Clough Divine institutions Lesson 16

Divine Institution #4 - Resources of National Government (cont)

We have three feedback cards, one of these is very cleverly written; I don’t know who wrote it but I’ll read it anyway. It comes under the category of one brethren admonishing the other brethren. This is one believer speaking out. “Concerning your statement last Sunday about women making themselves mantraps I would like to state that as a normal young male of the human race I find my interest in the opposite sex running in proportion to the height of their hemline. Now I suppose it’s great for young ladies to feel in style and perhaps enjoy the added masculine attention but when a guy is trying to keep his mind on spiritual thing this physical attraction competes very strongly for his attention. It’s hard to praise God from whom all blessings flow when short hemlines keep his thoughts here below. I think some of the young ladies of this church, although innocent of the knowledge of what they are doing, are being very inconsiderate in this way of their brothers in Christ. I am not advocating that our young ladies wear feed sacks to the floor but must they compete with the non-Christians as being stumbling blocks to their brethren.

I didn’t say it, somebody else said it and I think it’s a point that has to be made every once in a while. I understand that the Tech professors these days are adopting the following tactic; when they give a lecture and they face the class they look out the window to give the lecture. Well, when things get that bad either you have to wear dark glasses or do something else.

The other, this is more of a question, is the matter of spiritual gifts: exactly what are spiritual gifts, are they finite in number, how does a believer discern his particular gift, and is this spiritual gift necessarily tied to God’s general plan for a believer’s life. There are some lessons on spiritual gifts on the long basics series; there is also a book, Dr. Ryrie’s book, The Holy Spirit, I think is the name of it. I would also suggest as source material some of the Bible dictionaries that are available. Basically there are three central passages on spiritual gifts in God’s Word; Ephesians 4, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12. These will give you an idea of gifts.

Spiritual gifts from God’s Word are divided in two categories, those that are permanent and those that are temporary. Temporary spiritual gifts were given during the early years of the Church, while the Church was being formed, so that certain things were accomplished. For example, tongues are a temporary spiritual gift. According to Isaiah 28, given for the evangelization of the nation Israel in particular; it’s supposed to be a prophesied sign that Israel had entered the fifth stage of discipline described in Leviticus 26. Tongues are not a sign of blessing; tongues are a sign of cursing. The gift of apostleship was given only until the canon of Scripture was formed; once the canon of Scripture is formed no need for apostles. That’s why we say we are member, when we become Christians, of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. What do we mean by that? We mean it’s holy in that it is set apart; it is Catholic in that it is universal, the word Catholic originally meant universal. That’s why actually the word Roman Catholic is like saying black white, because the very word Catholic means universal. So Catholic means it’s universal, open to all men who will receive the gospel. Finally, Apostolic in that it is grounded on the apostles teaching, which we have direct in the New Testament. So there are gifts like that and of course none of you qualify for those.

Then there are the permanent spiritual gifts and many of these gifts are very mundane and… usually it’s funny, you know you hear all this talk about flash in the pan Christian experiences and all of the sensational things, and you look at the spiritual gifts of God’s Word and they’re very common place, ordinary, unromantic things. One of them, the gift of helps is one, the gift of faith is another, the gift of teaching is one, the gift of administration is another. The gift of administration is very crucial; the local church can’t survive without men who are qualified from God’s Word to be administrators. And it’s very mundane to be shuffling papers around in a back room in the board meeting but unless this is done the local church just can’t survive. My job as a pastor is not to shuffle papers around worrying about whether we paid so and so $35.16 last month; my job is to teach the Word of God and in order to free me to do that, a local church always has to supply a Board, and the Board surrounds the pastor and takes the administrative load off his shoulders so that he can devote his time to the study of the Word.

And this is why a lot of local churches don’t function, because you get in a vicious cycle. For one thing it starts off the pastor is doing everything, he’s a one-man show, which is not Scriptural, with the result he can’t study, with the result he doesn’t teach, with the result that nobody matures, with the result that nobody with the gift of administration ever gets to the point where they can use the gift of administration. Well if they don’t get to the point where they use the gift of administration then the pastor is always doing it, so it just feeds on itself. And you’ve got to break out of that, and the only way I know of breaking out of it is just simply for the pastor to say look, I don’t care if we meet in the street, let’s forget it until we get people that are trained, then we can worry about the organization. This would go, for people have asked what are our building plans. Our building plans aren’t; our building plans are whenever the Lord enables with a group of men who are trained, who are capable, and who have the experience in this area to work with it, but not until. The Lord’s will for us as a congregation is to develop a core of leadership; we’ll worry about buildings later.

Teaching is one, faith, and helps, that’s one most people never volunteer for but that’s a spiritual gift; and we have a spiritual gift called the word of wisdom; I’m interested in building up people in this and starting next spring we’re going to have more of an emphasis so that people who have the word of wisdom will be able to use it. That’s counseling; one of the jobs in the New Testament is for one believer to help other believers and we have people in this congregation, for example, who have gone through crisis experiences; some of them have, I believe, if they would work on it a little bit the word of wisdom. In other words, they have the capacity to share this with another person in the way of exhorting them, in the way of clarifying, in the way of helping another believer. And if they do this they function as believers, you have the whole team functioning so it’s not just this one man business.

So these are what spiritual gifts are; how do you find them? The way of finding this is… well, the principle that God can’t steer a parked car, you’ve got to get it in motion before it steers and you’ve got to try certain things, you just don’t suddenly… the handwriting on the wall doesn’t appear and say you have the spiritual gift of helps; you have to exercise yourself in various capacities and then you’ll find sooner or later that you tend to gravitate towards one area and this is your pet area; well, that means that you probably are invested with a certain capacity from the time you became a Christian to function and work in this area. Now this is what’s so lacking in Christian churches; if every member of the team… think of it, if only 25% of the team were functioning properly with their gift, what a fantastic thing it would be. Usually what happens is the pastor and a few deacons run the show and it’s not really correct, it’s not valid.

