Clough Manhood Series Lesson 16

Law: The Biblical Basis

Before continuing our study in manhood tonight I want to comment on two feedback cards that have been handed in. When I discussed manhood from the era of Jacob, we discussed the problem of… we broached the problem that perhaps Rebekah was not wrong in her rather shading dealings with Isaac. We suggested that; I wasn’t dogmatic because I didn’t have time to come to a conclusion in that passage but I suggested it as a possibility. And so a very logical question was asked, and we’ll read both of these questions because they’re both real good questions.

When you condone Rebekah for deceiving Isaac you appear to be saying that at times it is right to do wrong. Are you not, thereby, creating situation ethics? Another question: Is bribery justified, isn’t bribery putting a stumbling block in someone’s way. Let me answer this and respond to it by saying in the Scripture absolutes that God gives us are conditioned by Him, not by the situation. The modern heretic, the situation ethicist says that when we are in the situation we can bend and twist God’s standards to fit the situation, if we believe in God’s standards at all. Now the Scriptures have, however, points where it seems it borders on situation ethics. For example, the most famous of all is the situation involving Rahab. Rahab is commended in the epistle of James for showing faith by lying to the people of Jericho; it’s an act considered to be praise worthy by God. Why, then, does God praise a deceitful woman, a lying woman. We have to answer that and the answer is not easy. We can’t just go into the text, like I did the first time I taught the text, and say well, Rahab was wrong in this situation. Well if she was, it’s a strange thing that the Scriptures never, when they comment on Rahab in place after place, never say anything about it. In fact, that very act is the center and witness of her faith.

So this causes us to be cautious that there are those times and places when God Himself authorizes what I have referred to as moral miracles. Just as there are physical miracles that “break natural law” in quote, so it appears at times that God authorizes the breaking of what we would call standard moral rule. And the reason is because rules aren’t existing in and of themselves. It’s like in the military, you’re given an order by the commander, you carry out that order, but if the commander sends you another order that supercedes the first one you are obligated to carry the second order out in lieu of the first one. The order-giver or originator has the prerogative to change the order. And so God has the prerogative to change His own command. And so God says, “Thou shalt not kill,” but then He says but capitally punish the murderer. God says “thou shalt not kill” but he tells Abraham to kill his son. Now why does that happen? Is that situation ethics? No that isn’t, what that is is God Himself amending his orders in certain places and times. And that’s what I’m leery of getting involved in with Rebekah. Put another way, it’s not that at times it’s right to do wrong; at times it’s right to carry out God’s command for that time. And there’s a problem in some of the areas.

But the question of bribery is an interesting one, it’s been brought up several times so let’s turn to Proverbs 17:8 before we go any further in our study. This is one of those texts that give legalistic expositors ulcers. And you can tell as they handle Proverbs 17:8 the way they handle it; they do hand stands in trying to analyze and use this passage. Now the passage is clearly teaching something that most people don’t like to hear and think is very un-Christian. “A gift [bribe] is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that has it; and whithersoever it turns, it prospers.” That’s talking about bribing; it’s saying that wherever the bribe goes the bribe prospers. Turn to Proverbs 21:14 for a similar verse, “A gift in secret pacifies anger; and a reward in the bosom, strong wrath.” That’s talking about bribing someone.

So we seem to have two proverbs that speak explicitly of bribing and seeing no problem, we just recognize that. Yet on the other hand, throughout the Mosaic Law there are severe punishments for accepting a bribe, but never in offering a bribe. Now because there are times, and time after time after time, opportunity after opportunity for the Holy Spirit to say something to this issue, and He consistently doesn’t, and He consistently attacks the accepting of a bribe but doesn’t attack the giving of a bribe, this causes questions. Why is this? Why doesn’t the Holy Spirit at least once, some place, in the canon of Scripture between Genesis and Revelation condemn the offering of a bribe. He never once does it, not to my knowledge. Not once. Why is this?

It appears that here we have a safety valve, morally, to protect believers in time of severe persecution, not that believers go around bribing people to get their way, but there do come those times in history when the church is persecuted. For example, behind the iron curtain today, and inspectors of the Soviet Secret Police have to be given their presents to look the other way while the church carries on its business, and God says in such a situation, when a government by its totally anti-Christ position takes it stand, then you are under no obligation to over that government truth. That government at that point has ruined its right, its claim upon you for truth and you are justified in protecting yourself in this way by bribery. Again, this is apparently the reason why the Scriptures don’t say go do it but yet there’s a very consistent structure to the Law that lets you do it and the only conclusion we can come to, again, is that that is a built-in safety valve for a time and a place where it might be necessary to do it. And this is one of those places where there really is no lesser evil in the situation because there is no prohibition against that particular act. That’s the best I can do with bribery in a three minute answer.

Today we come to the 16^th in the series on the doctrine of the Christian man and we finished in Genesis and early part of Exodus our character studies. We’ve learned various principles from watching men work in the Bible, watching how God works with these men, watching how he molds their character, watching the frustrations, like we saw last time of Moses, a man who acts like a man when he’s frustrated; it’s refreshing to see that from Scripture. We have pansies in Christian circles who somehow think it’s pious to be feminine. And is’ refreshing to see that Moses acts like you would expect a male to act when he’s hacked. And he does, and this is why we saw that passage last time of Moses’ total exasperation with God, with the plan, with God’s plan for his life and everything else. And you’ll note that once again Moses’ exasperation was like most men’s exasperation, it’s connected not with their wife or home but with their job, and it was connected with Moses’ job.

So finishing that part of our study we are going to now move in for several weeks, maybe a month or two, on the Christian man and Law; we’re going to deal with the topic of Law because much of the Bible is Law, the first five books technically are called Torah, or Law, and so it’s no accident that Law has such a high place in God’s plan. Let’s make some preliminary observations.

