TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles - Date: September 17, 2026. Lesson 184-2026. When Leaders Prefer Lies

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

In today’s Morning Manna, Rick Wiles continues Proverbs 29 with verses 12 through 14, examining how a ruler’s appetite for falsehood can corrupt an entire administration and eventually shape the culture beneath it. Solomon warns that when a leader repeatedly listens to lies, those around him learn to reward flattery, suppress unwelcome truth, and tell the ruler what he wants to hear. Rick explains how this produces not only corrupt leadership, but a corrupt information system in which truth tellers are pushed aside and deception becomes normal. The lesson then turns to God’s common grace, showing that both the poor and the powerful live by the same light God provides and remain accountable for what they do with it. Finally, Solomon gives the test of righteous leadership: the ruler who faithfully judges the poor establishes his throne. True authority is sustained not by power, wealth, or influence, but by truth received, justice rendered, and the way leaders treat those who have the least ability to repay or retaliate. Lesson 184-2026 Teachers: Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart You can partner with us by visiting MannaNation.com, calling 1-888-519-4935, or by mail at PO Box 399 Vero Beach, FL 32961 MEGA FIRE reveals the ancient recurring cycles of war and economic collapse that have shaped history for 600 years. These patterns predict America is now entering its most dangerous period since World War II. Get your copy today! www.megafire.world Get high-quality emergency preparedness food today from American Reserves! www.AmericanReserves.com It’s the Final Day! The day Jesus Christ bursts into our dimension of time, space, and matter. Now available in eBook and audio formats! Order Final Day from Amazon today! www.Amazon.com/Final-Day Apple users, you can download the audio version on Apple Books! www.books.apple.com/final-day Purchase the 4-part DVD set or start streaming Sacrificing Liberty today. www.Sacrificingliberty.com

Welcome to Morning, my North. Welcome to morning, my new ritual north. Your teachers, Rackwiles, and Dr. Burkla. Get your Bible and notebook and get ready to here before. Did you know that if a political leader listens to lies habitual, eventually his entire administration will become wicked? It's in the Bible, and we will study it in today's Bible lesson. Hello, my name is Rick Wiles, and this is Morning Nana.

Dr. Raymond Burkhart, my teaching partner, is away attending a conference. She'll be back later this week. We are currently in the 29th chapter of the Book of Proverbs. In our study verses today are 12, 13, and 14. All of our lessons are archived at manna nation.com. Let's pray and invite the precious Holy Spirit to preside over this Bible study. Our Father in heaven, Father, we love you. We come to you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Your sons and daughters on many continents and many nations are gathered together right now, and we are hungry to be fed with your Word, and we know that your Word is your Son, Jesus Christ. So we are feasting on Him by faith, And we submit to the Holy Spirit, we ask the Holy Spirit to direct this Bible study and bring forth truth and revelation and understanding for the glory of Jesus and for the edification of his worldwide church. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right, let's read both the King James and the Septuagint translations of Proverbs 29, verses 12, 13 and 14. verse to King James.

If a ruler harkened to lies, all his servants are wicked. The poor and a deceitful man meet together. The Lord lighteneth both their eyes. The king that faithfully judges the poor, his throne shall be established forever. Septuagint, when a king harkens to unjust language, All his subjects are transgressors. When the creditor and debtor meet together, the Lord oversees both.

When a king judges the poor in truth, his throne shall be established for a testimony. Proverbs 29, verses 12, 13, and 14, present three verses on rulers and the ruled. with a remarkable statement about God's common provision standing at their center. Verse 12 makes one of the chapter's sharpest observations. If a political ruler listens to lies, all his servants become wicked. A leader's appetite for falsehoods does not remain his private feeling. it reshapes the character of everyone who serves under him. I'm going to explain this in detail in just a moment.

