Clough Manhood Series Lesson 19

Law: Violence and Law Enforcement; Unjust violence

Of the doctrine of manhood found in Scripture it’s the fourth time we’ve gone back to the law to show the framework in which the male believer functioned in the Old Testament, and which therefore became the model that was at least commonly understood in New Testament times for remember always that the people of the New Testament were born with this culture. This is the culture they were born with, they lived with, and this is the culture that they used to understand the claims of Christ in.

Now we’ve said so far several things about the law, again this is not an exposition of the Law but just as we’ve gone through the law that the law is the revelation of the will of God. That’s a very simple definition of the law: the revelation of the will of God. It’s one of the two means for subduing the earth; grace is the other. Law gives the content, grace enablement, and together they are both necessary to carry out God’s will. Last week we spent time on how the Scriptures, the law, covered the details of taking care of one’s body and it was those details, the details of no bodily mutilation, after becoming aware of the value standard; sanitation to guard physical health; nutrition, proper diet, exercise and so on. It was all of those things in the background that was meant when Paul said take care of your body because “you are not your own, you are bought with a price, glorify God in your body.” Granted, Paul meant a lot more than those things; those things are just the natural things, Paul meant a lot more than that but at least it included that in the basic cultural understanding.

We had one feedback card handed in, it’s a good one. Some of the feed back cards that have been handed in on the evening service, I haven’t forgotten, they’re still there but I’m trying to sort them out so I’ll answer them as I go through the pertinent material, otherwise we’re going to be hopping back and forth, but this one was pertinent to exactly this point. In light of your teaching that bodily mutilation is prohibited, especially castration, and that the principles underlying that are (1) God wants to raise up a godly seed, and (2) God doesn’t want an attitude that we’ll do as we please with our own body, what would be the biblical view of vasectomies, and for that matter, tubal ligations? The answer to that is that the use of vasectomies and tubal ligations as a form of birth control, if they are used to prohibit children period, then of course we’d have to raise the Scriptural principle that this is displeasing to God. But in a situation where obviously this kind of permanent birth control is needed because of the health of the people involved, or because the family has been raised and so on, then I see no Scriptural objection to those forms of permanent birth control. They’re not to be entered into lightly but I do not see any strict prohibition by applying the New Testament codes to our present time. The principle, again, in the Old Testament against bodily mutilation was destruction of the raising up of the godly seed. Conceivably one could argue that with permanent sterilization you run the risk, if your family is wiped out, of never being able to start again, and that is a risk but basically there has never been, that I know of, in most of the discussions going on today, an absolute prohibition against permanent forms of birth control like tubal ligation and vasectomy.

Today we’re going to come to a second part of the law, and this will be entitled: The value of life versus violence, violence being, violence obviously to life. And the Scriptures have a lot to say about violence and life; a lot is being said today in the media, TV and so on, about violence. In fact, recently the PTA nationally has put considerable pressure upon all three major networks to decrease the amount of violence during certain hours of programming. And so people are concerned with violence. And the man who is to be the spiritual leader should also be concerned with violence; to properly define what is violence and what is not violence, what is just violence and what is not violence. These things the man must have if indeed he is to be a leader.

So we’ll start off by making a very important distinction. The Bible is not against all violence; the Bible is against only unjust violence. God Himself is violent; God is violent when He judges, when He interferes in history. The prelude in the morning service, when the choir sang from Handel’s Israel and Egypt was taken from one of the most violent chapters of all Scripture, Exodus 15. It’s a sheer scene of blood and violence as the people of the Jews gather along the edge of the Red Sea and they see literally the pieces of the Egyptian bodies floating in the water and they praise God for the violence; they thank God for the violence. Violence is the cause or praise and rejoicing. So there are forms of violence that are praiseworthy, and so in all the talk about violence today the Christian, the Bible-believing Christian who has his categories, can say to his humanist sentimentalist friends, no, we are against some forms of violence but not others. We are not against all forms of violence; if we were, then we’d prohibit the cross of Christ. Isn’t the cross of Christ the epitome of violence in history? Of course it is and God ordained the cross, the utmost of violence to Himself for His own purposes. So the Christian cannot condemn violence without qualification. We condemn only unjust violence.

Now let’s look at some of the forms of just violence; these are the forms of violence that are permitted in Scripture, that, in fact, are commanded in Scripture. And so we have to look at these and understand when our modern conversation turns to the topic of violence. There were five major means of punishing in the Old Testament, punishing those who had violated the law. All five of these means are means of violence and they are commanded means of violence. They are ordained violence for the suppression of evil. We live in a fallen universe and the only way evil can be contained is violent counterattack, and therefore there are five systems, five ways of waging just violence against evil.