Every society, at every time in history, has always been dependent upon law, simply for order. You all know this from just living in a home together; you’ve got to have some rules in the home, somebody has to get the food on the table; somebody has to bring the money home, someone in the home has to be responsible for how the money is spent. Somebody has got to divine institutions the children and tell them what is right and what is wrong. All these things are necessary or you have chaos. It’s a very elementary observation. Now we can enlarge this. The concept of law in Scripture is simply the tool God has given men to subdue the earth with. Now let’s just think about that for a moment.

Let’s look at it in a non social area of another kind of law. When an artist wants to go paint a picture, doesn’t he have to master the skills of using the brush, using color mixtures, using the various media. I know there are some who put holes in the bottom of a can of paint and just extend it over a long cord and knock it around the canvas and call it art; we’re not talking about chance products. We’re talking about art that involves skill and no artist can possibly draw unless he conforms to certain norms, certain principles. The same with a musician. There’s a detailed mathematical structure to music that has to be respected if something comes out good; it’s to be there.

And so it is in the area of the Christian life; there’s got to be law, and in all our talk about grace, grace, grace, particular in Bible teaching circles, perhaps sometimes we’ve given the impression that grace means violation of law, but it doesn’t. Grace and law in the way they are properly related are not opposite; they are components of the same thing. The law is what tells you God’s will; grace is what enables you to do God’s will. Law is the road map; grace is the gasoline to make the car go the way you want it to go, so grace provides the mechanisms for it going but grace does not, by itself, tell you a thing. Love does not, by itself, tell you a thing. Only law tells you and that law is central in the Christian life; law is central in sanctification.

Now let’s take it a little bit further; this business of the fact that all society depends on law, I don’t think we realize, unless we’re law students, how law is behind everything we do. Take two simple situations out of every day life. Let’s take a case where the faucets leak in your bathroom, a common Lubbock occurrence with our great calcium carbonate water that we have, and when this ruins the pipes, obviously we call for a plumber. So you agree to hire a plumber to fix the faucets at a certain price that involves labor and material. He comes, he fixes the facets and you pay him. Now whether you’re aware of it or not, the basis for allowing that thing to happen involved a sort of contract. True, you didn’t write anything but there was a contract implied in that relationship between you and your plumber. You go into a restaurant and you order a rare steak and it came well-done and so you send it back to the kitchen and you get a rare steak. And so in this situation the waiter goes, brings it to you and so on. Now there could be some nasty things that come out of that, hard feelings. But even that has a contract implied in it, where there’s a contractual relationship, whether ever written or not, it doesn’t make any difference, it’s implied.

Both of these transactions show you that you cannot have relationships with other people apart from a background of law, law and contract. The law can be written or law can be oral. Don’t think that law is limited just to writing. There are lots of things that in our everyday life depend on oral contracts. There was no writing when you went into the restaurant to order a menu to order some food, but I guarantee if you walked out without paying your bill there’d be some legal repercussions, even though nothing had been written a contract somehow was orally implied when you ordered the meal. So therefore, law stands behind everything we do. Now there are some areas in life, and men have to learn the hard way, that it’s not good to have all your contracts in oral form. Contracts ought to be put in writing, certain important contracts. And this is why the English Parliament in 1677 passed the Statue of Fraud, which said that in order for a contract to be enforceable certain contracts had to be written and this was an advance because it forced people to make explicit contractual relationships.

For example, the Jewish people; the Orthodox Jew has a document, before a guy and a girl marry, this document is generated, called the ketubah, and this ketubah or writing, they go on, they agree, it’s the property disposition, what the groom will do, what the bride will do and so on. Recently, we thought it was a good idea so we started incorporating it here, and every couple before they are married must work out a written contract that explores biblically the relationship of the bride to the groom and the groom to the bride, and specifies the responsibility. They sign this and I keep a copy of it. And so when they have marriage problems and they come to me and they want to bust the thing up in a moment of tantrum, out comes my little copy; what was it that you signed? See, I trap them because when we oath before the altar in a wedding service we’re not just putting on a show; there’s a whole ramification that of that contract before God, and so we want to make the terms of the contract explicit so a couple knows what it is that they’re saying to each other. So this is an area where law is necessary.

Contracts, and it’s a vast area of law, contracts have certain preconditions, you have to be competent to enter into a contract, you have to be able to do things to enter into a contract; you have to have a lawful objective to the contract. Contracts themselves are very orderly and follow a certain procedure. Contracts can be discharged in certain ways, by full performance or by partial performance, under certain conditions. If a person drops dead he can’t perform the contract, there are allowances made in the law for this kind of thing. So maybe, if we think about it long enough we’ll realize that no social relationship of any sort can exist without a framework of law.

But law, if it’s precondition for living together, is going to aid or hinder, depending how wise it is. We can’t agree with President Eisenhower when he made this statement: “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in our deeply felt religious faith and it’s behind its law and I don’t care what faith it is,” end quote. Well, we certainly do care what faith it is. This is a sloppy statement, he usually was not the man to make these kind of statements, but like everyone he slipped here at this point. And it’s a statement that’s wrong; if we have the wrong faith that sets up our law, our law is wrong, and certain spiritual implications follow.

So if we turn to Deuteronomy 12:29 we’ll see the connection between law and faith. It’s talking about Israel going into the land in which there were pagan religions. Now notice something very clear in the Old Testament. It’s very clear in the ancient documents of the Near East. And our point is going to be as we work through several texts to show you something right off from the start. Why is law so important? Because law externalizes your religion. All law is religious in its source. All law is religious in its source. Why? Because it tells what you ought to do and what you ought not to do and that is a religious area. That is the area of right and wrong.