I'm just giving you the introduction of this lesson. So when we get to verse 13, it shifts to a different registry entirely. The poor man and the deceitful man, social opposites, moral opposites, meet together. and God gives light to the eyes of folk. It is a statement of common grace positioned deliberately between two verses about justice. Verse 14 closes the set of verses with a promise. The king who faithfully judges the poor will have his throne established forever, where verse 12 described the corruption a bad ruler produces.

verse 14 describes the durability, a good ruler secures. So the three verses form a deliberate structure. Verses 12 and 14 address the ruler's relationship to truth and to the poor. And verse 13 stands in the middle between them, reminding both ruler and reader that the God who gives light to every man will evaluate what was done with it. So the aim of today's lesson is to give our morning manna audience to show you how to really a leader's private appetite shapes a public culture and to present the two things scripture names as securing a throne,

truth received and justice rendered to those least able to demand it. All right. Let's start with verse 12. This is probably going to be an eye-opener to many of you in regards to political leadership of your nation, your state, your province, your city. If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are, wicked. The Hebrew, the translation of the Hebrew is a ruler attending to a word of falsehood. All his ministers are wicked. The Hebrew word, it's a verb, kashav. It means to give attention to,

to incline your ear to, to listen with interest. The ruler is not merely deceived against his will. he actively attempts to lies. Something in him welcomes lies. He likes to be lied to. That's the point here. We're not talking about a political leader who has been deceived by his advisors. We're talking about a political reader

who likes to be deceived, who likes his advisors to lie to him. And when he does so, his whole administration becomes wicked. The proverb does not say the rule, ruler tells lies or that he is surrounded by liars by accident, it says he listens to them. And that listening produces everything else that follows. The word all, not some of his servants, not some of his cabinet, not some of his ministers,

not the weaker ones, not the more corrupt ones. Not those who are inclined toward corruption, all of them. The ruler's appetite has become the environment in which every person under him operates. This is not something mysterious to understand. Every person who has worked under such a leader recognizes this pattern. When a ruler, and this can happen also in an environment, the president, CEO. It could happen at a university,

the leader of the university. It's when a ruler likes people to lie to him. So what does this mean? I mean, do you really think somebody says, I like being lied to? Here's how it operates. When a leader rewards flattering reports and punishes unwelcome truth.

The servants, the cabinet, the ministers, the bureaucrats, the managers, the supervisors, they learn to adapt. Those who tell the truth are removed, or they learn to stop telling the truth. And those who prosper are those who bring the leader what he or she desires to hear. Now does this make sense? No politician, no CEO says, hey, please lie to me. But inwardly, they desire that their team give them the reports they desire to hear. For example, a nation in war.

And the generals come to the president or the prime minister or king or whoever it is and says, hey, things aren't going well in the battle of them. You should not have started this war. This is not going well. For example, a king, president, prime minister, whose nation is in war. Perhaps the generals come to this leader and say, sir, things are. are not going well on the battlefield. You should not have started this war.

We were not ready for it. This was not a good idea. We're losing troops. We're losing bases. The enemy is hitting us hard. Do you know what happens to those generals? They get dismissed. And they get replaced by generals who come in to the office and say,

most everything's going great. winning, winning, winning. You're looking great. You're a hero. This war is fantastic. That's what happens. And it's not just in war. It could be with the economy.

The political leaders' policies have wrecked the economy. And nobody desires to tell the leader, you have really messed up the economy of our nation. It said they go in and give the leader, false reports. Insulation is down. More people are working than ever. People are happy. They really are happy to love you.

See, the leader is saying, please lie to me. Tell me what I desire to hear. Don't tell me the truth. Tell me what I desire to hear. And if you don't do it, I'll get somebody else in your job. And so what happens? They just described a moment ago. Truth tellers either leave, they get replaced or they quit, or they stop telling the truth. Doesn't mean that they lie. It just, they stopped talking.

Okay. And then the more corruptible people in the administration say, hey, the boss is waiting on somebody to lie to it. I'll give him a false report, and they get promoted. They get elevated. That's how this works. Okay? So the result is not merely a corrupt administration, but a corrupt information system.