So spiritual gifts are crucial and I would suggest the tapes and some of those references I gave. And your discerning of the gift is just that you have to do it the hard way of trying out and seeing what happens; when you fall flat on your face don’t necessarily conclude you don’t have the gift. Spiritual gifts have to be developed, they don’t come automatically; spiritual gifts are capacity but you have the responsibility to develop the capacity. If a man, for example, has the gift of pastor-teacher his job to prepare for that gift is to learn the original languages, to learn Hebrew and Greek, he should learn is so that he can use it and teach God’s Word with it. That’s his function and it’s very grinding, you spend hours and hours going through the verb conjugation but that’s the way you develop your gift. It’s very common place, but Christians have got to realize that a lot of this living the Christian life, quite frankly, comes down to just the usual common every day thing, it’s not this spectacular stuff, it’s the common every day area.

Finally, there’s one third question and that is: why is the Church of Latter Day Saints considered a cult even though much of their teaching has a sound Biblical basis or at least seems to have a Biblical basis. I would refer you to Walter Martin’s book. Walter Martin probably today is the nation’s leading expert in this area; he has formulated a research institute in New Jersey and Walter Martin has written a book, The Kingdom of the Cults, in which he deals with a lot of these today, goes back into their original writings and goes through this in far greater detail than I could. Suffice it to say that the mark of most cults is this: they started in the 19^th century; I don’t know what happened in the 19^th century but we had everything begin in the 19^th century; everything that really popped in the 19^th century as far as modern day problems in the Church are concerned. The second thing about them is that they tend to proselyte and not evangelize. What do I mean by that? I mean, for example, historic Christianity will go into an area and cover it with the gospel. Then the cult comes in after the Christians have evangelized it, and you rarely see the cults moving into an area where the Christian missionaries haven’t first gone. It’s usually they plow over plowed ground, you might say. It’s characteristic. And other areas, the fundamental identification of a cult today is their treatment of the person of Jesus Christ. That’s their criteria.

There are a lot of other differences but frankly we don’t have time and you don’t have time to be experts in every little thing that comes along so I recommend that you be expert in one area, and that is your understanding of the person of Jesus Christ, because if there’s ever a heresy that is where it is going to show up. Heresies usually show up either in their treatment of the deity Jesus Christ or the treatment of salvation by grace. That’s the two touch stones and if you master those two touch stones you will be able to identify something’s wrong. You may not be able to be an expert on it, you may not be able to go through it in detail but you will know that something here doesn’t fit. Those two areas, the deity of Christ and salvation by grace, those are two crucial touch stones and you master those, you will have an automatic built in defense against any and every cult, and I would suggest without going into the details that this is the area where you should look.

Shall we do into the Old Testament again and turn to Genesis 1:28 and we’re going to finish the area that we began last time; we have two more times to finish this area of the fourth divine institution. Tonight we wind up one area; next week we’ll deal with the doctrine of war. The Christian and the military, the role of the Christian soldier, conscientious objection, the draft and so on. Then the last week of this we’ll deal with the problem of how a nation is disciplined in history and the future of the United States. So these are two areas that we’ll use to finish.

Today we’re going to finish those spheres of responsibility over which we have the fourth divine institution. The fourth divine institution, remember, is a post-creation institution. That means that it was not instituted from creation. Government was something that began after the flood; it’s something that God invested man with after man fell. The previous divine institutions, volition, marriage and family were all before the fall. Government is something that’s come in since the fall; therefore it cannot have priority over those things that were dating from creation. As such, therefore, we have said that government has seven spheres, or eight spheres, and I just outlined these, there may be more or less but this is the way I’ve divided it up.

Government can be seen as balancing or harmonizing between the first divine institution, the second divine institution the third divine institution, economics. We’ve already gone through those four. These date from creation, they are inherent; the government cannot change the form of marriage, the government cannot change the form of family, and try as many politicians will, the government cannot affect the laws of economics. These are natural systems of values and the government, though it can regulate it, it cannot create an assigned value. So these are four spheres.

Tonight we are going to deal with four more: national resources is one, which of course dates from creation; education is another one, arts and sciences, and the Church. These are all various spheres in society that God has put there by inherent design; the heresy of our time, and we’re leading up to the elections and so on, if you listen carefully to both political party, every political party, you will find basically the same error being made, namely the humanist presupposition that the government forms these institutions. The government, from the Biblical point of view, does not form these institutions and has no rightful domain over them, except to control relationships between them. The government does not assign value to objects; the government does not have the right, it can’t create, and it should prevent the destruction of natural resources. The government does not have the right to go in and change forms of education. The government does not have the right to change the structure of the Church. These are things over which the government has no power and has never been given power. And you’ll find that every time the government, whether it’s the state, the local, whether it’s some other country, whatever it is, anytime the government begins to intrude in any of these spheres in the sense of over extending its legitimate concern, now government has a concern balancing these, keeping them all in balance, and that is a problem, but whenever government reaches inside these spheres and begins to manipulate and change their internal design, then we have trouble.

And last week we showed economics as one illustration of this. When the government begins to engage in price fixing, when the government begins to engage in various other forms of assigning value they do what Isaiah condemned in the first chapter, they have mixed silver with dross, they do what Moses condemned in Deuteronomy and they affect the just weights. This is not liassez faire capitalism as such; this is simply to say that there is a sphere of economic values and those values must go on by the law of supply and demand, by the natural market flow, and when the government steps in to affect this, basically, although of course in obvious situations sometimes it’s absolutely necessary, but whenever it does so it’s over-extending itself and is sure to reap the results.

Tonight we are going to start with the natural resources in Genesis 1:26; in Genesis 1:26 we have some man’s mandates over ecology and the natural resources; you don’t have to be too contemporary or too much of a subscriber to Time Magazine today to realize that this is one of the big touchstones on the modern scene, the problem of ecology, pollution and so on, the destruction of natural resources. So we’ll deal with the Biblical position. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. [27] And so God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. [28] And God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it,” and people have drawn from this passage, it continues on, that when Christianity made man lord over creation and its environment, then Christianity is therefore responsible for the present ecological problem.

And this is where we are being attacked, on the campus today, in many of the leading magazines, the latest and newest attack upon Christianity is right here; that Christianity is responsible for man’s misuse of his natural resources, because Christianity teaches here in Genesis 1:26 and following that man is to subdue and to rule, and they say man has subdued and ruled, and it was put upon in a little sarcastic by a man in the Bureau of Reclamation, someone recently handed me his paraphrase of Genesis.