Now let’s look in Deuteronomy 12:29, “When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, where thou goest to possess them, and thou succeeds them, and swells in their land, [30] Take heed to thyself that you not be snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee, and that you inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? Even so will I do likewise. [31] Thou shalt not do so according to the LORD thy God; for every abomination to the LORD, which the heathen have done unto their gods. For their sons and their daughters they have burned in the fire to their gods. [32] Whatsoever thing I command you, observe to do it; thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.”

Do you notice the connection; in verse 30 at the end; it asks the question, and this is the danger Moses is warning them against, when you go into Jericho, and you go down into the plains of the Canaanites, and you go up into the highlands of the Amorites, there’s going to be the tendency to say how do I serve their gods? Now how are you going to answer a question like that? By their law, simply go to their codices, find out what their law says and that’s how you serve their god; so serving their god and obeying the law code is identical in Scripture. Serving the god is obeying and carrying out the law. Carrying out the law is obeying the god behind the law. And this is why Christians have to be very, very sensitive to the construction of law because laws incarnate, or enscripturate religious faith and religious beliefs.

This is why in one of the recent episodes involving a law suit that’s in this abortion controversy, the other side brought up the objection, they said well look, why don’t you Christians just get off our backs, we’ve got liberalized abortion laws and if we non-Christian want our abortions we can have our abortions and if you Christians don’t want your abortions you don’t have to have them; we’re not forcing abortions on you. Now to the uniformed observer that seems a reasonable thing to say; after all, isn’t everyone happy here, the non-Christian is happy because he can go out and have his abortions and the Christians are happy because they’re not compelled to have any. Now isn’t that a nice state of peace; why is it that these hard-nosed Christians have to come in and say we want the law changed. Well what right do Christians have to say this. It’s very simple, because the law as it stands now has already articulated a religious faith and compels everyone to the belief that the fetus enjoys no rights whatsoever. That is a religious position.

Just like the god, Molech in the Old Testament, to whom everyone gave their children, we horror when you think of Molech in the Old Testament. Do you know how they used to worship Molech? They used to take their young babies down and slit their throat, or they used to burn them and toast them in front of the statues of Molech, and they used to have big drums and they used to beat them so loud that the screams of the child, as he was frying, would be drowned out. That’s the worship of Molech, and we say how crude; they are saying Molech is saying that I am worth more than your babies, give me your children; gods always want their children. And so it is in the 20^th century that when the State and man decide that it’s all right, we sacrifice our children just like they did in the ancient world to Molech. It’s the same principle; it’s simply the religious motive operating behind the law.

Most people, 98% of the people don’t even understand the religious motive behind legislation. It’s there, even the legislators don’t always understand this, but when you construct legislation you are saying this is right and this is wrong. Only the person who stands in the position of generating a piece of legislation stands on a Mount Sinai giving the tablets of the law. The legislative function is a divine function and when men purposely design legislation out of line with the revealed will of God, they substitute themselves for God. That is a religious position, and that’s why our law students, very correctly, responded back: the reason we Christians want the law changed is because we will not and cannot live in contentment under legislation of the humanist religion; it will either be the humanist religion or the Christian religion that decides the law, and we are going to compete and compete and compete with you until we overwhelm you. Or, you will compete with us and compete with us and compete with us until you overwhelm us, but one or the other of us will determine which designs the law; either God of the Scriptures or man; one or the other.

We can see this in legislation controlling family inheritance. There were a group of people in the 20s and 30s in the United States that thought they were doing everyone a favor by (quote) “busting up” the rich, wealthy families. They studied the cases of the Rockefellers and the Carnegies, and everybody thought well, it’s very easy, tax their inheritance; destroy the ability of the father to give his son capital for the next generation; that’ll take care of the Rockefellers and the Carnegies. Has it? Not on your life it hasn’t because the very super wealthy can always buy a lawyer and can always figure a loophole in the law through trusts and so on to get around it. Who has been ruined? The large mass of families, the middle class, the man who works and works and works and scrapes some savings together but he doesn’t have enough money to hire a big involved lawyer, the whole thing, to generate a trust fund for his children, go through this thing, that thing and the other thing. So who winds up being hurt by this unwise piece of legislation? The middle class; thousands and thousands of fathers have been prevented from giving capital to their sons because of inheritances. They are wicked, they are unbiblical, they are foolish in God’s sight. The reflect a faith that hates the family rather than nourishes the family like the Bible does. And so there’s another example; we could cite case after case but we hope that at least in this preliminary go round we’ve shown you that law is important and that behind law stands God.

There’s one other passage to look at in this connection; 1 Samuel 26, David is trying to flee from Saul and he face the problem of being excluded from his land. He is going to go down to the Philistine coast and in 1 Samuel 26:19 he says, “Now, therefore, I pray thee, let my lord, the king, hear the words of his servant. If the LORD has stirred thee up against me, let him accept an offering; but if they be the children of men cursed be they before the LORD; for they have driven me,” and this is David’s complaint, now look at the way David complains to Saul, because David has been pushed out, socially, from Israel; “they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the LORD,” that’s the land of Israel, “the inheritance of the LORD, saying,” now after the word “saying” you have a capsulation of what the meaning of this business, exiled from you homeland, “go and serve other gods.” What do you mean? David going and serving other gods? He’s living outside the Mosaic Law; he’s living under Philistine law, legislation that had been designed with their faith motivating it, with their values inputting itself into the legislative proves. And so the act of living in Philistia is the act of living to the gods of the Philistines.

See, this is why it’s so important that Christians fight to uphold the application of the Word of God. Don’t buy this argument, well, you’re just trying to cram your religious view down everyone’s throats. No, we’re not trying to make everybody a Christian; we’re trying to articulate our God’s views into legislation because if we don’t we know other gods view will be articulated in the legislative process.