The first one is capital punishment. Turn to Exodus 21:12; we turn to Exodus 21:12 because it is very nearby the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” And therefore this is a verse that shows you the context of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Moses wrote both of them and Moses was a very educated man and he had the IQ at least of you and of me. And that means that Moses is not going to write a deliberate contradiction between his command, “Thou shalt not kill” and his command for capital execution. So in verse 12, “He that smites a man so that he die, shall surely be put to death.” Not it can’t be much plainer than that that capital punishment was ordained by the very person who wrote down God’s commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” And therefore in the immediate context gives the proper definition and qualification for the command, “Thou shalt not kill.”

The command, “Thou shalt not kill” is a command that values human life under God. Now understand something; we’ve gone through this in the morning service, we’ve gone through it somewhat in the evening service and we will go through this again and again because this is the fundamental place where we as believers have the Creator/creature distinction. Here is life; creature life. That creature life is under God, the Creator, and therefore God defines its value. And the life does not have value in itself; we’re not Albert Schweitzer’s who believe in the inherent sanctity of life. We are not like the Indian farmers who caused the starvation of their country as they harvest the crops they allow the insects to eat 50% of the crop from the field before it is served to human beings because they do not want to kill the insects that are eating the food. And then we cry that we have somehow a problem of overpopulation and starvation brought about by men’s religious foolishness, not by agricultural problems. And so that is not the value of life that we are talking about. We are talking about value that is derivative, completely dependent in every way. If God said tomorrow, “Thou shalt kill,” then thou shalt kill would be right and not killing would be wrong. That’s what we mean when we say all values are contingent hanging on and dependent completely upon God’s character and His essence.

Now God says that we shall not kill the life, but God also has the right to tell us when to take the life and this is the origin or capital punishment in Genesis 9:6 and it is also amplified again in Romans 13. So we have the Old Testament and we have it reiterated again in the New Testament. The Bible is for capital punishment, not without mercy, not without careful justice, not without very, very careful administration, but the Bible is for capital punishment. You say well, I think that’s very primitive. You do? On what basis do you think that’s primitive? Do you have a higher value than God? That’s what, in fact, you’re saying, that your humanist values, sitting finitely as you do, you can sit and contemplate the universe and say I have come up, all by myself, with a value system higher than that of the God of the Scripture. Now that’s a very arrogant claim; you ought to be able to justify that claim by appeal to some standard that seems obvious to people.

Well, capital punishment is given in the Scriptures because of the value of life. It can be argued that those who are against capital punishment actually despise life because they despise the life of the victim. In other words, the victim’s life is worth nothing and therefore since the victim’s life is worth nothing, there need not be any capital punishment. That’s also a way of attacking capital punishment and I think that would be the logically consistent way of attacking capital punishment; we are against capital punishment simply because the life of the victim is immaterial. Capital punishment is a memorial to the life of the person whose blood was shed. That’s the purpose of capital punishment; it is justice, not in an absolute sense, but it is a form of a witness and a testimony. Executions in the Old Testament were conducted publicly; the people gathered around and had to watch the horror of an execution. It’s not necessarily wrong to have an execution, for example, on public TV; it might be good. It might deter crime. We’ll see that the deterrent argument is valid. That’s one form of just violence that God permits, capital punishment.

A second form of just violence is whipping or scourging, Deuteronomy 25:2. This was a second form of punishment for lawbreakers: whipping. “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 seem vile unto thee.” Now notice in verse the qualification and limit to the violence. God ordains violence but He ordains the violence with qualifications. It’s not unlimited violence to just literally beat the pulp out of an individual. It says you shall beat him and never, no matter what the sentence is, you cannot exceed the forty stripes. So you see, God authorizes violence but limited violence; limited and bounded by His laws. Whipping then, a second form of just violence.

You begin to say these are all primitive forms of justice. No they’re not, they’re realistic forms of justice because we’re dealing with evil and evil is powerful so you have to use powerful means to eradicate it.

The third system of violence is violence to property by restitution, Exodus 22. In Exodus 22 there’s an entire section, in fact, the first 15 verses of Exodus 22 deal with violence to property. Someone has stolen something, and so the government authorizes just violent condemnation and confiscation of their property. This is the Old Testament way, largely, of handling crimes of theft. Exodus 22:1, “If a man steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.” Notice the restitution is not one to one. Why is restitution not one to one? Several principles; number one, someone steals an ox, that ox could have been used before for something, the sheep could have been used, say for shearing, and not only was the sheep stolen but the use of the sheep was stolen, and that’s why you have multiple restitution in the Old Testament. It is not simple one to one restitution. An example today would be if someone steals a car, he has to give the car and say 1.5 cars back or the equivalent in cash and the reason because during the time your car was stolen you had to pay money for bus transportation, you inconvenienced other people and so therefore there’s a cost beyond the cost of the inherent piece of property stolen. So thus restitution in Scripture is not one to one, it’s more than one to one.