I’ll read this paraphrase of Genesis 1 to you so that you can understand how the connection is made; it’s not any accident that this man goes back to Genesis 1. “In the end there was earth, and it was with form and beauty, and man dwelled upon the lands of the earth, the meadows and trees, and he said, Let us build our dwellings in this place of beauty, and he built cities and covered the earth with concrete and steel and the meadows were gone, and man said it is good. On the second day man looked upon the waters of the earth, the man said let us put our waste in the water so that the dirt won’t be washed away, and man did, and the waters became polluted and foul in their smell, and man said it is good. On the third day man looked upon the forests of the earth and saw that they were beautiful, and man said let us cut the timber for our homes and grind the wood for our use, and man did, and the lands became barren and the trees were gone and man said it is good. On the fourth day man saw the animals were in abundance, and he ran and ran in the fields and played in the sun, and man said let us cage these animals for our amusement and kill them for our sport, and man did, and there were no more animals on the face of the earth and man said it is good. On the fifth day man breathed the air of the earth, and man said let us dispose of our waste into the air, for the winds shall blow them away, and man did, and the air became heavy with dust and all living things choked and burned, and man said it is good. On the sixth day man saw himself and seeing many languages and tongues he feared and hated, and man said let us build great machines and destroy these lest they destroy us, and man built great machines and the earth was fired into the wage of war and man said it was good. And on the seventh day man rested from his labors, and the earth was still for man no longer dwelt upon the earth, and it was good.

Now this man, of course, is making a very good pitch from Genesis, but he’s linking it to Genesis; this is not without accident that this is linked to Genesis because it’s precisely this passage that our critics today are labeling us with the responsibility for pollution. Christianity has schooled man not to be afraid of his environment, go out and smash it, therefore Christianity is at fault. Now I want to dispose of this right away because obviously this is another distortion of Christianity.

Let’s turn to Romans 8 and you’ll see the Biblical answer to this. It is true that man was given originally as the Lord of creation, but man fell and this is the particular point that most people who blame Christians for the ecology problem fail to realize, that Christianity also teaches a historic space/time fall, in which man literally fell and literally corrupted his environment by his sin. So therefore the problem that mars the environment is not man; the problem that mars the environment is sinful man and there’s a difference and a big difference.

In Romans 8:18 Paul says, “For I reckon the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. [19] For the earnest expectation of the creation,” that’s the environment, “waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. [20] For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly but by reason of Him who has subjected the same in hope, [21] because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. [22] For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pains together until now. [23] And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves…,” etc. etc. etc.

So Paul recognizes there’s a problem with the environment; Paul recognizes that man destroys the environment, but he relates it back to the historic fall. And that’s the answer; Christianity does not teach that man goes out and smashes his environment; Christianity simply explains why man goes out and smashes his environment. Man was originally given as lord and master of creation; as a result of his sin he can do nothing but spread his discord and his disharmony everywhere he goes. And so he smashes his environment but it’s not due to the fact that it’s God’s design; it’s simply what man himself has done.

Now I want to take you back to the Old Testament, to the book of Isaiah to show you that the Bible promises, in the future, certain things about the environment that will prove God is concerned with ecology. God is concerned with these and doesn’t take these problems lightly. In Isaiah 65:25 one small example, there are many of them, we do not have time to worry about all the details but I’m taking you back to Isaiah 65 as one illustration that God’s prophetic program includes redemption of the physical environment. Isaiah, in chapter 65, speaks of the millennium after Christ shall return, and when he goes back to this time he’s looking forward but we have to go back, and he’s looking prophetically into the future, that time when the whole creation will be redone and reworked, and he says, verse 25, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion eat straw like the bullock, and dust shall be the serpent’s meat; they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, saith the Lord.” What do you do with that? Do you take that symbolically and allegorically or do you take it literally? If you take it literally then you must say that here is a whole ecological balance system that’s worked out; a whole system that is worked out in the millennium. The very form of the animal and plant kingdom, and these are changes between them, are reworked, including the refurbishing of natural resources. God is concerned and our doctrine of premillennialism, namely that Jesus Christ will come and set up his 1,000 year reign and that 1,000 reign includes an ecological revolution in which natural resources are reworked and reprovided proves that God is interested in the environment, and if we are believers, application, we should be concerned with the environment. It is a legitimate area of concern for the Bible-believing Christian.

On further passage to show that the Bible does teach conservation of natural resources. Deuteronomy 20:19, here we have a passage where we have a specific instance of conservation and you might just jot this verse down, Deuteronomy 20:19-20, sometime when you’re in a discussion and somebody says well, the Bible never says anything about conserving natural resources. The Bible says a lot about conserving natural resources, this is just one of many. In the middle of warfare, in all places, next week when we go through the doctrine of war, a Christian’s attitude toward war and so on, we’ll go through Deuteronomy 20 in detail but in verse 19: “When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, you will not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them; for you may eat of them, and you shall not cut them down (for the tree of the field is a man’s life), to employ them in the siege.” Can you think of anything more desperate in time of war when natural resources are at a premium and everybody is desperately trying to hunt natural resources to conduct the war, right there at this most crucial time God says un-uh, there are certain things in the environment that you can’t touch, even in the times of the crisis of war you are not to touch these. So the Bible does teach sensitivity to the environment. And therefore this business is nonsense, it’s sheer nonsense that Christians are responsible for this. Certain individual Christians may be but they’re not acting consistently with Christianity; Christianity is not responsible for the environmental pollution in any way, shape or form. Anybody that says that has no understanding of Christianity.

The sixth sphere in Scripture is the area of education; we covered most of this under family. I will just touch tonight on one further aspect of the government and education from Deuteronomy 13. This is our sixth sphere in society over which the government has a say, and that’s the problem of education. We said when we discussed family was that the proper role originally in the Bible was the family unit as the core of the education. This doesn’t mean that everybody in the Scriptures were taught the techniques. For example, a young man might be taught the skills, the technical skills of carpentry from somebody else in the community but by education I mean the divine viewpoint framework. This was the responsibility of the parents. You see, education really is two things; first it’s a philosophy, an overview of life that must be perpetuated from father to son, father to son, father to son. That’s the (quote) “religious base.”