Let’s look at the basis of law; turn to Job 38; we’re going to skip around a little bit and then we’ll come back, finally at the end tonight to a passage in the Mosaic Law and stay pretty much in the Mosaic Law as we go from night to night. Tonight we’re just getting some background on the nature of law. First, the basis; the same basis we saw this morning for philosophy in Athens. Job 38:2-7; Job has a problem; he has experienced the answers of counselors of many different schools and then God finally intervenes and says, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? [3] Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer you Me. [4] Where we you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have understanding. [5] Who has laid the measures thereof, if you know? Or who has stretched the line upon it? [6] Whereupon are its foundations fastened? Who laid its cornerstone thereof,” God is challenging Job’s finiteness, He’s saying Job, you don’t have the capacity to generate law, you’re finite and limited, there’s not enough experience. And then there’s another problem why man needs God’s law, and that’s given in Psalm 14, the next book after Job.

In Psalm 14 David looks out on paganism and he makes certain remarks about it; these add to Job’s remarks, so now we have two reasons why God’s law has to be the basis of our operation. First, we are finite, that means we are limited and limited men make very poor laws. In Psalm 14:1-3, “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. [2] The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek God. [3] They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no not one.” That’s the classic passage Paul uses in Romans 3 to teach total depravity.

So we have the second problem and that is man’s sinfulness. Now with those excellent qualifications, how can man generate law? He’s limited and he’s sinful. Those aren’t two things you cherish in your legislature. Well, the have been people who have insisted, yes, we are going to build law, and three theories have been structured down through history and these three theories pretty much exhaust the possible answer. One theory that was popular for a long time was the concept of natural law. This argued that I, with my finiteness and my sinfulness could look out upon what’s there and I’ll determine what ought to be. I look upon man’s nature, for example, I look in his heart and I see that man needs certain things and so I’ll legislate; after all man needs this, man needs that, man needs something else, that is, until someone comes along on the basis of Scripture and says what was that I heard man needs, or man wants. How do you determine what man needs from what man wants? The sinful heart is desperately wicked and it’s deceitful. Might I, therefore, as a sinful creature think I need something when in fact only I want something. I need an objective observer outside of myself to cut the line between needs and wants.

And so this is an argument why natural law never worked, never will work. The man in the west who understood natural law correctly was the Marquis de Sade, the pornographer, the father of all pornography and he simply summed it up by saying, “what is, is right,” the most famous is that the male is stronger than the female so that gives the male the right to do with the female what he wishes to do. Very simple but deadly conclusion. And you can’t stop Marquis de Sade if you’re not a Bible-believing Christian. Marquis de Sade simply takes the non-Christian premise to its logical conclusion and I dare anyone, on a non-Christian basis, to answer the Marquis de Sade. Defend the fact that men ought not to do anything they want to do with the woman on a non Biblical basis. Try it sometime, just as an exercise and see how far you can get with it.

Now other men, men like Hume, who came out with the social good theory. That is one basis of law. What is good for the corporate structure, what is good for the many, we go for the good. Communism follows this; what the Marxist bureaucrats plan to be good for society, that will be law. The problem is, without a Joseph how do you know what’s going to be good.

And then the third one cranked out by a man by the name of Hobbs, was what we call the positivist view of law. The positivist view of law simply says there is no criteria of law; law is the criteria. If Adolph Hitler wants to make law to his S.S. soldiers to crush all Jews in Germany, and fry them in the gas chambers, then by definition it’s right because there is no higher standard above the law; there is no law above the law, the law is the law. And so whatever you make as law is law and that is what is right and what is wrong.

So you have all the answers; on the non-Christian side they all come from man who is limited and he’s sinful. From the biblical side they come from God. Let’s look at some of God’s answers; let’s turn to Isaiah 41:21, God challenges the right of men to make law, in particular He’s challenging the right of the pagan gods and this is a classic passage to show the capabilities of a lawmaker. God says there are certain prerequisites to the generation of law that you must have to qualify, and He’s asking whether anyone outside of Himself possesses these qualifications. “Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, says the King of Jacob. [22] Let them bring forth and show us what shall happen;” if you think you’re a god, you’re capable of making laws, then show us the future, that’s what God’s saying; demonstrate your capacity of legislation, “show us the former things, what they be,” in other words, go into the past, show us that, “that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things to come. [23] Show us the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods,” let’s see what you can do by prediction, let’s see, government planner or legislator, who operates on the humanist base, not all do, but those do operate on the humanist base God would say I want to see that you are gods, I want to see your capacities, demonstrate them for me by a simple test…prediction of the future. And if you can’t predict the future, then you are no omniscient, then don’t come to Me that you are qualified to make law. Law-making in Scripture is a sacred act.

Deuteronomy 4:7-8, all law is basically holy, holy for the God who makes it. God gave the Mosaic treaty into history and it was given as a testimony of the best piece of legislation the world had ever seen. And so in Deuteronomy 4:7-8 this challenge to all nations outside of Israel is given. “For what nation is there so great, who has God so near unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon Him for? [8] And what nation is there so great that, that has statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I have set before you this day?” That’s God’s challenge, show me legislation that is better than Mine. I, He says, am the standard of all legislation. How dare the finite creature think he can generate legislation apart from Me and My Word.

Let’s look at the concept of law. We’ve said that the basis of law has to be in God, not in man, for two reasons. Man is limited and man is sinful; those two reasons alone disqualify all men and all groups of men from generation of legislation. Now that’s not to say we can’t have houses that legislate, we’ll get into that. What we’re talking about is the original ground ideas that come down. For example, the decision in 1973 over what is life. Is the fetus living or not and is there some in-between. What about this? And the Supreme Court made a decision, that was a religious act. That was declaring a religious value. And the court got caught because it didn’t want to go back to the Scriptures but yet it couldn’t do anything without the Scriptures, so it had a make-do definition; life is defined as to what is socially meaningful. So if you come out with purple skin or something, from Mars, you’re just not socially meaningful, so let’s eliminate you. Jews weren’t considered socially meaningful in 1935 in Germany. So let’s eliminate you. The Supreme Court is engaged in a very, very serious breech at this point.

