Clough Proverbs Lesson 79

DI #4: Government: The Legislative Function

 

Today we continue our studies in the book of Proverbs or the themes of the book of Proverbs and this time we move into a new area, a new divine institution.  We go into the fourth divine institution.  So far we have topically studied Proverbs 10-22, studying the first divine institution which is human responsibility; the second divine institution, sex and marriage; the third divine institution which is family and authority.  Now we’re on the fourth institution and as you can see on our diagram, this is the only institution, or is the first one that is blue, it’s not clear colored like the other institutions.  The reason for this is that this institution was not original to creation.  This is an institution that God set up and ordained later in history after the fall.  So institutions that happen after the fall are shaded blue on this chart.  And the fourth institution which is judicial authority is something that happened after the fall. 

 

Originally, then, the fourth divine institution did not exist.  The first institution, human responsibility, existed; the second institution existed and the third one existed but not the fourth.  This has certain ramifications about whether government is necessary or it isn’t.  Obviously it wasn’t because for the entire period of the antediluvian civilization there was no such thing that we now know as government. 

 

Now let’s go back and look at the background of government because we’re going to be studying government for the next 3, 4 or 5 Sunday’s with the biblical principles involved.  First you have to get some dispensational background to the origin of government and to do this we first have to remember there are four civilizations in history; the antediluvian civilization which was that part of human history prior to the flood of Noah.  Obviously in order to say this I am presupposing that the Bible is historically valid.  And there may be many here who do not share that presupposition; all I can say to you is that the entire Bible reports that certain historic events took place.  And the only way you can deny that those events took place is by deliberately setting up your own presuppositions about certain things, human viewpoint, and then using, on the basis of those presuppositions, to discredit Scripture.  You are free to do that but you ought to be aware what you’re doing. 

 

Our claim here is that the historicity of Genesis can be defended in any arena.  There is not one shred of evidence, either in paleontology, historical geology or in cosmogonies of very astrophysicists, that can undermine the historical information given in Scripture, that the Scriptural view stands and we go even so far as to add that all views that do not fit Genesis are basically mythology, whether they masquerade under mathematical language as various modern cosmogonies do, or whether they’re more simply and naively put, they are all grounded on myths; myths being man projecting out from himself what must have happened at the time of origin.  So therefore, in that light all views that are not Scripture are myths, and since we don’t believe in myth here we believe in Scripture, then we reject mythological viewpoints and accept the historically valid viewpoint of Scripture. 

 

Jesus Christ believed in a literal Genesis and though modern Christians may try to apologize, Christ believed in a literal day, as did the Apostle Paul, as did Peter, as did every writer of the New Testament.  And again, you have to make a choice; you have to say whether you’re going to chuck the whole thing and that’s an honest thing to do, forget it, or consider the fact that Jesus Christ might possibly have known what He was talking about.  So this is the choice and only you can make it, I can’t make it for you.  All we can do is present the issues.

 

But the background is that there were these areas of human history.  The antediluvian culture, the postdiluvian culture which we are now in, the flood separating the two, the millennial culture or the millennial kingdom with Christ’s Second Advent separating the two, and then the eternal state with the destruction of the present universe and its recreation separating those two.  So between these four civilizations you have tremendous judgments, tremendous changes; changes geophysically, not just spiritually.  We’re not talking about some ethereal spiritual thing; we’re talking about something concrete and physical.  And the God of the Bible is big enough to pull it off every once in a while.  And so therefore we have geophysical judgments and they’re not unreasonable given the existence of the God of the Bible.

 

Now government started at the time of the flood, just after the flood, so one civilization lived on the basis of parental authority only.  In other words, you have divine institution one, that’s volition; divine institution two, marriage; third divine institution, family.  Those three spheres of society existed for the antediluvian period.  During this time education was family centered.  All authority was in the home, and this, by the way, shows then, that the concept of authority is what is learned from the parents, not government.  In other words, governmental authority must always collapse if there is no authority in the home.  It will always happen, has always happened, will always happen, that a society that has no authority inside the home is not going to have any authority outside the home.  You can go to any sphere of our present culture and see this.  You can go in the military and see it, the clucks that are going into the service these days, and the lousy discipline that the army has and all the services have.  It’s simply because many of the teenagers today are nothing but spoiled brats who have never been required to do anything except sit around and watch the boob tube, and they have never developed any concept of a future orientation where you make your choice on the basis of what in the future is correct and what in the future will bless you, not on the basis of your immediate pleasure.  But because for the last 15 years we have had lots and lots of young people who have done nothing but satisfy the immediate desires, they have no discipline and the service is a beautiful living illustration of this.  How we ever got into this all volunteer thing is beyond me.  All volunteer military is never going to make it.  The Russians don’t have it and we’re going to find out real soon and lots of people are going to die because we have this idiotic concept of volunteer armies.  That’s one are where authority or lack thereof shows.