And then there are the specific details, the techniques, reading, how to read; writing, arithmetic, these things, these are techniques and these can be taught by specialists, of course. But specialists, you see, in Scripture, can never teach you the basic philosophy that ties everything together into one thing, the unity. All a specialist can do is teach you over here, teach you a little over here, teach you over here, and that’s of course why our universities are not universities, they’re diversities. We have courses all over the place, fragmented, no unity. Why? Well it was never designed to be unity; you can’t have unity apart from God’s Word. A person starts here with God, around God we have Bible doctrine, making Himself known through Bible doctrine, and then as we do research in science, history, philosophy, art, music, literature and so on, and all these various areas of life, then the Bible doctrine flows out into these areas and it ties them all together and gives them unity.

And this is why in our day we do not have truly educated people. We do not have truly educated people. The reason is that the mark of the educated man is that he can reason from one field over to the other; it doesn’t mean that he’s an expert in all of them but he has a basic grasp so that he can sit down and carry on an intelligent conversation about art, music, literature, and see unity in it. Now how many people do you know in your acquaintance that can sit down in your living room and conduct a conversation for 15 minutes ranging in the areas of philosophy, science, history, art and music? Now had you existed 200-300 years ago you would have found people like that but you don’t any more. You find people that are specialists in their field but that’s all. And this is why in our day it’s so difficult to win these people to Jesus Christ because to win a person to Jesus Christ you have to place them with a vacuum of their own unity; they don’t have any unity, they’re just hanging on pieces and fragments and there’s no unity. Jesus Christ gives that unity. You’ve got to have it and this is why it’s difficult, see, people are thinking in terms of categories; over here we’ve got science in one little air tight compartment; over here we’ve got art in one little air tight compartment, and the two never connect. Well that’s a false view and the reason why you have that view is the way you’ve been educated. So this is a problem of education. I include myself in that also.

Now Deuteronomy 13:1 and following does, by way of application, give us one area or one reason why the government can legitimately interfere in education. In Deuteronomy 13:1-5, we use this passage for other reasons, tonight I’m not going to use it for the areas of theological proofs, but this is teaching that, “If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or a wonder,” and so on, verse 2, don’t follow them if the miracle comes to pass, which incidentally you should take careful note of; just because you have something that looks supernatural is not a proof for God’s activity. Here in verse 2 a man makes a miracle, it does come to pass, and yet still the man is stoned to death as a heretic. Heretics can produce miracles. The Bible recognizes that. The last part of verse 2, he teaches, “Let us go after other gods,” which is a Hebrew idiom which means let us violate Mosaic theology. In other words, his verbal teaching does not line up with Scripture. That is sufficient; you do not need miracles to judge people; you judge them logically, whether their teaching logically fits with Scripture or not. If they don’t reject them, regardless of how many miracles they do, they can have a thousand miracles but if their teachings do not line up with Scripture they’re wrong. Miracles do not make up for false teaching.

But the point is that in Due 13:5, “The prophet or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death, because he has spoken rebellion,” literally, “against the LORD your God, now when we go back in Deuteronomy we have to remember that Jehovah or Yahweh is the great king over Israel. So if you want to think in terms that will be more accurate as far as this text and this principle I’m about to draw here, just visualize every time you think of the word Jehovah, visualize a king. That’s the way to look at Deuteronomy. They think in terms of God as a political king, ruling over the nation. Now, here you have a prophet who was an educator in his day, who had schooled various people around him in the prophets of Israel, the Nabiim had schools in which they brought their disciples together, analogy to education, and here is a man who would teach rebellion against the government within the classroom. He would be stoned to death in Israel. Any person in an educational system that teaches rebellion or overthrow of the legitimate government should be ex-communicated, kicked out, thrown out or killed. And that is the Biblical position.

Such is the situation, academic freedom does not include the freedom to advocate rebellion against the nation; academic freedom involves many things but not that, and Israel here recognized that, that in their corresponding situation they would not permit academic freedom in this area, and it is illegitimate and wrong to permit academic freedom in which professors and various groups on campuses and in other places advocate openly and unashamedly that they are going to overthrow the United States government. At this point the United States government or the state government should step in and therefore men like Ronald Reagan, who have stepped in, should be clapped and applauded, in spite of the fact that they’re being caricatured and maligned. These men have done the Biblical thing; they have stepped in. They probably could have stepped in a lot harder and faster than they did. But anytime you have this kind of situation, academic freedom is not valid on Biblical grounds. Academic freedom is not a valid excuse or subterfuge to be used to advocate rebellion. We have a parallel passage, Deuteronomy 19:;9-22; that is another passage that teaches this limitation of academic freedom.

The seventh principle we want to cover is arts and sciences; very briefly arts and sciences have their function in society; the government has no right to regulate the directions of these areas. You say well, we have no area of friction there today. Well then obviously you haven’t read anything by John Kenneth Galbraith; Galbraith advocates the massive centralization of the United States in which ultimately government bureaucrats will then begin to dictate to artists and other ascetic tastes and the government will establish policies for art and other areas. This, of course, would be blasphemous on Biblical grounds.

And finally we have the eight area, the Church. The Church, of course, “Render unto Caesar those things which are Caesars, and unto God those things which are God’s and we have that principle developed in other places but the principle there is that the government has no right to interfere with the Church, nor does the Church have a right to interfere as the Church with government. Individual Christians operating as independent voters, if you want to influence the government your opportunity comes up Tuesday and that is your legitimate way to influence government, not go out and hell raise in the streets, and not throw tantrums and bricks and rocks and everything else at the President and some body else just because you don’t like them. Or throw tantrums, my little baby acts that way when he can’t get his milk right on the time, well, that’s what the college students are doing, they’re acting, going back to the infantile area and when they can’t get their own way they’re throwing their bricks around and so on, throw their toys all around and act like little two-year olds. Well, they should be treated as two year olds and I’ve often said they should pass out rattles with glue and stick them in their mouth and this would solve most of the problems.