So restitution, you can go on, Exodus 22:5, “If a man shall cause a field or vineyard to be eaten,” and so on, it’s all talking about this, this problem of restitution. You can go on and quote parallel passages of Scripture. Restitution is considered as part of enforcement against crimes in the Scripture. Now in our law, in our process today, we distinguish between what is a civil problem and what is a criminal problem, what is sometimes called a tort or a crime and we have this distinction. Notice the Mosaic Law makes no distinction. It is all criminal; there is no such thing in Mosaic legislation as civil lawsuits. Today you have to sue someone to get back damages. But in the Old Testament if someone damaged there wouldn’t necessarily be a suit, the state would prosecute it; it would be prosecuted as a crime. It’s not a civil issue, it’s a criminal issue; there’s no distinction. We make, in our justice, a distinction between crimes brought against the individual and crimes that are considered public and brought against the State. The Bible does not make the distinction. All crimes are against God, and that’s the unifying factor and therefore there is no distinction between a crime, so-called against an individual and a crime so-called against the state. All crimes are the same brand, they all are against God Himself. So restitution was the means, the violent confiscation of property by the state for the victim.

A fourth system of violence and just violence of curtailing evil was slavery. Leviticus 25:39-40, this was not so much against a crime, it was a way of getting out of poverty. But nevertheless, it’s a form of violence so we’ll talk about it; it’s violence in the sense we violently deprive someone of his freedoms. “If thy brother that dwells by thee has become poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant, [40] But as a hired servant,” now the point there is that the man who is poor can’t pay his debts. So what he does, he sells his freedom and he goes to work until that debt is paid off. You say we don’t have that today—ha! You been under a note recently. You see, economic bondage is considered slavery in Scripture; there is no distinction there either. And notice in verse 39-40 we have the limitations to this. The person to whom the man has enslaved himself cannot misuse the slave. Just because the man did have a setback in his life and just because he did sell his freedom to go to work for the individual, the individual cannot take advantage of him, because though a slave he is still a slave before God and his master is also before God and God takes care of both slave and master and they both must operate under the principles of the law of the Bible. So that’s the fourth way of violence, the violent deprivation of freedom through slavery.

And finally, the fifth system of violence is found in Deuteronomy 19:1-10, the cities of refuge. “When the LORD thy God has cut off the nations, whose land the LORD thy God gives thee, and thou succeedest them, and you dwell in their cities, and in their houses, [2] Thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the LORD thy God gives thee to possess. [3] Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the boundaries of the land, which the LORD thy God gives thee to inherit into three parts, that every slayer may flee to the city of refuge.” Now what is spoken of here is not murder but what we call manslaughter, accidental killing.

“And this is a case of the slayer,” verse 4, “which shall flee there, that he may live: whoso kills his neighbor unintentionally, whom he hated not in time past, [5] As when a man goes into the woods with his neighbor to hew wood, and his hand swings with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slips from the helve and lights upon his neighbor, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live.” Well, why is there a necessity for the slayer to flee? Why is manslaughter, actually you have to hole up in the city of refuge. Because of the avenger of blood, in verse 6, the avenger of blood may pursue the slayer.

This is an interesting sidelight on Old Testament justice; we’ll get back to it in a moment but the avenger of blood is a member, usually, of the family of the person killed, who’s job it is to see that the crime is punished…to see that the crime is punished. A family would stick together when they’d been ripped off, assaulted or beaten. And another member of that family would stand up, and this provision of the city of refuge is to prevent blood feuds from developing… to prevent blood feuds.

All right, so these are five ways of just violence. Now if you’ve listed these carefully: capital punishment, whipping, restitution, slavery and the cities of refuge. There’s one missing, conspicuously, and that’s jail. You notice there’s no jail here, there’s no imprisonment mentioned in the Mosaic Law. Now there was imprisonment in other nations; Egypt had a prison, that’s where Joseph was. So we know that the other nations of the Ancient East practiced imprisonment for crimes. Well why, then didn’t Israel practice imprisonment for crimes? Because they had a different standard of justice than we do; they viewed imprisonment as for animals and therefore they considered it beneath the dignity of man to be imprisoned. And thus imprisonment was only used for one thing in the Old Testament, to hold the person until trial. After that, imprisonment is never used under any part of the Mosaic Law Code.

Again, the reason, well we can go into some of the reasons: take for example putting someone in jail for theft of property. Now this is an interesting spectacle to behold. Here is somebody that’s ripped off somebody to the tune of five or six thousand dollars and in all of our vaunted humanistic desire to solve the criminal problem what do we do? We tax all the law abiding citizens and give him a food and subsidy program, a brilliant accomplishment that we do for the criminal. We give him food and lodging by subsidy and we tax the victim of the crime to pay for it. We consider this a higher form of justice than the Mosaic Law. But under the Mosaic Law the person who ripped somebody off was forced to pay the property back and two things would be accomplished in the restitution system. One thing that would be accomplished is that you would have generation of wealth instead of consumption of wealth. No longer would there be wasted food and lodging to finance the jail but that real goods would be produced because you’ve got another person really producing now with his hands; something’s happening wealth is being created because production is happening. So that’s the first thing; instead of decreasing wealth you increase wealth under a restitution system.