 

Now let’s go back and get some background on where this judicial authority was added.  The judicial authority that was added to family authority; it began in Genesis 8, so let’s turn there but before we do go to Genesis 6 to get a view of what was going on prior to the flood.  Notice particularly in Genesis 6:5, “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”  Now many have said that the doctrine of original sin is something that Augustine cranked out in the 4th or 5th century, or the apostle Paul added that to the teachings of Jesus or something else.  It’s interesting, the doctrine of original sin and the sin nature is solidly entrenched in the book of Genesis.  And here is one of those passages that shows it.  This is talking about the sin nature of man, you couldn’t ask for a more dogmatic passage of Scripture that deals with the depravity of man.  In verse 5, “God saw the wickedness of man,” it was great, there you have the scope of the depravity.  The “imagination of the thoughts of his heart” shows you the mental attitude sin that are always involved because the Bible emphasizes mental attitude sins, not overt sins. 

 

One of the questions in the exam was, I listed several sins, fornication, stealing, etc. etc. etc. and I said what about these sins renders them not of primary importance, and the answer is that none of them are the direct expression of rebellion, they are indirect, later consequences of rebellion.  The most satanic sins are the sins that Satan can commit; Satan doesn’t go around fornicating.  He goes around with pride, and so obviously the most satanic sin is the sins of pride, the autonomous mental attitude.  And of course these later lead to the overt activities but the Bible always, even here, emphasizes what starts the process: mental attitude.

 

“…which was only evil continually,” that means it’s tied in magnitude, in depth in the heart and in time.  So there was total depravity and because of the anarchy that reigned in the antediluvian period God brought the flood.  Now in Genesis 8:22 God sets up the Noahic Covenant, and when He does, verse 22 sets the scene geophysically, dynamics of meteorology are established for the postdiluvian civilization, and after the geophysical backdrop the stage has been set, then God begins to give details. 

 

In Genesis 9:1, God says, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth.”  This is a repeat of the mandate of the sixth day of creation.  [2] “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth,” that is something new.  Verse 2 is not like the original creation narrative and strongly tells us that there were major changes in the ecological environment, that is, that in the animal kingdom particularly in some way the relation between man and the animals deteriorated.  Verse 3, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you,” that’s new.  At creation men were vegetarian; the luxuriant pre-flood plant live provided nutrients of every sort.  After the flood man becomes a meat eater.  Then in verse 4, the “flesh with the life,” or the soul or the nephesh “thereof, which is the blood thereof, ye shall not eat.”  It’s talking about draining the blood off the meat out of reverence for the life that has been taken when that animal is killed. 

 

Then Genesis 9:5, “Surely your blood of your soul,” nephesh, “will I require, at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the nephesh of man.  [6] Whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man.”  That historically is the mandate for judicial authority.  When, for example, Adam faced a problem with rebellion in his son, Cain, Adam was not able to execute judicial punishment.  Remember the mark of Cain; Cain was protected from judicial punishment.  The father was not permitted to do this; yet after this point in history the person in charge of a group, who would be the one who administers judicial authority, now has a power that he did not have before, the power to take life.

 

Genesis 9:5-6 are the historic basis for judicial authority, the authority to take life.  Now I fully realize because I myself came out of the same background, that many of you have come out of church backgrounds where you’ve been taught that it’s wrong to kill and that somewhere in the Ten Commandments it says “Thou shalt not kill.”  It doesn’t, it says “Thou shalt not murder,” and it’s not talking about killing because in the very same chapter Moses is told to kill.  The Bible does not say all killing is bad.  At times, because of man living this side of the fall, man becomes diseased and certain people have to be eliminated and down through history you can be very, very thankful that people like Israel in the Old Testament slaughtered the Canaanites, men, women, children in one big gory mess.  And the Psalms are written in the Old Testament to praise it.  Now the reason people have trouble with that concept is because they have never understood the doctrine of the literal fall, they have never seen that man is a totally depraved, in Jonathan Edward’s terms a damned miserable sinner, and therefore all of us have this tendency within ourselves, we are responsible, and when through negative volition we allow the sin nature to take over and become absolutely gross and become a danger to society such people have to be eliminated. 