The ruler eventually cannot know his own situation because every channel through which accurate information might reach him has been trained to filter it out. So this is one of the deepest irony of this verse. The ruler who listens to lies is the man or woman least able to discover that he or she has been lied to. Because he or she has personally selected people who lie to him or her, and they've eliminated the ones who would have told him to truth. We see this continuously.

in politics in various nations at various times. It's like, if you are an unbiased observer, you can look at it and go, they're running to him. But he likes the lies, and he appoints liars. Take a look in verse, First King. First King's chapter 22, Ahab surrounded himself with 400 lying prophets who told him what he desired to be told. And then when Jehoshaphat asked whether any other prophet remained,

Ahab answered, there is yet one man. Mokiah. But I hate him. For he does not prophesy good concerning me but evil. What an answer. Charles Spurgeon said Ahab's complaint against Makaya is the most honest sentence any corrupt ruler ever spoke and that every leader should ask whether he has a Makaya remaining in how he has treated him. Again, look what Ahab said.

Yes, there's one prophet remaining. There's one man, Makaya, but I hate that man. For he doesn't prophesy anything good to me. He only prophes evil. No, Maciah was telling the truth. And your 400 other prophets were lying. Matthew Henry said that a ruler's ear is the door through which a nation's character enters.

And that a man who guards what he is willing to hear has done more to preserve his administration than any policy would accomplish. The theological framework beneath verse 12 concerns the formative power of leadership, the conviction that those in authority do not merely direct behavior but shape character for good or evil. And this pattern appears throughout the books of the Bible. In 1st Kings, Chapter 14, verse 16, Jerobolm is repeatedly identified as the one who made Israel to sin.

And that phrase who made Israel to sin was applied to his successors. They made the kings made the people of Israel sin against God. How? The kings were liars. They were deceivers. They misled the people. So knew what it assigns. Jerobolm did not commit every sin Israel committed. He made Israel to sin by establishing the conditions under which sinning became normal.

What politicians in your country has made sin normal? I'm not going to comment. I'll let you think about it. Okay, how does the Septuagint look at first 12? The King James says, if a ruler harkens, the king James says if a ruler hearken to lies all his servants are wicked the Greek Septuagin puts it this way when a king harkens to unjust language all his subjects are transgressors so the Septuagint makes two

shifts first lies become unjust language so this broadens the category from lies to injustice, anything that is unjust. It is not only the ruler who welcomes false reports, who corrupts his administration, but the ruler who welcomes unjust speech, accusations against the innocent,

dismissals of legitimate grievances from the people against the government, contempt directed at those without any standing to answer. The second, and this may be more significant, the Septuagint replaces the ruler's servants with his subjects, those who are under him, those who obey. So the King James, so the King James describes the corruption of a governmental court. The Septuagin describes the corruption of the entire nation,

where the King James has the official, is becoming wicked, the Septuagin has the entire population becoming transgressors against God. This is why it's so important whom we elect a power. And I do not accept this free. At least it's common here in America. Well, I voted for the lesser of two evils. Show me the Bible verse that tells you to vote for the lesser of two evils. We're not supposed to vote for any evil. A ruler's tolerance for injustice does not stop at his own staff in his cabinet. It establishes a public standard in populations reliably adjust to the standard that's actually enforced rather than the one that is formally professed. Now, the Septuagint is,

transgressors, literally means those beside the law, those who have broken the law of God. It's the same word the Septuagint uses in Proverbs 29 in verse 4 for the ruler who destroys his country. So the Septuagint draws the line directly. A lawless ruler for a lawless people, and the country eventually collapses. So the two traditions describe the full trajectory. The King James names where the corruption begins in the court, in the administration, in the cabinet, in the highest levels of the government, those closest to the rulers year, the Septuagint names where it ends

in the entire population beneath them. Let's now go to verse 13. The King James, the poor and the deceitful man meet together. The Lord lighteneth both their eyes. The King James reads, delightful man. The world English Bible, modern translations, reads oppressor. And the Septuaget reads, Preacher. the one who loans.