But we have the area of Christians openly advocated by the National Council and by other areas, clergymen have urged certain churches to go on record as pronouncing things, and the Church has no right to go in this, and has no right from Scripture. If we follow the right of the apostles and we study how the apostles handled one of the greatest crisis of all human history, that of slavery… why is it that in the New Testament the Apostle Paul didn’t go on a crusade against slavery? Why is it? And don’t say that he didn’t have enough manpower; it wasn’t a strategic time to do it. The early Christian church had no idea on theoretical grounds of ever dictating to Rome the policy of slavery, and yet Christianity is against slavery. Why? Christianity eats the problem away from the inside; it chips away in an area where the government never sees. If Christianity were carried through, slavery as an automatic byproduct, would dissolve.

And that is the way the apostles worked in their society. If you want a key book in the New Testament that’s devoted completely to the slavery question, Philemon; it’s a one page epistle, easiest thing to read in the whole New Testament. There is the classic way Christian apostles handled social issues. And they handled them within the area of Christians; they did not go on record as saying this is the Christian view, period. That is wrong. Many of you are here in an independent church tonight because you have been set up with having your name used because you happened to be a member of a group and have that group said and represented in Washington as everybody in our group believes this. And you don’t believe that, and you have been misrepresented. Well, this goes on and it’s illegitimate interference in your personal life. You have a right as a Christian to make up your own mind on the basis of the Word of God and you have the freedom in this country to vote and that’s the way you influence; not by demonstrations and pronouncements.

But we have the flow the other way and I would suggest there are three areas in which the government basically is intruding into our area of privacy. One is certain welfare schemes like the Peace Corps. What’s wrong with the Peace Corps? Nothing wrong with the Peace Corps except this borders, when it gets right down to it, on a humanistic missionary project. In other words, what we have now are apostles of humanism being sent out to the mission fields of the world, and by the way it is set up in some countries and certain situations, the Christians who operate within the Peace Corps have their hands tied and are unable to give a verbal testimony to Jesus Christ. Now this, of course, again is illegitimate. It is an illegitimate restriction and it almost is setting up an apostate mission corps. We have Christian missionaries who go out into these areas but when you send a man out and his message essentially is improve your environment and that is sufficient…now I realize not all people in the Peace Corps think this way and realize that but there are some of the zealots behind that do think this way and they look upon the thing as a humanistic missionary corps and of course this is in direct competition with Christians missionaries and is a violation of Church and State.

And we have the education curriculum; whenever the education curriculum teaches something like evolution to the exclusion of creation it too violates the boundary between Church and State. When sex education is taught in the schools and it is taught with certain moral values or no moral values it violates the boundary between Church and State. Whenever sex is presented in the schools, as I have seen certain films and so on where you have the animals copulating and then you have the people you are setting in motion, of course, the concept that sex is nothing more than something biological and physical, it’s by evolution it’s derived and so on, and the students who see that have all the right in the world to act like animals after they see it.

I mentioned this to one of the men in the Lubbock School system. I said what do you do? Suppose I give you this hypothetical situation; I am a student and I sit here and I watch this thing and I go on, and you have the egg, the fertilization of the egg in the area of the birds and the animals and so on, you go on up the hierarchy to man and you get up to man and I as a student draw the conclusion, well, there’s no such thing as marriage and morality in the area of the birds and the animals, then why should I have morality. Oh well, after it’s all done we provide them with moral standards, was the answer. I said where’s the base for that? That’s just like saying here, I give you a glass of water and we’ll stick a few drops of oil in it and mix it together; you can mix it together all you want to but it’s not going to become a solution, it’s still a mixture because oil will not mix with water. And when you teach people the evolutionary setting, you teach sex education in an evolutionary setting and then after you’re all done you say yeah, we dressed it up with some moral principles. You’re dishonest, and I as a student sitting in the classroom have all the right in the world to just go out and do what I want to in this area, and say that you taught me to do it. It would be very amusing if some of the students that were alert to this kind of situation and thought clearly would do this, go out and do something like this. Of course, I’m not abrogating Christians do it, you can’t do it because the Lord tells you. But it would be interesting that if the non-Christian would go out and kind of hell-raise in this area, and then simply turn around, well we were taught that in public school. He would be absolutely correct because he was simply taking the teaching in the classroom to the logical conclusion. So this is an area where the public school, granted, has a problem in this area. It’s almost impossible to teach this in any way that’s acceptable to all parties. But it’s an area where we as Christians have to watch it.

All right, that concludes this area of this, I’d like to summarize by going to one further thing, the area of courts. We have covered the eight areas of government and I’ve shown you how the government keeps balance between these eight areas. Now I want to go back to Deuteronomy; Deuteronomy 16 and here we begin in just one survey the area of how the government keeps this balance. We’ve discussed the eight areas that government must keep in balance, now we discover the mechanics of keeping this in balance. Next week we’ll discover the area of external balance or how does our national government keep us in balance with other national entities, doctrine of the military. Tonight we’re dealing with the police and the court system from God’s Word.

Deuteronomy 16:18, here we have the police and court system developed. Every nation must have something that corresponds to police and court and you can call them pigs all you want to but let me tell you something, as far as God’s Word is concerned they have to be there and the police are a long thin blue line that stands between you and survival. And the very people today that are working to destroy the police force of the United States are going to be the ones that are going to be crying when anarchy hits. And when people are riding through your neighborhood tossing Molotov cocktails in your living room window and shooting you and raping you on the street, these same people will be the ones, oh, I wonder what happened to the police. Well, you just disarmed the police, that’s what happened to them and we may well come to the state in some communities where the citizens armed, the citizen with his own gun is going to be the only thing that can stand between him and his own family’s safety.

Now we’ve come down to that point in this country because we have maligned police officers, we have deliberately obstructed their operation and we have set in motion defiance. Parents have failed to breed in their children a respect for authority, and do you know who gets it at the end? The police. What the police are getting out on the street today is what five or ten years ago the parents had in the home. These kids that are sitting in the face of policemen and so on are kids that have deliberately run their house and their parents have let them do it and now they’re out on the streets and now the policemen are going to put up with it. I know of one case in this town that I was involved in where the police frankly told me, we know this kid, this kid we have tried to arrest on a number of occasions and every time we arrest him he kicks us, he spits and so on, he’s a juvenile but you wait till he turns 18 and when he turns 18 we’re going to give him a birthday party. Now what does it mean, the police are going to go out after him? No, it just means that when gets 18 he’s going to be treated like an adult and a few surprises are in store; daddy isn’t going to be able to go down and mommy and bail them out and accuse the policeman, oh why did you brutally handle my little child. Things are going to change at 18 and this kid is going to be in trouble and there’s no way around it. I told the particular people involved that this kid is going to have trouble; on no, no, no, well, you watch, we’ll see who’s going to be in trouble.