A second thing is that the person follows out a pattern of producing wealth instead of stealing wealth. And so you are rehabilitating the criminal. You’ve got him in an automatic rehabilitation program where he’s got to produce wealth. You say well, that’s Mosaic Law; no it isn’t, because in Ephesians 4 Paul, under apostolic authority, says the same thing to handle theft. He says “Let him that stole, steal no more,” and then not just stop, but “let him work with his hands” so that he has enough, not only to provide for himself so he doesn’t have to steal but in order to correct that kleptomaniac behavior pattern he has, let him work so he has enough to give to other people. And let the wealth flow instead of being to him from others be from him to others. And you correct with righteousness and godliness, evil. So you see, there are wisdom principles involved in the way the Scriptures handle things. Needless to say, capital punishment is also a good deterrent.

All right, that’s the forms of just violence, but now we have to ask another question: who did the enforcing? Turn to Deuteronomy 13; they have the department of public safety in Israel and they did the enforcing? Not at all—the men of the community did the enforcing. The men of the community, Deuteronomy 13:6-11. “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend who is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast now known, thou, nor thy fathers, [7] Namely the gods of the people who are round about you….” Verse 8, “Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto them; nor shall thine eye pity them, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal them. [9] But you shall surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. [10] And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die, because he has sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God,” now verse 9 is not talking about immediate execution there, that’s talking about trial; that presupposes the whole process of trial and so on.

But the point is, in verses 6-8 who’s doing the reporting of the crime? Who’s doing the arresting of the individual? It’s the men of the community. There is no special police force, it’s every citizen’s job to do that, and that’s the way the Old Testament approaches it. We’ve already turned to Deuteronomy 19, the avenger of blood, I’ve explained to you there, there again is where men of the family saw to it that justice was done.

But let’s turn to Deuteronomy 21 to see what happens when the men of the community can’t do anything. In Deuteronomy 21:1-9, we have a passage that shows us when the men of the community fail to enforce the law, then what happens. Either they are lazy and do not do it because (quote) “they don’t want to be involved,” or two, they try to solve the problem and can’t, they just can’t catch the guy that’s done it. All right, Deuteronomy 21:1-9 is a very interesting passage because it shows the result of the failure to punish crime means, in God’s sight, corporate guilt on the part of the community; a very interesting transformation. At first the guilt is individual, that is, only one person is guilty, namely the criminal. But if that criminal is not apprehended, by God’s law the community itself becomes guilty, and therefore the community itself must be cleansed. And it shows you, therefore, the community is clearly held responsible for enforcing law and executing evil.

“If one be found slain in the land which the LORD thy God gives thee to possess, lying in the field, and it be not known who has slain him, [2] Then the elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain; [3] And it shall be that the city which is next to the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer, which has not been worked with, and which has not borne the yoke, [4] And the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer into a wadi, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer’s neck there in the valley. [5] And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near; for them the LORD thy God has chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the LORD…” and so on, [6] “And all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man,” see, they’ve measured it, they’ve taken a mileage indicator and they say okay, there’s three cities here, the body was found closest to city Z, so city X, city Y, you’re not held accountable for this, city Z is held accountable because the crime occurred in the precinct of city Z. Then “all the elders of that city,” notice the men, “next to the slain shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley. [7] And they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. [8] Be merciful,” and the word here is kaphar, which is the Hebrew word to atone, “atone, O Jehovah, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and don’t lay innocent blood unto thy people of Israel’s charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them.” Notice, not the criminal, but “them,” the people of the community.

So this shows the importance of Scripture, that the citizens were held very seriously responsible for enforcing law in their community. Now today we have some remnants of this in our law codes in that if a policeman requires your help you must give aid to a policeman; if not, it’s a misdemeanor, and you ought to, there’s no excuse for citizens failing to be involved. If a policeman needs your car to chase somebody he ought to have your car. If he needs a tool, if he needs your help to pursue some one, then you are required by law to help him pursue the person. And you ought not to consider this an imposition upon you. And if somehow the policeman is your enemy, no-no, the policeman is only performing a function that you would be performing if you lived in Old Testament times. So understand that concept, it’s completely foreign, I know, to most Americans who live in our day. We’re so used to seeing police but every time you see a policeman tell yourself, if those guys weren’t there we’d have to be doing it. The sheriff’s posse is also an example of the same concept, that the men in law enforcement can [can’t understand word] people and use them to enforce the law.