So the range suggests a man of financial pressure and questionable dealing, someone standing over the poor man rather than standing beside him. He says that they meet together. This describes an encounter, a face-to-face meeting. These two men occupy opposite positions

in every visible respect. And the proverb pictures them in the same place at the same moment. It's like having a banker and a borrower, a debtor, together having a meeting. But the Lord lightens both their eyes. He gives light to, he enlightens, he causes them to see. The verb describes the granting of sight itself, the basic capacity by which a person perceives anything at all. So the proverb claims that the same God supplies the same gift to both. Sight. The poor man sees because God gives him light. The deceitful man sees by exactly the same

provision from exactly the same source, Almighty God. This is a statement. This is a statement. This is a statement. of what theologians call common grace, the goodness that God extends to all people, regardless of their moral condition. Common grace is God's non-saving goodness extended to all people, sustaining life and making provision, regardless of the recipient's response to God. It's his common grace to humanity.

Jesus said in Matthew 5, verse 45, that God maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sins reign on the just and on the unjust. Acts 14, verse 17, Acts 1417 records Apostle Paul appealing to pagan heirs on precisely the same ground. He said, God left not himself without witness in that He, he did good and gave us rain from heaven in fruitful seasons. The provision is described as a witness. Evidence available to everyone.

And Acts 17, verse 25 extends it, God giveth to all life and breath and all things. That's common grace. Two things, two implications follow. The first is a common grace. establishes accountability rather than removing it. Romans 1, 19, and 20 argues that God's goodness leaves men without excuse. The gift becomes the ground of the reckoning. The deceitful man's sight is a loan he will answer for.

The second implication is that common grace is genuinely good and should be received. and should be received as such. Not a lesser consolation prize, but a real kindness from a real God. Romans 2, verse 4, names its intended purpose. The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. Sinners are led to salvation because of the goodness of God. This proverb sits between verse 12's corrupt.

ruler and verse 14's faithful king that we're going to get to in just a moment. Between two statements about human justice, and it reminds us the reader that both parties to every dispute are living on borrowed light given by the common grace of God. Verse 13's positioning between the two verses about just. judgment serves a specific function. Human courts assess conduct. And this verse reminds us that both parties standing before any court receive their capacity to stand there from the same source. Verse 12 names the corruption plainly. In verse 14, demands justice for the poor. But between them stands this verse insisting that the man on the wrong side of the encounter remains a creature of the same maker.

It's amazing how this time in my study proverbs, which I didn't see in previous studies, I see how Solomon deliberately structured these problems. He's created a sandwich. Versus 12 and 14 are the bread. 13 is meat in the middle. So the implications run in two directions. For the deceitful man, the light in his eyes is not his own achievement. He sees by a gift from the God who's poor he is exploiting,

which places his conduct in a very difficult frame than his own accounting of. Now, for the poor man, his condition does not indicate divine abandonment. The same God who lights the eyes of the man standing over him lights his, the poor man. If you recall back in Proverbs 22, verse 2, it says the rich and the poor meet together. The Lord is the maker of them all. Once again, you see how what we learned months ago in Proverbs chapter 22 is now coming back in Proverbs 29. And because we studied 22, Chapter 22, it helps us to better understand Chapter 29.

In other words, you can't just pick a verse out of the Bible in study it of context. It's layer upon layer, verse upon verse, is why we have to study the entire Bible. Adam Clark observed that the shared light in this verse is both a mercy and a summons, since every faculty a man possesses was given to him by God, who will inquire What did you do with it? All right, let's go to the Septuagint translation of verse 13. We still have to go to verse 14 yet today. The King James says the poor and the deceitful man meet together.

The Lord lighteneth both their eyes. The Greek subtogent says, When the creditor and debtor meet together, the Lord oversees both. Every banker should think about that. If you're a banker, you need to ponder that verse. But the Lord is in the root. and when you meet with those who owe the bank money. The Septuagint resolves the Hebrews,

the King James' difficult phrase into a specific economic relationship, the creditor and the debtor. Purely economic now. Financial transaction. The encounter is no longer a vague meeting between social opposites, rich and poor, but it's a particular transaction with a particular imbalance.