So now we come to police and court. God’s Word always says this is necessary and the Christian today should be in the forefront of defending the existence and proper functioning of the police and the courts. And Christians who are embarrassed, it’s one thing to complain about certain techniques that are used in law enforcement, that’s one thing, but when you complain about the very existence of law and order that’s another thing. And so therefore the Bible says the police are necessary.

In Deuteronomy 16:18 we have a series of passages that extend from Deuteronomy 16:18 through 18:22. These deal with the personnel of the police and court system of Israel; the personnel of the police and court system. So we’re going to have an extended passage, we’ll go through it, survey it, for the qualifications for government officials in the nation Israel. What kind of qualification did these people look for when they picked court leaders and law enforcement officials? “Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the LORD thy God gives thee,” now remember the concept in the Old Testament is that God is the political king. Don’t think of this in terms of something spiritual. In the Old Testament theocracy of Israel God politically reigns. Now look, here’s a simple point. If God Himself, when He rules a nation, must use police, how much more do human officials that rule must use police. When God rules Himself and He has to use police and court systems, how much more when men rule do they need police and court systems? So verse 18, “in all thy gates” means cities, “gates” is a Hebrew idiom for cities; those of you who’ve sung Handel’s Messiah, “open ye gates” and so on, you’ve heard that expression, it’s an metonymy for the city, open up so you can let Messiah in.

Deuteronomy 16:19, “And thou shall not wrest judgment,” or leave judgment literally in verse 19, “thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift, for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise and pervert the words of the righteous.” And it seems like every single week, we don’t have a week go by but we don’t have some expose of some congressman or some senator getting $30,000 from some business outfit or something’s going on. Now in some areas there’s a problem because today you have to be a wealthy man to be elected, and it’s a problem that a man can’t be elected in this country unless he has money, it takes almost a quarter of a million to get into the Senate, just sheer campaign expenses. And some of these congressmen, of course, have obligations in this area, but it’s a tremendous problem that we’ve got to work with, the buying off of public officials and verse 19, this is the number one…number one characteristic! Notice before even their intellectual qualifications the moral qualification, is this a person who can be paid, bought off, bribed, or not. Moral qualifications come first, then your leadership. This is a very crucial order.

Deuteronomy 19:20, “That which is altogether just shalt thou follow,” and literally in the Hebrew it reads “of righteousness and only righteousness shalt thou follow, the word righteous being standard, “that thou mayest live and inherit the land which the LORD thy God gives thee.” Then verse 21, it seems odd that this would be right in the middle of a passage on judges, “Thou shalt not plant tee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the LORD thy God, which thou shalt make thee.” You say what has this got to do with police officers? We’re talking about officers and judges and now you’re talking about planting plants some place, what’s the deal. Here’s what happening. The function of law is built on the Word of God; God is the ruler of the nation Israel. He must rule through His Word. What are these grove of trees in verse 21? They are the places of the Baalim, the Baals, the false gods, and when you allow the false gods to come in you have a disruption of the Word of God. In other words, this is revolt, tyranny, traitorship; this is a traitor type operation in which you would infiltrate outside foreign influences. So in verses 21-22 there must be the elimination of all foreign influences in the national government. Now that in itself would be a major revolution in the United States. If we could destroy all the foreign influences in our government, what a day of rejoicing that would be. But nevertheless, this is one thing that Israel always insisted on, no groves. Keep in mind, God is the political ruler; the Baalim are competing rulers of the Gentile nations. And so what this is referring to is the rise of insurgency and so on within the nation.

And so these officials, first of all in verses 19-20 they are to have moral qualifications, and 21 and following they are to eliminate foreign influences. They are to be patriotic men to the core, dedicated to their country. And of course the Christian doesn’t go to the extreme of saying my country, right or wrong, whether it’s right or wrong it’s my country and so on; that’s true, we have to stand on the Word of God, but the qualification of a man is loyalty to his nation, and yet we have person after person elected to private office who could care less for the United States. They malign the United States, listen, most of your ancestors probably came from Northern Europe. Do you know why they came here? Because they couldn’t stand the cesspool where they lived. Our forefathers came to this country precisely because of some of the problems we’ve got here; they left the European cesspool to get out of this so they could live here in freedom, and now we come here and what’s the deal? Oh, we want to get European culture and all the rest. I don’t know about your family but that’s why my family came here, to get rid of the mess and what do we do now? We get infiltrated by it. So here was one of the great qualifications; moral leadership and an inbred deep sense of patriotism.

Now another thing that these men were to have, Deuteronomy 17:2, this was the practical law enforcement that these judges and officers would perform. “If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God gives thee, man or woman who has wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing His covenant, [3] And has gone and served other gods, and worshiped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the hose of heaven, which I have not commanded, [4] And it be told thee, and thou hast heard it, and inquired diligently, and, behold, it is true, and the thing certain, that such an abomination is wrought in Israel, [5] Thou shalt bring forth that man or that woman, who hath committed that wicked thing, and they shall stone them with stones until they die.”

Now there again, you can brand this as McCarthyism and so on and witch hunting but nevertheless, this is literal witch hunting and it is a legitimate area of government. The only problem with witch hunting is, of course it becomes undisciplined and you don’t have any standard for witch hunting, but witch hunting as such is a bona fide legitimate domain of sorting out foreign agents and so on, and foreign influences in the nation and it is legitimate. And this was done so in the nation Israel and God commanded it.

However, there are certain things here that through the court procedures, which I would not like to get into and beginning in Deuteronomy 17:6, “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses,” this introduces the most beautiful court system the world has ever seen. The court system in the nation Israel was a model; in fact, our law today, built on British common law, has its original base in the Old Testament. We have a tremendous influence, even to this day, in the Old Testament on our country.