All right, that’s one area of enforcing the law, we’ve covered the five forms of just violence, we’re still under the overall topic of just violence, we’ve seen its type, we’ve seen who carries it out, now we’re going to cover two special forms of violence, two special forms of carrying out just violence. And by the way, before I go any further, I want to read a passage to you under this problem of capital punishment; people say this is primitive and so on. It’s very interesting that in the New England Code of John Cotton, prepared in 1641, that I quoted some time ago, there’s a passage that says… this was the law for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in this country at one time. “Rebellious children, whether they continue in riot or drunkenness, after due correction from their parents, or whether they curse or smite their parents, will be put to death.” It’s interesting that in the history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony that was never exercised, and the conclusion is it was a deterrent. There was never a child executed under that provision of John Cotton’s law code; there never had to be. Shall we say they lived under the fear of God. So you see, powerful laws do have deterrent effects when they’re carried out.

Okay, that is the forms of just violence that we’ve studied, the ways in which it is carried out, now two areas of specialized just violence. One is self-defense, Exodus 22:2. Now there are people of meek, I should say weak mental attitudes who believe it’s a sin to defend yourself against violent crime. I hope you will see that that’s not the case. In some unusual cases that might be so… in some unusual cases that might be so. In a situation involving violent crime always remember your first line of defense is not necessarily a physical weapon but it’s prayer. Some time ago we had a situation where some girls were living in an apartment and they were broken into, a man tried to go in and rape them, held one of them at knife point and one of them told him, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ get out of here; the guy became so unglued that they had to escort him out the front door.

And it shows you the remarkable confrontation of spiritual powers because the people who are involved in violent assaults are very often demonically, and I think we could say in most cases, are demonically empowered, and by a swift prayer in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, what you do is you’re severing the demonic energization of that individual, and this has a measurable effect. And we’ve had several others in the history of the congregation who have done this. Sometimes, and you can’t argue with hypnotic because we had a case of a man who was involved in a parking lot downtown one night, and there was a menacing group of people that were coming upon his [can’t understand word], where he kept the money, and he could do nothing; he had no weapons, nothing there to defend himself with, and so very quietly he looked at them and he prayed to the Lord, and all of a sudden these people just broke up and disappeared, broke up and left the place. Now how come? We’re not saying this works at all times but we’re saying it is a tool available to every priest who is “in Christ.”

All right, in Exodus 22:2 we have a case of self-defense. “If a thief be found breaking in, and be smitten that he die, there shall be no blood shed for him. [3] If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him,” now what’s that mean? That means a night attack; a night invasion of your home can be stopped lethally; a daytime invasion of your home cannot be. Why is there a difference? Because in the daytime the person can be identified and that’s why the rest of the verse, “for he shall make full restitution,” that is, he can be identified and apprehended and turned over to the authorities so they can find him. But at night we don’t know what weapons he had, he may have had a lethal weapon, he may be about to kill, and so therefore the Mosaic Law permitted lethal self-defense under attack at night, attack of property at night.

Now because we have this attitude in our society that says this kind of thing is wrong, I’m going to read a little section from an excellent little work we have in our church library by Mr. Jeff Cooper who is one of the outstanding handgun specialists in the United States: Principles of Personal Defense. It’s a most eloquent short book I’ve ever seen; he’s not dealing here with guns, he’s not dealing with karate or any form of tools. He’s dealing with the mental attitude. And he goes through certain mental attitudes, one of which is the principle of ruthlessness; ruthlessness in self-defense. Listen to Mr. Cooper; Mr. Cooper is writing, incidentally, as a retired Colonel, I believe from the United States Marines; he is also writing as one of the top researchers who has collected personally thousands and thousands of reports on violent crime. He has studied how policemen have been shot and hurt and injured on the job; he has watched and done studies, major studies of all the violent terrorist activities, and so when he speaks he speaks as a man who knows the facts of the situation, empirically.

Here’s what Mr. Cooper says: “Anyone who willfully and maliciously attacks another, without sufficient cause, deserves no consideration. While both moral and legal precepts enjoin us against so-called overreaction, we are fully justified in valuing the life and person of an intended victim more highly than the life of the pernicious assailants. The attacker must be stopped, at once and completely. Just who he is, why he has chosen to be a criminal, his social background, his ideological or psychological motivation and the extent of injury he incurs as a result of his acts, these may all be considered at some future date. Now your first concern is to stay alive. Let your attacker worry about his life. Don’t hold back; strike no more after he is incapable of further action but see that he is stopped. The law forbids you to take revenge but it does permit you to prevent. What you do to prevent further felonious assault, as long as the felon is still capable of action, is justified. So make sure, and do not be restrained by considerations of forbearance. They can get you killed.

