spoke, and the winds dropped, whilst the tumultuous waves were hushed to rest. He spoke, and men knew their sins were forgiven, to be remember against them no more for ever. He spoke, and the dying chief passed into Paradise.

Whwatever He bids you do by his word, be sure that He will enable you to do it by his power. He works in us to will and to work of his good pleasure, that is, He never directs us in any path of obedience or service without furnishing a sufficient supply of grace. Does He bid you renounce some evil habit? The power to renounce it awaits you. Claim it. Does He bid you walk on the water? The power by which to walk only waits for you to claim it. Does He bid you perform irksome duty? There is such transforming power issuing from Him as to make duty a delight, if only you will avail yourself of it. Whenever you are called to stand up to speak the word of your King, be sure to seek and obtain the power--that shall prove your best credential. Take the power of the King with you; it is his signet-ring, by which men will be convinced that you have been entrusted with his word.

"Sustain me, that with Thee I walk
these waves,
Resisting!--Breathe me upward, thou
in me
Aspiring, who art the way, the truth,
the life--
That no truth henceforth seem indif-
ferent,
No way to truth laborious, and no
life,
Not even this life I live, intolerable!"
(Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

Want to walk on water? You can if you visit here! :)

Bill Brown
Xiamen University
www.amoymagic.com