So I would like to show you, we’ve worked with the officials a little bit and now I’d like to show you the court system and how it functioned in the nation; compare this with our nation today. The first thing about court systems dealt with witnesses, so let’s work with the witnesses a little bit. It says in verses 6-7, “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death;” the first thing about it that strikes you is that there was basically no police force, there was kind of a sheriff in that each city had their own official and so on, more or less like the rural areas today. They had their kind of sheriff and his deputies, but they didn’t have a full-fledged police force. The individual citizen was the informant.

Now this is amazing, some of the areas in our country you’re brought up not to tell and so on; you’re a tattle-tale. Of course, you could be a brat in this way, but when it gets to the extreme point of a person being raped or assaulted and in New York City where they stand by and look, the 11:00 show is not on TV, it’s right out in your street so you sit down and watch it, and that’s the way they handle it. When that happens, of course, we’ve come a long way, and in the nation Israel at the base of their whole judicial system they had this one feature that was going for them—individual citizen responsibility. Each citizen was a law observer. So what chance did a criminal have? You have passages in the Old Testament where people would flee all around the city; people would tell them, look, we’ve got this crook in our city, he just floated in the main door and so the officers would come in and grab them, pull them right out.

How did they have such a fantastic system? At the base of it all was a widespread citizen responsibility. Every citizen in Israel took it upon himself to be a law enforcement officer. The law was his law, not something imposed from without, it was his God’s law and therefore he helped enforce that law. So therefore application to us as Christian citizens, respect for the law includes, if you really respect the law, you’ll see that it’s enforced.

Secondly, false witness was a major crime; remember the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” And so we have the problem of false witness made a major crime in the nation.

The third principle about the witnesses was that the punishment for a false witness was what he was trying to bring upon the accused. Turn to Deuteronomy 19:18; this is rather a sneaky way of doing it but it was self-correcting. If you came up and you wanted to eliminate your neighbor and you accused him of a certain crime and they found out about it, do you know what? You’d be accused of the crime you’d tried to accuse your neighbor of. “And the judges shall make diligent inquiry; and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and has testified false against his brother, [19] Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother.” I would dare say that that would solve most of the false witness problem.

The fourth principle about witnesses in the Old Testament was that one witness, one eyewitness was never, never sufficient. This passage we have before us in chapter 17:6-7 says “at the mouth of two or three or witnesses” it must be established. No person could be executed on hearsay evidence; no person could be executed at one witness; only with two or three witnesses; there had to be two or three witnesses. Now this is why the Lord Jesus Christ in John 8, in that woman that was caught in adultery, reacted the way He did. Most people misinterpret John 8 and say aha, Jesus says that He that is without sin let him cast the first stone, and they imply thereby by saying that that you as a Christian should not accuse, it’s not your right to accuse. Jesus said “let him that is without sin cast the first stone.” Nothing could be further fro the truth. In John 8 what you had was a Jewish festival feast; we know this now from a study of certain Massoritic literature and so on of the temple. There was a feast and during this feast the women would be kept in what they called the inner court, in rooms around the inner court. The reason why was because previous to this they had riots and so on, these people were having liquor in the form of beer that we would have today and things would get a little rowdy, and the women would have problems so they’d put the women in these little rooms around the edge of the temple and left them there all night.

Well, during John 8 these men that brought woman caught in adultery, see what they were trying to do was trap Jesus, they were eyewitnesses, they caught her in adultery and when Jesus turned around and said to them, “You who are without sin cast the first stone,” do you know what He was saying? Where you boys been; in other words, they were in the women’s section and they weren’t supposed to be in there anyway, and Jesus was essentially saying if you want to start casting stones, you know what, you’re all qualified, and I’ll get my disciples around here and they’ll start throwing rocks at you because all you’ve guys have been in the inner temple there where the women are, the women’s court; you have no right to be in the women’s court, what were you doing in the ladies room. And that’s what He was saying there, that’s exactly the context of John 8; these men were in the lady’s room. And that was their problem and Jesus caught them at it and he called their number and they walked off; it has nothing whatever to do with not testifying to a law violation that you see happen; it has nothing whatever, don’t ever feel intimidated by John 8. The person that uses that on you doesn’t know John 8; you tell them that men got caught in the lady’s room and it has nothing to do with your witness.

Finally, the fifth thing about witnesses was that these witnesses had to be the ones who killed the person. In other words, Deuteronomy 17:7, “The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death,” now think of the tremendous psychology behind this. You’re the guy and before you is this person who’s going to die because of your testimony and you have to look that person right in the eye and pick up the first rock. Now don’t think it’s going to purify a few views of court systems; in other words, a person is going to be very careful what he says; it’s going to lead to a self-disciplining process here. And so the witnesses themselves under Old Testament law were the first ones to cast the stone. Today we would say the witnesses would be the executioner, if it was an electric chair situation, the man or the woman who witnessed the act would have to be the one who pulls the switch. And so you put the witness, you involve him in the case.

See, we’ve got uninvolved justice in this country. A crime happens, what do you do? You pick up the phone and call the police, that’s the last thing you do, you’re never involved in the whole judicial process. Now that’s utterly contrary to the Old Testament. In the Old Testament you not only would witness the crime you would report the crime, you would be at the trial participating in the thing, you would also, if it involved execution or punishment you would be involved in that. You see, every citizen was involved in the whole judicial process and it kept a tremendous respect for law and order.

Now I’d like to make a few remarks about their court proceedings. Deuteronomy 19:17, this is a little helter-skelter in the passages in Deuteronomy but it’s the only way I know to quickly introduce you to these areas that have applicability today. The court system—there are several things about the court system; we’ve covered the witnesses but just in general observation, in Deuteronomy 19:17, “Then both the men, between whom the law suit is,” the word “controversy” is lawsuit, “shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, who shall be in those days. [18] And the judges shall make diligent inquiry;” and so on. The point there was that there was, the first feature was a quick trial. Now in this country we do not have enough court systems, something is happening, and the man who commits the crime is not getting punished close enough to the crime. Here’s the crime and it may be three years before the sentence is passed. And this aborts the whole system of justice; if you’re with children you know that you just can’t let the kid get away with something and then discipline him for it two weeks later. It doesn’t connect it; the trick in justice is not even the severity of the punishment so much as it’s the quickness of the punishment, and the quickness and the timing of the punishment is crucial. In the Old Testament, other passages, Deuteronomy 25:1; Ruth 4:1-12 is an illustration where Boaz and Ruth had immediate access to the court. So you have quick access of quick trial.