An armed man, especially if he’s armed with a firearm, is dangerous as long as he’s conscious. Take no chances, put him out. If you must use your hands, use them with all the strength you possess. Tapping your assailant half-heartedly for fear of hurting him will indeed make him mad and since he is already shown that he is willing to kill you, he may try even harder now that you have struck him a painful, though indecisive, blow. If you choose to strike, by all means strike hard. This also applies to shooting. If you are justified in shooting you are justified in killing, in all but a few obvious circumstances. So don’t try to be fancy; shoot for the center of mass. The world is full of decent people; criminals we can do without. We often hear it said, especially by certain police spokesmen, who it seems to me should know better, that in the event of victimization the victim should offer no resistance for fear of arousing his assailant. Perhaps we should ignore the craven exhortation to cowardice made here. Honor may, in truth, be an obsolete word. So let us consider only the results. The Sharon Tate party did not resist. The Starkweather victims did not resist. The LaBiancas did not resist. Vitrioni did not resist. The next time some expert tells me not to resist I may become abusive. Apart from the odds that you will be killed anyway if you submit to stress through violence, it would seem, especially in today’s world of permissive atrocity that it may be your social duty to resist.

The law seems completely disinclined to discourage violent crime. The sociopath who attacks you has little to fear, at this writing, from either the police or the courts. The Chief of Police of our capital city has stated in print, quote, ‘the greatest real and imminent hazard that the hold up man faces is the possibility that his victim may be armed and might shoot the criminal.’ The syntax may be a bit garbled but the meaning is clear. If violent crime is to be curbed it is only the intended victim who can do it. The felon does not fear the police and he fears neither the judge nor the jury. Therefore, what he must be taught to fear is his victim. If a felon attacks you and lives, he will reasonably conclude that he can do it again. By submitting to him you not only impair your own life but you jeopardize the lives of others. The first man who resisted Starkweather after eleven murders overcame him easily and without injury. If that man had been the first to be accosted, eleven innocent people would have been spared. The coddling of murderers has brought us to an evil past. It is truly a wise and just policy which we will have serious reason to doubt, leave it to the courts. You’re your life is in danger, forget it. If you find yourself under lethal attack, don’t be kind; be harsh, be tough, and be ruthless.” Very good advice. It follows the mandate of Exodus 22:2. So that’s one form of just violence permitted in Scripture and commanded in Scripture, the principle of self-defense.

Now the final principle of just violence in Scripture and that is military. Now granted, this is the generation which has lived since Vietnam so most young men despise the military and, of course, don’t realize they’re being despisers of their own country. They do not realize that in so doing and despising the military they are parasites who are living off the blood of their hosts. Numbers 1:2-3 give the principles of the military. This is also a form of just violence. Principles of just violence; in Numbers 1:2-3 I read this only because I have heard it said, when I advise people to go to military before they go to Dallas Seminary that that’s just some quirk that Clough has, I read Numbers 1:2-3:

“Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls; [3] From twenty years old and up,” do you know what that is? The book of Numbers is a draft, it’s a census, that’s what numbers means in the book of Numbers; it’s numbers in the draft, so the whole book deals with compulsory military service. That is what God did when God had a chance to run a country, how did He do it? Compulsory military service, that’s how he did it. But His compulsory military service is a little different than ours. In God’s compulsory military service every boy over 20 was expected to be on call for military duty. By the way, no girls. God, unfortunately had not had the advantage of the added illumination of the ERA and so therefore eliminated women from the situation. Now under this system of all males over 20 God then apparently had it so these guys trained and then He picked out of those who were trained… what we’ve got here is UMT, universal military training, and out of the Universal Military Training then God picked the best, and the losers stayed behind.

Now let’s see the exceptions to warfare, Deuteronomy 20. Again though, notice, as all forms of violence that are just in the Scriptures, just violence is always controlled violence, and in the military the military itself is under God’s law. Judging from the way some of our seminary students are acting in these days I think it would have been good if they had gone through a barracks and had some D.I. chew them up one side and down the other, just about three times, that’s all it’d take on some of them, to get common sense into an area that’s greatly lacking.

Deuteronomy 20:5, here’s the first exception to military duty; one who has built a home, “and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle, and another man dedicate it.” That’s the idea of establishing his physical home. I’ll explain why this is an exception in a moment. In verse 6, a second exception. If a man “who has planted a vineyard, and has not eaten of it,” it takes at least two or three years to get a vineyard producing, at least. This means a two or three year draft exemption for the farm boy who had planted his own vineyard. A third exemption in verse 7 was the newly married. “And what man is there who has betrothed a wife, and has not taken her?” This would be engaged and hasn’t married his wife, “Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.” And so they were permitted to have their honeymoon before the battle began. And finally, in verse 8, the fourth exemption, “And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well as his heart,” and that is the person who’s panicky, who’s unsure of himself, the person who just generally lacks courage. And they weeded these boys out real fast, because all you need in a unit of twenty men is one or two crybabies and then everybody goes bananas. So you get rid of those guys, they’re dangerous to everyone else. They can go home and pick bananas or something but just get them out of the way so other people can do the job.

