Nehemiah wrote in his official diary:
I gave the charge of Jerusalem to my brother Hanani, and Hananiah the leader of the citadel, for he was a faithful man and feared God more than many. (Nehemiah 7:2 NKJV)
What does it mean that Hananiah “feared God”? It should paint the image of someone who lives as though he senses God watching over his shoulder every moment of this waking hours. This is pretty good, because God can read your mind.
That’s not paranoia unless you have a lot of sin in your life. It is the natural result of the Presence of the Holy Spirit, and it is meant to be comforting. You will be guided and supported. If you are faithful, His promises will be fulfilled. That doesn’t mean there’s no testing. On the contrary, trusting the Lord ensures more testing. Instead of meaningless suffering and sorrow, everything has meaning and it calls you to trust Him more.
When I suggest that Biblical Law requires certain things of certain people and governments (or any agency with governing authority), it comes with the promise that those who obey will reap the rewards of obedience. Those promises are woven into the fabric of reality itself. It’s not to say you will always love the outcome, but that it most certainly is in your best interest. The question is for you to discern what His purpose and glory demands of you.
And there is most certainly the element of covenant here. Any nation that fails to enter the Covenant of Noah will be short-changed on those promises even if they do happen to stumble into obedience on some point. Even if your compliance is poor, embracing the covenant changes things completely. God fully expects a measure of failure, but the covenant promises hold far more strenuously in your favor if you solemnly declare it.
Hananiah was under the Covenant of Moses and was conscious of it. He had a duty that was quite clear. He acted like someone who honestly believed what the Covenant said. He proceeded as if all the miraculous blessings were quite real, even if he saw no objective evidence of them at the time. Obedience was the right thing to do because it was right, not because it worked. He committed in faith to the promises before he saw the manifestation of the rewards.
It’s a whole lot easier to get a small handful of fellow believers to embrace the Covenant of Christ (AKA Biblical Law) than it is to get any government to embrace the Covenant of Noah. This is what makes it particularly heartbreaking that so many churches are filled with people who do not actually fear God except in the phony sense of paranoia that Satan gives to keep us powerless.