A second thing about it is that the complaint is brought by the plaintiff and not an intermediate lawyer. References: Deuteronomy 21:18; 22:15 and Ruth 4:1. This means that the citizen, think of this now, the average citizen had such a grasp of the law in that day that he could walk into the courtroom and function as a legitimate court official. Today we have laws that are so complicated and so on we need specialists, and even the specialists, I find, don’t really know it too well sometimes. So we have a court system that is simple, it is quick, and the citizens really have moxy, they really know what’s going on.

The third thing, and this is an absolutely crucial thing, was that justice was considered not to be the sentence of the community against the criminal. Justice was considered to be the sentence of God against the criminal; not the community against the criminal, not so and so versus the State of such and such, but so and so versus God Himself. That’s Deuteronomy 1:17 in which Moses said you are invested with carrying out the justice of God Himself; so justice was on a divine basis.

Now there’s one more thing and that is Deuteronomy 25:1-3; I’m thinking of what Dr. Houston said over at the coliseum the other night about drugs and about punishment of drug addicts, and I thought she had a tremendous point when she said that instead of jailing the narcotics offender, what we ought to do is take the person who’s used the drugs and make him serve a sentence of six months in a place where they deal with drug addition. And let him be a helper and let him work with people who are hooked on the stuff and let him see just where it leads. Now this was a fantastic suggestion, instead of clamping a person in a cell. And I notice when I study Old Testament law and particular here in 25:1-3, this is the epitome of a principle, that jailing was only used in Israel for one purpose; holding the person until the trial. Jail was never used as a system of punishment. Now this is kind of interesting, you have to get the principle.

In Deuteronomy 25:1-3, “If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them, then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.” Incidentally, that is the key verse by which you may understand the New Testament. You know when you read in the New Testament how you are justified in Christ? Do you know where that term comes from? Right here, Deuteronomy 25:1, and if you’ll look carefully at it you’ll get a tremendous blessing and insight into your own justification. Look carefully at what it is saying and apply it to yourself. If you are a Christian tonight, you are justified, do you know what that means. You have already stood trial. Justification was a term which meant that you were declared by the judge, not merely to be innocent, but you were declared by the judge to have obeyed the law and it is final, and you can’t have double jeopardy and you can’t be brought into the court again, and when we are justified as Christians the tremendous and precious truth that the New Testament is trying to convey using this imagery, right here, here’s where your justification is coming from, it’s exactly the words from the Greek Old Testament used over in the New Testament; the exact imagery is this; at point one I received the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ to my account, all of His obedience to the Law, all of His perfect life that He lived, all of His perfect conformity to God’s standards, all of that is credited to my account… all of that!

That’s justification. And you know how it’s accomplished? God the Father justifies me, and it means that I am, at the point I am saved, at the point I become a Christian it’s as though I stand trial and God the Father is the judge of trial, and He reaches down after the trial is finished and says you are justified, and it means that you can never be brought into trial again. This is eternal security. You never can be brought to trial again, law of double jeopardy. Your life has been declared in conformity with the will of God even before you finish your life. You say wait a minute, I haven’t finished my life, how can it possibly be that my life can be said to be in perfect obedience to God and I haven’t even finished it yet, leave alone all of the mistakes I’ve made. Well here’s the wonder of imputation; the righteousness or obedience that is credited to your account isn’t yours; it’s the Lord Jesus Christ’s obedience and it’s His obedience credited to your account which qualifies you to pass the trial and when you walk out of the courtroom you know you can never be brought back again. And this is a tremendous truth when you grasp it, justification, and you can walk out with straight shoulders, knowing that I am accepted legally forever in the presence of God. Fantastic and humbling thought because Jesus Christ did it all! So that’s one of the great New Testament amplifications of this passage.

But let’s continue, Deuteronomy 25:2, “And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number. [3] Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed; lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem,” actually, “to be dishonored unto thee.” In other words, we have a situation where there were certain safeguards built into the judicial system. One of these was that it had to be by legitimate trial, verse 1.

So let’s look at how they punished people, here’s a little course in punishing criminals, comparing to criminology today. First of all it had to be a fair trial; it had to be a quick trial. The second control in verse 2 was that it had to be done before the judge; the punishment had to be executed before the judge so that there was no… in other words, an analogy in jail, there would have to be inspectors to make sure that standards were used in punishment, and that those standards, that the people who did the punishing kept to the law. The third thing, in verse 3, is a limitation on the punishment, lest it says, “thy brother be dishonored.”

Now this is amazing. You think of the Old Testament as unduly strict, but frankly the more I study the Old Testament, the more I think it’s very merciful. Is it or is it not worse to beat a man physically or to keep him caged like an animal for 30 years? That’s the question, and the Bible always, in the Old Testament…they had jails in the ancient world, it wasn’t that they didn’t have jails, but isn’t it interesting that throughout the whole civil law of Israel the three ways they punished people were fines, physical punishment of capital punishment; no jail. The jails were only there to keep a person until trial, but a person was never caged as an animal. And the physical punishment itself was limited.

Now there’s something to be said for this and I think some of us ought to do some thinking about it, the resurrection of corporeal punishment. You say it’s cruel; I don’t think so, I don’t think it’s half as cruel as to cage people up with other hardened criminals and when they come out they’re twice as hard as when they walked in.

So these are some of the functions… and historically do you know where jails got started? In reaction to Deuteronomy 25; people said look, we can’t beat people, that’s inhumane, so what we’ll do is we’ll cage them up for a little while. And then the jail sentences got more and more because people were finding out that jail sentences weren’t working; that jail sentences don’t do what they’re supposed to do. So they made them longer and longer, and the longer they made them the less effective they become. So the jail sentence is actually not something in Scripture, it’s something that we in western culture have added to it.

These are some features of the Law of Israel, and next week we will begin with the areas of war and this is a very contemporary subject, whether pacifism is authorized in God’s Word or not and we’ll deal with the problem of the draft, all these functions, the youth of Israel’s day, the young Jewish male was faced with draft, he was faced with a form of universal military training, and he was faced with a mental attitude that he should have on the battlefield. Also we’ll deal with the foreign policy of the nation when they engage in war and you’ll see some very startling things.