Now, when we come to the Law of Moses we want to respect certain things about it. We’re not under Moses’ law but there are principles of his law that carry over to the Christian life. All we’re interested in tonight is just one simple thing. All we’re doing tonight is getting an idea in our mind what is law, what’s it for, what’s its basis, what’s it supposed to do. It’s a tool to subdue the earth with, in every area, in your home, on the job, in school, in society, wherever we go, law is a tool we ought to use as Christians. We ought to be the people of the law and that will make us strong; not legalists, but people of the law who insist that human relationships are controlled by standards other than emotion… standards other than somebody’s opinion. That’s what we mean, bringing law into every area of life.

In the book of Moses we have what we call a suzerainty vassal treaty. Now this is a treaty made between a great king; the great king would make a treaty with these lesser kings. It’s said in today’s world of international law, these neutral aid packs which a great power would make treaties with lesser powers. We have access to treaties like that, fortunately for our study, a fascinating study, it’s been discovered in the last fifteen years, great work has been done in this. All of a sudden we discover in archeology suzerainty vassal treaties. You say so what; what’s that do for me as a Christian? What it does for us as Christians is tell us what we have said all along, the books of Moses are whole; they’re not pieces pasted together from this source and that source. These are entire impact documents written in exactly the legal format we’d expect in Ancient Near Eastern law. And the books of Moses, therefore, and particularly the book of Deuteronomy, when God says do this, don’t do this, do this and don’t do this, we now understand, it’s not like the code of Hammurabi; it’s not a law code as such, it’s a treaty.

What’s the difference between a law code and a treaty? It’s simple. A treaty is controlling the relationship of personal being; it’s initiated because of this particular party and that particular party. It’s a contract, and so the idea of law is very contractual in Scripture. And the latest findings of the suzerainty vassal parallels with the Old Testament law substantiates this to a T, that it’s not the case of God saying do this and don’t do this, and do this. He’s saying do this because of your contractual relationship with Me. In other words, behind the law is a personal relationship. Now we ought to back off right at this point and say hey, wait a minute, that means something doesn’t it. Look, if God sits down with you and enters into a personal relationship with you, and with me, and He thinks it’s necessary to define that relationship with law, how much more ought we to define our relationship with each other lawfully? You see the argument from the greater to the lesser. God considers it absolutely necessary to define His relationship with us and therefore human relationships ought to be defined. That’s what’s wrong with the couples that live with one another and don’t get married. They refuse the responsibility of defining a relationship. They don’t want the responsibility, they don’t want to be hemmed in with some agreement. Exactly! They’re irresponsible, they want chance to play rather than law to play. And the result is they finally get hurt, or ironically, most of them finally wind up getting married.

So the point is that men crave the same order that they have in their relationship with God. The whole book of Deuteronomy, you can put your hand in chapter one and put your other hand in chapter 34 and hold it in your hand, that is one intact contract between God and man. And the interesting thing is, as Dr. Albright of Princeton University said: Isn’t it an amazing fact of history that only one nation on earth made contracts with their God. There were contracts known in the other countries but only one country made contacts with its God. [can’t understand words] God sign on the dotted line, right here. And God wanted them to sign on the dotted line, right there. All things were done decently and in order; all things were done lawfully.

Let’s look at another element of this treaty idea and what law is. We know from these documents, by studying them, if you want to see what these documents are, just curiosity, there’s a book in the Tech library, we have it in our church library, it’s called Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Text and you can look up there and you’ll see the treaties that are made; look under the Assyrian treaties and you’ll find one and you’ll see it written right in there. Also look at some of the law codes too, it’ll give you an appreciation.

All of these treaties had two copies when they were made. Here’s the great king, the great power, and here was the vassal king; one copy of the treaty, written in cuneiform, would be deposited with this man, the other treaty would be deposited with this man. Obviously each required a copy of the contract. That’s all it’s saying, very simple to understand. But now look what this does to understanding the Scripture. How many tablets did God have on Mount Sinai? Two, not one, and over the years Christians have always had the idea that five commandments were on one and five commandments on the other. Well, that’s not said in the Scriptures, we’ve just inferred that. Now all of a sudden it dawns on us why there were two; one was God’s copy, one was Israel’s copy. God put His copy in His temple, Israel put their copy in their temple. And the temples in this case were the same. And so the deposit of the two tablets in the ark show the witness of the Law. And by the way, that concerns what we started tonight with, that law is religious, because the laws in the ancient world were deposited in the temples. The law was kept in the temple, showing its inherently religious nature. Those people in those days were very sensitive to the religious overtones of law.

Now, here is a quotation from an actual Akkadian treaty between a king by the name of Suppilulimas and [sounds like: Kur ti waza]. in Mitanni Land, this is not a fairy story, this the way the cuneiform reads so here’s an abbreviated… I want you to see it from this angle, then we’ll go through some passages of Scripture in the Mosaic Law to see if all of a sudden now, when you read these pieces of law in the Old Testament, lights don’t turn on; ah, now I see what’s going on here in the Old Testament.

“In Mitanni land a duplicate copy of this treaty has been deposited before [sounds like: Tess up], the lord of the temple of [sounds like: Nah had].” Notice again the code is placed in a religious position. “At regular intervals, all parties shall read it in the presence of the King of Mitanni land and in the presence of the sons at Hurri country; whoever will remove this tablet before [sounds like: Pess eth] and put it in a hidden place, or if he breaks it, or cause anyone else to change the wording of the tablet, at the conclusion of this treaty we have called the gods to assemble and the gods of the contracting parties to be present to listen and to serve as witnesses.”