One man holds an obligation over the other, and the two have come face to face to settle it. The creditor, the banker, can demand, can seize, can imprison, can forgive. But the debtor can only be asked. More significantly, the situagen changes what God does. does. Whereas the King James had the Lord lighting the eyes of both, a gift given. The Septuagin has him overseeing both, both people, exercising oversight. And listen to this. The verb that used in the

Septuagin, the Greek Septuagin, is Episcopis. This is where we get the word, for overseer, for bishop, Episcopal. The Septuagint pictures God as the supervising authority present at the transaction, observing what each party does with the advantage he holds. So together the two translations, King James and Septuagint, supply a complete frame for any, unequal encounter. God gives both parties

the very sight by which they see each other. How does the creditor, the banker, see the poor, the borrower? And how does the bar see the banker? Both are given light from the Lord to see each other. And God is present as the overseer

of what they will do with what they see. Again, if you're in the financial industry, You need to ponder that verse, that God is in the meeting watching you. And if you are a borrower and you're called in to the one who gave you the law, you need to ponder the same thing. God is watching.

All right, verse 14. King James says, the king that faithfully judges the poor, his throne shall be established forever. A king. judging in truth the poor His throne forever shall be established In truth The Hebrew is They met

And it's the root word behind Faithfulness Reliability It's the root word of where we get Amen So be it, it's done, it's settled The judgment described is not merely correct a given occasion, but it's dependable. The poor man can count on receiving it. The specification of the poor as the test case is deliberate by Solomon. Any king would judge the powerfully

correctly, carefully. Why? Because the powerful can retaliate. And the powerful can hire lobbyists. and influencers and lawyers to represent them. Four men or woman cannot do anything. So a king's treatment of them reveals what he does when nothing compels him to make that decision. It's what's inside the king, what's inside the president, the prime minister, the executive, the CEO,

whoever is in this leadership position. And this is why scripture, repeatedly makes the vulnerable the measure of a governmental administration. There is no incentive to judge them rightly except the character of the judge and their fear of God. It says, His throne shall be established forever, shall be firm, shall be made secure, should be established. It's the same, comes from the same family of verbs that we saw in verse four of chapter 29. where the king, by judgment, establishes the land. In verse four of this chapter,

the justice establishes the land. In verse 14, says justice for the poor establishes the throne. The same practice secures both the nation and the man who governs it. So a regime that treats the powerless, the poor, justly, has removed the grievance that most reliably destabilizes governments. And the one that exploits them has manufactured the conditions of its own eventual overthrow.

You want to see a government that's going to fall? Look at how they treat the poor, the weak, but vulnerable. I've got one in mind right now. That government's going to fall because they are harsh. rule against the poor. They're going to fall. In God's time, they're going to fall. Charles Bridges observed that the poor are placed as the test of kings precisely because they can offer nothing and threaten nothing so that a ruler's conduct towards them is a pure report of what he is when all calculations are removed. Now, the theological framework

Now, the theological framework beneath verse 14 is the biblical vision of the righteous king. And that runs from the Davidic covenant through the prophets, and it terminates with Jesus Christ, the righteous king. The proverb 14 functions in two directions at once. It states a genuine principle for every human governmental. ruler and it describes a standard no human ruler has ever met, which is why the scripture's royal language keeps reaching beyond its immediate subjects, because no politician can ever reach the standard of Jesus Christ as a righteous king. In Psalm 72, which is Solomon's own royal song, he said, He shall judge thy people with righteousness

and thy poor with judgment, he shall save the children of the needy and shall break in pieces the oppressor. And in that same Psalm, it says, They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure. In other words, this ruler who judges with righteousness

and is just to the poor, their kingdom shall be, as in durable as the sun and the moon. In other words, it's going to last a long, long time. Solomon's rule lasted 40 years. He spoke this from his own experience. Isaiah, chapter 11, verses 3 and 4. And this is speaking of becoming Messiah.

