“…He sets up kings and deposes them.”

                 When one looks over the history of governmental leadership over the last 2,000 years, one thing quickly becomes clear:  leaders are put in place and removed either by bullets or ballots, by force or choice.  The former reflects the all too common experience of far too many people.  Typically overzealous leaders force themselves on a population that is either too complacent or too ignorant to care.  The thinking of such elitists is, “Such people don’t know how to choose good leaders; that’s why we tell them what’s good for them.”  Of course, in political history the idea of open and free elections is a fairly recent development pioneered by the United States.  That’s why democracy is called “the grand experiment.”  The standard thinking up to the time of the American War for Independence had been the “divine right of kings.”  This notion said that only God chose leaders — in the form of kings — not people.  America’s Declaration of Independence said otherwise, that leaders ruled the people as a stewardship under God, and that God directed people to first choose and then submit to their leaders.  The divine right theory said that since God chose national leaders, kings could do whatever they wanted since God had chosen them.

Regardless of the practical and political implications of the two theories, both recognized the truthfulness of our text, Daniel 2:21, namely that it is God who sets up kings and deposes them.  Sometimes he uses people; sometimes it is through death or by other means.  Nevertheless it is still his doing.  Only God has such authority.  In 2 Timothy 6:15 Paul calls God “king of kings.”  The Greek literally means, “king of those kinging.”  This strange wording gives currency to the description.  It makes the static title “king of kings” contemporary and immediate in human affairs:  “Of those acting as kings, right now God is their king!”  Thus only he can set up and depose (or remove) them.

But if we back away from the political emphasis of Daniel’s text and read verses 21-23 together, we get a broader picture of God.  He is not the kind of deity who sits on the sidelines of history, like some disinterested person, twiddling his thumbs or falling asleep.  No!  It is he who “changes times and seasons, he sets up kings and deposes them.  He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.  He reveals deep and hidden things…”  Notice the action involved:  changes, sets up, deposes, gives, reveals.  God is not passive but very involved in day-to-day activities as well as at critical moments of national and global significance.  In this we see God’s sovereignty.  He is supreme over all creation and over everything that happens.  And from that point of sovereignty he actively directs history according to his will.

This tremendous fact only gets clearer when we think of the opposite.  Imagine what the world would be like if God were not intervening in human affairs.  Start with today.  Look how terrible things are on the world scene.  If things are already this troubled, this difficult when God is intervening, how bad would it be if he were simply passive and uninvolved?  Biblical descriptions come to mind of the pre-Flood world — “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness of the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5) — and the time of the Judges — “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit” (Jud. 21:25).  As bad as things are now, we do not live in the chaotic, disastrous mess we could be in, all because of the Lord’s intervention.

That intervention, spiritually speaking, is described no better than a three-letter word twice found in Ephesians 2: “but.”  Look at the first three verses:  “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.”  That is our testimony!  However, look at the next word:  But!  “But because of his great love for us, God…made us alive…”  That is God’s testimony, but by his grace it becomes ours too!  We see it again in vs. 11-12:  “Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles…were separated from Christ, excluded…and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.”  Again, this is our collective testimony.  When was the last time you thanked the Remover of kings for his divine intervention, removing you from your past and preparing you for his future glorious kingdom?