And this chapter and this verse is the first time God delegated this authority.  Please notice it is delegated authority.  This is not, as the opponents of capital punishment always try to say, community vengeance; nothing of the sort because community vengeance was prohibited in history up to this point and it didn’t work.  The opponents to capital punishment are trying to set up society like the antediluvian period.  And we’ve had 16 to 17 centuries of antediluvian history to know that without capital punishment it won’t hang together.  You cannot have a society of peace and righteousness in a fallen world without capital punishment.  Even in the millennium when Jesus Christ comes to be world dictator, He uses capital punishment.  So capital punishment is the sine quo non of judicial authority.  Any group that denies capital punishment has cut the roots out from under any concept of government.  That is it, all other areas of judicial authority are implied in the capital punishment concept. 

 

Now, to study government we have to break it apart in pieces and then we’ll study each one of these pieces, then we’ll put it together again and see where the heresies of human viewpoint have destroyed government in our own generation.  First we’ll deal with the legislative.  The legislative today, executive next week, the week after that the judicial, the three branches of government, and try in each one of these times together to show by various verses of Scripture in summary form, if you want a detailed form I can suggest more reading for you, but in summary form the basic biblical concepts behind each one of these governmental functions.

 

First, the legislative function.  Today the rest of the time we’ll be dealing with the legislative function of government.  The first concept under the legislative is what is law?  That’s the starting point.  And right away, as those of you who are in regular attendance know, we’re at loggerheads with everybody.  It’s amazing if you think biblically you’ll be in opposition to every major school of thought existing in the 20th century.  And as we say we don’t take that as an embarrassment, we just say the 20th century is screwed up; we’re the ones that have the truth, everybody else doesn’t.  And so people who disagree with the Scriptures simply do not have wisdom.  And the Bible alone gives this kind of wisdom and the Bible alone has its own doctrine of what is law and this doctrine differs from every other view of law all the way down through history.

 

It goes back to two words; that is the Greek word for law, nomos, and I think we can both easily demonstrate the difference between human viewpoint concept of law and divine viewpoint concept of law by looking at two words, the Greek word n-o-m-o-s, that’s what the Greeks called, that’s their word for law, and the Hebrew word for law is torah, t-o-r-a-h.  Both these words differ radically and both of these words are excellent words to capture the content, to see the difference between what the Bible teaches and what man teaches.

 

First let’s look at what man teaches.  Let’s look at nomos, let’s look at human viewpoint and then we’ll look at divine viewpoint and see the difference.  First, human viewpoint.  Down through history men have tried to formulate various theories of law and if you take all the men who have ever written in the area of law you can divide their views into three kinds.  So human viewpoint can be divided up.  Let’s look at some of these kinds of human viewpoint, see what the common denominator is and then see where the Bible differs. 

 

The first concept of law that you can call is known is as the positive law theory, the concept of positive law.  The first men in history to teach this were Hobbs, Spinoza, they were rationalists.  In our modern day people like Holmes and Kelsen teach the concept of positive law.  In the concept of positive law, law equals justice, it’s identical to justice, there’s no such things as an unjust law in this concept because the law defines what is justice.  There’s no higher standard except a person’s likes and dislikes.  So the positive law means that justice is identified with law itself.  It’s not the concept that law reflects my idea of justice; it’s not that at all.  It’s more mechanical; law is the statement of justice.  If there’s no law there is no justice.  And under this concept you have two motives for obeying the law; I obey the law because of fear of punishment, or I obey the law because of personal desire.  There’s no moral motivation in this system consistently.  There’s no reason I ought to obey the law except if I don’t I get hurt—the positive law theory.

 

Another, more popular theory of law is the social good concept of law, the social good.  Far more proponents have held to the social good concept; men like David Hume, Mill, and in our day Blanchard and Pound put forth the concept that law basically articulates what is good for justice; justice is what is good for society and the law tries to reflect that justice.  There is something higher than the law but what is higher than the law is what is good for society, society’s goodness.  Under this concept if you had one man living alone on an island, like Robinson Crusoe, without Friday, then there would be no justice because there would be no society.  So the social good theory holds that law is totally confined to society, no society, no law.  So if you had a single Adam dwelling in Eden all by himself before Eve came there would be no law on this basis because there would be no social good because there’s no society, there’s only an individual.  That’s the social good concept.

 

Then the third concept of law that has been used, by far probably the majority though may be not in our own day, is the concept of natural rights.  Christians are frequently classed as believing this.  And I’m going to distinguish in a moment.  Men who have held the natural rights theory of law are Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, Jefferson.  In our day, Hart.  And this holds that justice equals an inherent right in man, so if you only had one man that man is worth something.  And because of his inherent worth then we have justice and then out of that we have law. 

 

So let’s look at the three views; all are human viewpoint.  Positive law says that law equals justice; social good says that law is the reflection of social good; and the natural rights view that law is the result of some inherent right of man.  No matter who you read, no matter who you’re talking to, they have to hold one of these three positions; these categories are mutually exclusive; there are no other categories available.  These are the only three possible.  So everyone who talks about law holds to one of these positions. 