So we have these groups, this group of people exempted. Now why those first four? Why the house builder, the vineyard planter, and the newly married. There’s a principle here in God’s law and the principle is this: that the home and the family take precedence even over war… that the home and the family take precedence over war. The vineyard is the spruce of life. Remember when we show our divine institution chart we’ve colored some of these divine institutions blue, meaning that they are negative divine institutions because they came in after the fall of man and primarily produce nothing. All they do are like weed killer on a farmers acreage. The farmer can’t grow his thing with whatever weed killer that they use, he needs plants, and the plants are going to produce, but not the weed killer. All right, if that’s the case, then the government, which is the fourth divine institution, which is involved in just violence and war, isn’t producing anything, it’s only stopping something. And therefore the home and the vineyards, which are part of divine institution one, two and three, must not be destroyed in the process of waging war. So the process of waging war itself is controlled by God’s laws. There’s no such thing as all out war in the Scriptures; even holy war in Scripture has limits and is bounded by God’s principles.

Some other principles of waging just war. Deuteronomy 20:10, “When you come near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it,” and that is the idea war ought to never begin without peace initiatives and peace feelers. In Verse 24, this is talking about when the enemy has been defeated, “The women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, thou shalt take to thyself;” this is equivalent to what we call indemnity payments. The enemy was forced to finance the war. Now consider what happened in both World War I and World War II. Who paid for most of World War II. You did; you’re still paying for it, but the people who started it didn’t pay for it, they got the aid. And so God’s principles are that the people who start it pay for it because in the principle and context of Deuteronomy 20 the attacking nation who is defeated in self-defense must therefore pay for war damages.

Finally, another point here, verse 19-20, “When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, and thou must not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life) to employ them in the siege. [20] Only the trees which you know that they are not trees for food,” then you can destroy those and cut those down. And the principle again is what I showed you with the vineyard. War is not to destroy food producing mechanisms; it is to be limited in that respect.

So much for just forms of violence; we’ve covered capital punishment, whipping, restitution, slavery, self defense and warfare. These are areas of just violence.

Now a survey of the unjust forms of violence. What are those that are condemned; and some of them will surprise you. Let’s start with Exodus 22:22, because at first it sounds like they are not violent. Again the purpose, if the male believer is to be spiritual leader, then the male believer ought to be sensitive when unjust forms of violence occur in his community. Exodus 22:22, “Ye shall not afflict the widow, or the orphan. [23] If thou afflict them in any way, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry; [24] And my wrath shall wax hot and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.” That’s protection on every widow and every orphan. And the Bible is very, very picky about this; any deceit, any assault on a widow or an orphan, the principle being that these are helpless people, normally, for protecting themselves.

Another area, Exodus 22:21, “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Those are people to whom no violence ought to be done; people who are the foreigners, maybe they’re of another race or another culture but they live in the community. Thou shalt not take advantage of them or due them violence, says God. In Exodus 23:6, “Thou shalt nor distort the judgment of the poor in his cause,” that’s violence to the poor person who can’t afford legal defense; he must be protected, and is protected under the Mosaic Law.

For another category, very vulnerable… what we’re dealing with here is just vulnerable areas where unjust violence can easily occur and through neglect everyone in the community doesn’t even see that it’s happening. This is to sensitize the human conscience to unjust violence. We can see obviously unjust violence, someone gets blown out in front of you; if somebody blows his brains out with a gun, that’s obvious. But these forms, these are more subtle forms of violence that God is equally angry with.

Turn to Leviticus 19:32, another person or sub group of society to whom unjust violence can be done and people not even think about it. “Thou shall rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am Jehovah.” And that is the elderly; the elderly to whom it is so easy to do violence to, try to bulldoze them into a nursing home and let them rot, that kind of thing. God is sensitive about a community how it handles its poor, its stranger, its widow, its orphan and its elder.

Now there are other forms of unjust violence; one is the unjust violence that’s really neglect in construction. Turn to Deuteronomy 22:8, they had building codes in the Mosaic Law, and this particular verse is the forerunner of the laws that prevent accidents on the job, though I would hesitate to ascribe OSHA to Moses. “When you build a new house, then you shall make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon that building, if any man fall from there.” And the principle is in your construction you respect life that is involved in that construction, both when it’s being built and after its built. Just safety; that too is an unjust form of violence. People die because of the neglect of other people, and lest you think that OSHA has solved the problem, it hasn’t. While OSHA has been worried about how many toilet bowls exist in an auditorium or something like that, 600,000 people, I was reading the other day, have been involved in serious accidents on the job since OSHA began because OSHA hasn’t touched the really serious stuff; they’ve just been knocking around the little stuff. So again we still have no imposition of Deuteronomy 22:8.