Several things. The law was deposited in the temple. The law had to be read periodically that everyone be clear on the contract. That’s something I’ll have to add to my marriage counseling product; every couple will be required to come back here and reread the contract every seven years; let’s do that. Another thing is that the gods are witnesses of the contract. And the fourth thing, no one can tamper with the letters, it is an infallible doctrine in that sense. You don’t tamper with the letters because you change the law.

Now let’s look at some interesting verses and parallels of the Scripture. Turn first to Deuteronomy 4:2, look what God tells Moses. After the document is generated in Deuteronomy 4:2, lo and behold, what do we read: “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish anything from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.” Look at that, exact parallel with the legislation of his day. We understand now what that’s talking about; that’s talking about the fact that this is a legal text, a document. In other words, this text is not just a textbook; that is the law of God that shines upon us as a testimony. It is on deposit before His holy temple and this acts as a witness against all of us before Him. That’s the importance of the Scripture, and no one dare tamper with the Scriptures in this way.

Turn to Deuteronomy 10:1, here are the two tablets that God had Moses cut out, and in verse 2,, “I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which you broke, and they shall be brought into the ark.” Remember what Moses did when he came down the mountain, to the two tablets? He broke them. Now most people think Moses as just angry at the people sinning. Oh no, no-no, you’ve got it all wrong. Moses was angry but that wasn’t the reason he broke the tablets. The reason he broke the tablets was because the people had violated the law and the tables then collapsed; the contract between God and Israel had collapsed at that point. And so he literally, physically, smashed the tablets and terminated the treaty. He tore up the contract, that’s what he was doing. And now God renews the contract. This is an act of grace, lest it be said there’s no grace under the law. God graciously rewrote the contract.

Turn to Deuteronomy 12:32, again thinking in terms of the secular treaties that had to be preserved intact, look at verse 32. “Whatsoever thing I command you, observe to do it; thou shalt not add thereof, nor diminish from it.” Same thing isn’t it? Don’t tamper with the text. You say well, that’s all so very nice, but you know, that’s all Old Testament. Turn to the last few verses of Revelation; Revelation 22:18, the angel tells the apostle John, “For I testify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; [19] And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his portion out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” The New Testament is also looked upon as a legal doctrine; it’s the doctrine of the new covenant, or the new contract, and it shall not be tampered with. So God puts a curse on those who would tamper with his text. Do you see from this how serious it is to misrepresent the text of God’s Word? It is to defile it. And that’s why the Word of God has to be handled gingerly; it is a legal document that stands shining back at us; it’s God’s testimony against us. God wrote it.

All right, having seen that phase of the parallel, the idea that the treaty is intact, it has to be protected, let’s go to another parallel between the ancient treaties in the Bible. Deuteronomy 31; notice too, we’ll notice this in further evenings, that the Law was written to the males, not to the women. It was addressed to the men; it was the men’s responsibility to carry the law out; not the woman’s responsibility, the man’s. We saw that last week. God held Moses responsible, not Zipporah, for not circumcising his son. Frankly, as a man that bothers me because what that’s arguing, that Moses/Zipporah incident is arguing is that if my wife’s out of it I can’t use that as an excuse why my home doesn’t run right; I have to take the leadership blame for it. And so I am charged to run my home, regardless of whether my wife likes it or not; whether she agrees with the Scripture or not, I bear that responsibility; it’s not a pleasant responsibility to bear. It’s a very heavy one and Moses did not bear it and that’s why God met him at the motel door and was going to kill him. God had a very blunt way of talking to Moses.

Deuteronomy 31:9, “And Moses wrote this law,” now look what he did with it, again think in terms… don’t get too pious about this or too religious. Just think of it in terms of every day statute law. “Moses wrote this law,” this contract, this treaty, “and he delivered it to “whom? “ the priests,” see the sacredness of law, “he delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD,” notice it’s called “the ark of the covenant,” look at that, the very word “ark” means “ark of the contract,” the “ark of the contract. [10] And Moses commanded them,” notice this in verse 10, periodic reading, just as that treaty in Mitanni land, “At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, [11] When all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy God in the place that He shall choose, thou shalt read this contract [law] before all Israel in their hearing.” Look at that. The law was not only there but it had to be studied, periodically by every citizen in the land.

Notice, verse 12, “Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger,” that was traveling businessmen from Assyria, Egypt, and the other countries; even if the guy was on a business trip in that seventh year they said hold it, hold it! You guys, you’re foreigners, I don’t care if your visa expires right now, you come to Jerusalem. You too are going to hear the law. And so, “the stranger that is within thy gates,” it’s “within thy cities, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and that they may respect [fear] the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law; [13] And that their children, who have not known anything, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God,” now look at that. Notice what this is saying. The law transmits wisdom from generation to generation. That’s one of the features of law; it is the deposit of the community’s wisdom. Every group of children, like it says, verse 13, the children “who have not known anything,” children don’t know anything; they have to inherit some sort of capital assets from the past, from their parents. It’s got to come down to them from some place; how is it passed? How is man to subdue the earth unto the next generation? By enscripturating it and passing it on, transmitting it in the legal tradition. And so their children will “learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as you live in the land to which you go [over the Jordan to possess it].” Notice this, the law operated as long as they were in the land. Notice too in verse 12, everyone including children had to be trained in the law and the result and the purpose of was respect for the authority of God Himself.

