As we dissect this verse it is important to define a few of the words. The verse tells us to fear God and meddle not or busy oneself unduly with something that is not one's concern with them that are given to change. Many preachers have taken this word "change" our of context. I have heard them preach, "You shouldn't fellowship with people who want to change stuff! Bless God we're gonna do everything the same way we've always done it (spit on crowd) Bless God Amen (insert deep breath.) That is not AT ALL what this word means or what this text implies. The word "change" in this verse is originally the word "Hithpael" meaning "to disguise oneself." The writer advises us not to involve ourselves with them that are given to disguising themselves.
There are many ways to disguise who you are. In my high school there was a teacher named Mr. Jones. He had a way of finding out and noticing if you were not following the dress code to the letter. There were certain students that Mr. Jones liked in particular, and those students knew it and used that to their advantage. Mr. Jones always happened to be walking down the hallway toward his office as the high school students would be heading up that hallway for lunch. Upon spotting Mr. Jones is was not uncommon for students to suddenly realize, "OH NO I forgot to wear a belt!" or " HOW IN THE WORLD did my shirt get untucked!?" If you were one of those guys you then walked right next to one of Mr. Jones favorite students. This somehow placed an invisible shield around your dress code violation and you were safe. You disguised yourself by hiding behind the character of others.
It is this kind of disguise that I find is most common in our world today. Christians realize that they are severely lacking in their walk with God, and they look for a quick fix to just get by. The way they do this is by surrounding themselves with people they feel will hide their issues. How do we do this? Well, we go to church. In fact, we sing in the choir. We play on the worship team. We go out with everyone on visitation. We work on the bus route. We cook food for the church fellowships. We are on every committee possible. We make it a point to speak with the pastor every week. We mention church folks in our facebook statuses. These are not bad things. The problem comes when we examine our motive for doing these things. Do you genuinely have a concern for the things and people of God, or do you do what you do so that you can name drop in conversation hoping that people will see some sort of spirituality in your life? When you spot the pastor in the store do you try to hide? Would you be ashamed to be openly identified as a Christian? Has someone ever walked up to you and said, "Hey man I didn't know you went to church!?" Are YOU one of those people who is attempting to fear God but disguise yourself as the world? It just isn't possible to manage both.
Dear Christian, if you are genuinely close to the Lord, it is so much easier to spot those who are fake. Pray for those people. Encourage and Edify them, but do not allow yourself to get caught up with them lest you become one of them."My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: [and] meddle not with them that are given to change:"
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