But then probably the most famous of all, Deuteronomy 24:19; here’s something that the male leaders of a community were instructed to do and to watch for, in order that not only construction be not negligent, but here it’s farming or the process of gleaning. We would enlarge that to any manufacturing operation. “When you cut down your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, don’t go to fetch it; it shall be for the stranger, for the orphan, and for the widow, that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands. [20] When you beat your olive tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again; it shall be fore the stranger, for the orphan, and for the widow. [21] And when you gather the grapes from your vineyard, don’t glean it afterwards; it shall be for the stranger, for the orphan, and the widow. [22] And you shall remember that you were a bondman in the land of Egypt; therefore I command thee to do this thing.”

It’s the principle of gleaning; in the principle of gleaning the farmers left areas in the corner of the field, the book of Ruth deals with gleaning. What is this process of gleaning? It was a method of preventing unjust violence to the poor. It was actually the first system of welfare. But observe what a miraculous way this welfare system worked. First, it insured that no one would die of starvation; everyone had food. And so this guaranteed that the poor did have something to eat, unless of course in a famine type situation. So it insured a sort of minimum subsistence. But notice what it does: instead of buying a food stamp, which may be the only way of doing it in an urban society, I don’t know, but to me it would have been a lot more satisfaction if I had been a poor person not to just stand there with my hands out, but to be able to go into the field and at least pick my own field, and walk away from the field saying at least I picked it up, there was some action on my part that brought the food into my hand. And so gleaning was used in the Scriptures to solve the welfare problem.

Today that same system is being used and I’m currently sending to Portland, Oregon, because the city of Portland, Oregon, has three separate programs of gleaning. In one program involving potatoes, they found out that they had a list of poor families in the city of Portland, and they figured out, how can we get food to them? Very simple; the had farmers who had farmed potato fields, sign up on a list, and when they were through with the mechanical harvest of the potatoes, which left a lot of the potatoes in the field, they’d call the poor families to come out into the field and get the potatoes. One poor family in one afternoon could pick up enough potatoes for a years supply. And so these three systems of gleaning, and as I say, I’ve written to Portland to see how they actually administer the program but it shows you that some Christians had their head together in the city of Portland, and began to dream of ways in which they could utilize biblical wisdom to solve the problem without getting involved in this massive machine of bureaucracy that we have today, and yet solve the problem and truly solve it by putting food on the poor people’s table. We have another system or urban gleaning, Goodwill Industries, that’s a system, in a way, of urban gleaning adapted to our present situation.

Now at this point, in conclusion, let me just say something as a challenge to the men here. Those of us who are going to be around Lubbock for some time to come, I think, could have a tremendous testimony in our city if we could sit down, perhaps businessmen, lawyers, Bible students, not just this congregation, but Christians who are committed to the authority of the Scriptures, and had sort of a task force or a think tank that could be developed, explore ways and means of taking biblical principles and applying it to this city, of utilizing some of the principles to meet needs; then we could turn around and say to our socialist friends, you see, we evangelicals and fundamentalists, we’re not the ones that slough off the poor; we’re the ones, we still have compassion, but we’re going to solve the problem in a biblical Scriptural way and let the Word of God get its honor, like in Portland, hey, the system works. Yeah, Moses showed us how.

And so the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof, and it seems to me that with innovative creative men who knew the Scriptures, but yet at the same time knew the everyday gritty of business and farming and law that it could be put together; some very innovative ways. It hasn’t been done, Portland, Oregon is the only place I know that’s even tried it. A whole vast frontier of possibilities opens up here and it could be a tremendous testimony for the evangelicals, who at the moment, are always on the defensive, always fussing about what the liberalist socialists are doing but never usurping them, never taking the offense and solving the problem before they get there. Well, that would be an opportunity for us.

Let’s conclude by turning to Exodus 23:3, there’s a little warning in the Scriptures, it’s a warning against sentimentalism. We talked about just and unjust violence, we’ve plead the case of the poor, the widow and the orphan, but today that same plea is being used to manipulate your conscience for votes. Vote for me because I’m for the poor? Well, who wants to vote against the poor so you vote for the guy. That’s manipulation of conscience, but be careful, the Scriptures also, after having given us all this say, “Neither shall thou countenance a poor man in his cause.” Do you know what that’s saying? Don’t favor the poor man over the rich man. All you have to do is adhere to the standard of justice; you don’t favor one race against another race. All you have to do is have the standard and stick with the standard. Don’t let the pendulum swing one way; don’t let the pendulum swing the other. You can be harsh and negligent toward the poor, but you can also be over indulgent and sentimental to the poor and God doesn’t want that either and that’s a good verse to remember when you’re being manipulated, particularly around election time.

Now what’s the sum of the matter tonight, just and unjust violence and the value of life? The sum of the matter is the New Testament command, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This whole thing that we’ve covered gives you the content for understanding and appreciating what Christ meant when He said that; easy to say, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” True, but now that you know the Old Testament content do you see how wide-ranging that command is; all the interests involved, all the means at disposal and so on.