Let’s look what other techniques were used in ancient Israel. Look at Deuteronomy 31:19, “Now, therefore, write this song for you, and teach it to the children of Israel; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel.” Now there is a teaching tactic. God used music to teach children doctrine and law. Maybe they found it hard to memorize, just like we find verses hard to memorize, it’s a lot easier to memorize with music. And so here was a tactic. The “song,” the hymnology of the nation Israel, and this sounds so out of place, but the hymnology and the music was centered in the legal community. Can you imagine singing about the law; Israel did. That’s what it’s saying.

Deuteronomy 31;24, “And it came to pass, when Moses made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished,” verse 26, “Take this book of the law, and put it in the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be for a witness against thee.” Now look at the candid admission in verse 27, why do we need law? “For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the LORD; and how much more after my death.” So he’s pretty candid as to why we need law.

Now Deuteronomy 32, the entire chapter is a song. If you have a modern translation it should be indented, and written in poetic form and it’s a complete indictment, it’s an application, and it turns out upon recent analysis that the way Deuteronomy 32 is written turns into another amazing parallel. If you take the outline of Deuteronomy 32 and you take the outline of a lawsuit proceeding unto international law in the times of Israel, the two fit like a hand in a glove. And what this song is, it’s structured in a lawsuit format. For example, Deuteronomy 32:1-2, it’s the call to witnesses. “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.” The same cry of Isaiah, when Isaiah brings lawsuits against the nation. Notice the accusation in verse 5, “They have corrupted themselves… they are a crooked generation.” And then the specific indictments, verse 15, “Jeshurun grew fat,” verse 16, “they provoked Him to jealousy [with strange gods]” and so on and so on and so on. It’s one series of indictments after another.

So we’ll continue with the Mosaic Law in detail in ensuing evenings and we want to conclude tonight by showing you the power of the law as it was applied in history as a sort of exhortation; how we can again, as Christians, become powerful. Always today we hear well why is it that we’ve got so many Christians and yet we don’t have power? It seems there’s something missing; we’ve got so many people born again, we’ve got a percentage of people born again far more today than we ever had before, percentage wise, in the history of the country. Why is it that so many people, born again, can’t exercise more influence on the system. And the answer is because the people in previous generations exercised their influence at a different point than we are. Let’s look at it.

We’ll start out, just briefly summarize here, the testimony of what makes strong people. The Mosaic Law came before Hammurabi’s Code, that is by the revised chronology which you can see for yourself in the third framework pamphlet. It’s not true that Moses borrowed this legislation; it was given as a basis from God for all future legislation. Therefore, the archetype of legislation we as believers can safely say rests not with Hammurabi, it rests with Moses in particular, Moses’ God. And so it was that down through history the ancient nations would borrow bits and pieces of the Mosaic Law, until when the Christians went into the Roman Empire and began to teach both Old and New Testaments, they influenced Roman law until the Justinian code of 560 AD. When the Emperor Justinian codified Roman legislation, law students are often fond of saying that this was codified Roman law. But that’s not true. It was codified Roman law under Christian influence. And so the code of Justinian preserved the Christian influence up until the 6^th century is a testimony to that; the Justinian code became the model for much legislation after its kind.

Now another source of law in the West that made the West strong is what is called common law. Now here legal historians, because of their humanism, love to point out that common law came out of pagan court tradition, that it came out of the northern European areas, [can’t understand words] and so on, this kind of thing. That’s not really true, and here’s an example of a Harvard law professor who claims that he is giving us Alfred the Great’s 9^th century English pagan law, and he identifies it as [can’t understand word]. Now you all have at least read your bibles, and this is shocking. This man is a Harvard professor and he can make this mistake of saying that this represents common law from pagan tradition. Here’s quote from Alfred the Great’s code: This professor writes, “Here are a few characteristic laws included by Alfred in the code which he drew up on the basis of old customs and laws of the earlier Saxon pagans.” Quote now, “‘if anyone smite his neighbor with a stone or with his fist but nevertheless can go out with a staff, let him get a physician, and do his work as long as he can, as himself cannot. If an ox gore a man or a woman so that they die, let it be stoned and let not its flesh be eaten. The owner shall not be liable if the ox would want to push with its horns for two or three days before…’” etc. etc. etc. That’s a direct quote out of Leviticus.

[Exodus 21:18-19, “And if men strive together, and one smite another with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not, but keeps his bed; [19] If he rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be clear; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed;” Exodus 21: 28-29, “If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die; then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be clear. [29] But if the ox were accustomed to push with his horn in time past….”]

Now what’s this jazz about picking up common law out of pagan courts. What has happened, is out legal historians and all their humanism fail to see something. Christians were evangelizing Europe, friend, before 900 AD, and there was Christian influence spread throughout the continent, and so when we have common law develop, that is a product of Christianity and biblical law.

Now there’s another thing, another source in evidence why common law and why much of the legal tradition has come about in the Bible through another channel, and again this is a massive failure on the part of our legal historians to recognize this, and that is the fact of the Jewish people of Europe. Here’s one man, one of the historians writes, this is during the Middle Ages, “In the midst of almost universal personal subjugation the Jews alone were politically free. In the midst of turbulence and war the Jews alone could travel in comparative safety; they could carry valuable merchandise over long distances. When practically every man owed to his superior services and dues that constituted sacrifice of 15-50% of their income producing time, the Jews paid taxes but a tiny fraction of their income. The Jews organized self-governing communities, developed super communal institutions, enacted ordinances on a national scale, and employed a most efficient and most remarkable form of group organization,” etc. etc. etc. Who was the genius behind it? One man by the name of Maimonides, he codified Jewish applications of Biblical law, and in Maimonides day, in 1250, thereabouts, just after his death, his compendium of biblical law was known all over Europe. So beware, when you read about common law just kind of developed by itself, with no guidance. Baloney! It had at leas two inputs from Scripture. It had the Christian missionary influence, and it had the Jewish influence.