Isaiah said he would rule with righteousness, shall with righteousness shall he judge the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth. Isaiah 9, verse 7, supplies the forever that no earthly king would ever deliver. Of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end. Jesus' own earthly ministry displayed the standard. the blind beggar whom the crowd told to be quiet go away the widow with two mites who gave all that she had from her poverty the leper who whom no one would touch

in luke chapter four verse 18 jesus declared his mission according to Isaiah to preach the gospel to the poor what is the gospel the gospel is the good news what is the good news to the poor you're not going to be poor anymore i'm going to give you life and i'm getting I'm going to give you life abundantly. That's good news to the poor. The question is not how you treat those who can affect your standing,

but how you treat those who cannot affect you. They have no power, no wealth. They have nothing to affect your standard. How do you treat them? Because how you treat them, as verse 14 indicates, is what actually secures or undermines what you have been given by God. Think about that. The next time you have any dealings with someone who is less fortunate than you,

do you dismiss them? Do you brush them off, go away. You bother me. I'm going to share something with you just in private, okay? Just before I came in, just moments before I came into, my studio and reward this lesson. My wife, Susan, told me, there's a woman here in town who just reached out to you

and said, if I don't have money by in two days, I'm going to be evicted from my house. What do you want me to tell her? This just happened. Just moments before I walked in. Am I going to say, tell her to go away. I've got things to do. I've got to teach the Bible.

I don't have time to give her money to pay her rent. Is that what I'm going to say? I'm busy teaching the Bible. I don't have time to go pay her rent. No. Let's say something. Does I say to Susan? Tell her, I'll take care of her when I get this done.

Okay. I'm not going to judge her. I'm not going to ask you why can't you pay your rent? All I know is that she is a single older woman who can't pay her rent and is going to be evicted in two days. That's all I know. That's the only thing that matters, isn't it? See, God is going to judge me by what.

I do. How I handled this meeting? How does a subtergent handle? Verse 14. The King James, the king that faithfully judges the poor, his throne shall be established forever. The Septuagint, when a king judges the poor and truth, his throne shall be established for a testimony. So the subtergent tracks the King James closely in the first half. It preserves both the poor, as the test and the in truth. And that makes the judgment dependable rather than occasional. The significant difference between the King James and the Septuagint is in the second half. Where the King James has the throne established forever, the Septuagin has it established for a testimony.

There's a Greek word used here in the Septuagint in this verse. Martyria is the word of witness. This is where we get the word martyr, a witness for the faith, the testimony born before others. The throne becomes their witness. The throne becomes their evidence. This is a meaningful shift

from what the throne's establishment accomplishes. The King James emphasizes duration. The throne lasts. The Septuagint emphasizes function. The throne testifies. In the Septuagint translation, a just administration does more than endure. It stands as a public witness, evidence, a demonstration visible to the watching world, that justice to the powerless is possible, and that a government need not exploit those who cannot resist it.

The reading, the subtergent reading, also connects the throne to God's own purposes, rather than merely to the king's own security. A testimony is born to someone about something. And a throne established for testimony is one whose stability serves as a witness beyond itself. So together, the King James and the subtergent supply. both halves of the promise. The just king's throne endures, and its endurance says something. It is a standing witness that the justice that the Bible requires can actually be rendered and seen and measured.

That's my lesson for David. I hope this has been enlightening to you and a blessing. and I encourage you to tell people about Morning Manor. Would you help us grow? We don't have an advertising budget. We don't have a marketing department. We count on you and the Holy Spirit to invite people to Morning Manow. And so that can be a major contribution that you do to the growth of this ministry.

Just tell people about this Bible study. Just encourage them. So just give them one month. Just one month. Watch five days a week for one month. and see what God does in your life. Take care. I'll see you tomorrow. God bless. Thank you for watching Morning Manor.

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