Well now, let’s come to our own country and see what used to make our country great. Our country was, obviously the legal tradition was set in motion by the Puritans. How many of you probably have sat as I have in classroom after classroom and heard the Puritans ridiculed; oh, those old religious fuddy-duds, they got into Massachusetts and you know they came here seeking religious freedom, they wouldn’t let anybody else have their freedom, bigots. And so the onus is always put against the Puritans. Now let me tell you something. The reason why people hate the Puritans is because they’re great people. Little petty people always malign big people. And petty people, particularly on college faculties, love to make it their hobby of maligning these great people who established law for you and for me.

Here is an excerpt, a rare document found recently in the bowels of Harvard University, in the library and somebody dug it up and saved it, fortunately, and this is what I thought was happening back then. You see, this is what they don’t understand; the Puritans weren’t trying to cram Christ down everyone’s throat. That wasn’t their point. Listen to this; here is John Cotton, this is the man, the Puritan minister, who came to Massachusetts Bay Colony and sought to design the legislation after the Law of Moses. Now he wasn’t trying to jam Christ down someone’s throat; he was just trying to design wise legislation for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Here’s the introduction to his abstract of the Laws of New England. “This model,” this is the publisher writing this, “This model far surpasses all the municipal laws and statues of any Gentile nation incorporation under the corpus heaven,” rather humble comment; “This abstract may serve for this use principally to show the complete sufficiency…” look at this, can you imagine a lawyer writing this today, and this is a man that was promulgated the law, this code of law was “to show the complete sufficiency of the Word of God alone to direct His people in judgment of all causes, both civil and criminal. But the truth is, both they and we and other Gentile nations are loathe to be persuaded to lay aside our earthly forms of government to submit to the government of the wise Christ.”

And there follows this abstract in ten sections, dealing with magistrates, dealing with the right of inheritance, dealing with commerce, dealing with trespasses. We’re not saying in every part of this law is right, there are some things here he really misinterpreted. For example, “Rebellious children, whether they continue in riot or drunkenness after due correction from their parents, or whether they curse or smite their parents, shall be put to death.” That was one of the Puritan laws in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Now where did they get it? John Cotton tacked on the end of this line, Exodus 21:15-17; Leviticus 20:9, now that’s what your critics don’t like. They don’t like biblically based law. It’s not that they... the occurrence of bigots yet, they had some bigotry to them, but that’s not the real reason people hate Puritans. People hate Puritans because they insisted that the legislation be designed biblically.

Listen to this one. “Murder, which is a willful manslaughter and not in man’s just defense, nor casually committed, but out of hatred of cruelty, to be punished with death.” Exodus 21:12-13; Numbers 35, Genesis 9:6. “The forcing of a maid or a rape, is not to be punished with death by God’s law but one with fine of penalty to the father of the maid, with marriage of the maid defiled if she and her father consent, with corporal punishment of stripes for his wrong, as a real slander, and it is worse to make a whore than to say one is a whore,” and it goes on and it describes that situation. And you can see, for those of you who have read the Mosaic Law, what were they doing in Massachusetts Bay Colony but simply taking the Mosaic principles to control their society.

Listen to the one on foreign policy. “In case any of our people should do wrong to any of another nation,” now this is all founding American fathers, how often do you hear this one in school? “In case of any of our people should do wrong to people of any other nation, upon complaint made to our Governor, or some other of the counsel or assistants, the fact is diligently to be inquired into, and being found to be true, restitution shall be made of the goods of offenders, as the case shall require, according to the quality of the crime,” in other words, international restitution would occur if anybody in that colony shortchanged someone from another country. However, “in the case the people of another nation have done any important wrong to any of ours, right is first to be demanded of the Governor of that people, and justice upon the malefactors, which, if it be granted and performed, then no breech of peace is to follow,” Deuteronomy 20:10-11; 2 Samuel 20:18-19. “If right and justice be denied and it will not stand with the honor of God and the safety of our nation is wrongly passed over, then war is to be undertaken and announced; some ministers to be sent forth to go along with the army for their instruction and encouragement.” Deuteronomy 20:2-4. And so on and so on.

Now that’s why your people hate the Puritans, because they were trying to subdue the law with the Word of God. Now I submit to you the reason why the Puritans were such strong Christians is because they took the area of law and they demanded that the law submit to the law of God and it was precisely because they were experts… sure, the Puritan male… why was the Puritan male who was elected to the House of Congress and to the various state governments so articulate on the floor? He knew his parliamentary procedure. Why? Because in their church meeting it was all done by law and due process. And so naturally the man trained in his own church, when he got out into the community what would he do? Where had he learned to be a man? Where had he learned to work with people? In a lawful system. So what would the Puritan do when he was called upon to be elected to the city council? Immediately, whether there were non-Christian, Christians or Hottentots, it didn’t make any difference, the law was going to be structured on biblical grounds, period. That’s what is so hatful and abominable in the eyes of critics of the Puritans.

All right, we’re going to conclude with just one verse in Genesis 9:26. Here’s the strength of the man; the man under Law. We have said that the western law that has made the West great was a product of the Scripture. It was not a product of pagan courts of Europe. What made western man great was because he relied upon the products of the Jews, the Law. What is the prophecy in Genesis 9:26-27? “Blessed be the LORD God of Shem;” that’s the Semitic peoples, including the Jews, “and Canaan shall be his servant. [27] God shall enlarge Japheth,” that’s most of us here tonight, most of us are Indo-European stock, “God shall enlarge Japheth,” it means He prospers Japheth, “and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.” What does it mean to “dwell in the tents of Shem?” To dwell in his framework, to use Shem’s law. That’s what God gave the Semitic races to the human race for, to act as His mediators and to give us the Law. How do we subdue the earth? With the Law. And so in ensuing Sundays we’ll be studying how the Christian male subdues by application of the Law.