 

That’s fine but what does the Bible say and first, what is common to all of these?  What is common is that man is the lawmaker; that’s what’s common.  Always it’s man who makes the law; it’s always man, finite, limited, cranking out of his limited moral consciousness, cranking out of his limited intellect laws for men; laws by which men are judges; laws that decree what is right and what is wrong.  Man is always the lawmaker in every one of these.  That’s human viewpoint; human viewpoint starts with autonomous man working out from himself in negative volition.  Negative volition means he rejects and pushes away God’s verbal authoritative revelation.  When God says this is right, this is wrong, negative volition, human viewpoint says no, I don’t want a standard outside of myself; I will be my standard.  So all human viewpoint, whether it’s in law or anything else, always has this weakness to is, no matter who it is, no matter how they speak, no matter what they say, behind it all is man is the standard.  Ultimately it is man who determines whether this law should be there or another law should be there; whether this standard is good for society, even the social good theory, or whether that standard expresses what is best for society.  What is best for society man decides, always man choosing what is best for himself.  Even the natural right theory, what are the inherent rights of man?  Man decides what his inherent rights are, it always starts from man.  That is human viewpoint.  That’s what the Greeks meant by nomos, a set of principles where you have a limited man looking out and he has his standards; he generates the standard, the nomoi is the plural; the plural looks like this, n-o-m-o-i; the nomoi or the principles were all cranked out by man. 

 

Now what does the Bible say?  In the Bible what is the picture of all pictures; think of all the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, where is a graphic simple picture for the basis for law.  Get firmly in your mind some historic revelation, some piece of God’s program of revealing Himself to man, what even strikes you?  Mount Sinai.  Mount Sinai is the concrete answer to all theories of law.  God speaks law.  And so the Bible answer on a divine viewpoint basis, God is the lawmaker, not man.  God makes the laws.  And His law is called torah.  The word “torah”, it’s a noun, it’s related to a verb, yarah, and yarah meant to throw something and hit a target; it’s the opposite of the word for sin, sin is something that missed the target.  It’s very interesting.  But yarah was to shoot an arrow and you hit the target and so it came later to mean instruction on how to hit the target.  So the word then became the torah, the noun, meant instruction on how to hit the target, in particular God’s righteousness.  So torah are instruction in God’s character, how to get along with God. 

 

Now on that concept, now we’re on a different basis.  All the previous theories of law is man is the lawmaker, they’re all human products.  God says no, I reserve the right to make law Myself but law is mine, not man’s, Mine.  And this is not just the Ten Commandments.  There are 200 other command­ments right in close context with those Ten Commandments.  Remember the commandments that we studied in the Old Testament?  We studied everything from sex all the way on up to you wear clothes, covering the whole range of society, areas where modern law doesn’t even speak the Bible has law that speaks in every area of life.

 

Now let’s summarize under the divine viewpoint what the basic elements of the biblical view of law are.  The first thing that we can say about the divine viewpoint of law in the Bible is that it’s centered on what is called sphere sovereignty, that means that when God makes law He makes it fit created orders.  For example, God has the first divine institution, volition; God has the second divine institution; marriage; God has the third divine institution, family; God has the fourth, government; God has the fifth which we’ll deal with later.  God has institutions; when God makes law He never sets one institution over the others.  That’s one of the great heresies we’re going to study later.  In our day, if we were to draw a chart, it’d look something like this: [writes on board], and that’s what man has done in our day, the fourth divine institution dictates how you choose, what you do, so forth, welfarism, socialism and communism all have bloated the sphere of the fourth divine institution until jams, crams and destroys the other institutions.  When God makes His laws He makes them for each one and treats each as a compartment.  And you don’t transgress; the government has no right to transgress into marriage.  It can regulate certain things about it but it can’t dictate policy, such as, for example, communism did in the 20s and 30s in Russia.  So government, then, has to be cut down to size. 

 

This is where we are in the 20th century; the Bible and it’s concept of law has sphere sovereignty, each sphere is respected and has an integrity all its own; it’s not to be transgressed by anything else.  We’ll see why, by the way, human viewpoint has always done this.  In fact, we’re going to see later human viewpoint has to do that. 

The first thing under the divine viewpoint concept of law is sphere sovereignty, there are certain sovereign spheres.  The second point, that’s one of the most beautiful things about the divine viewpoint concept of law, is that what is useful, pragmatically, what produces happiness and what is righteous is all the same.  On the biblical basis, due to the criteria of pragmatism, the summum bonum and righteousness correlate.  Traditionally human viewpoint always has a problem; what causes the most happiness may not be what is righteous.  And what is righteous may not cause the most happiness.  Or what is useful may not be righteous.  Now the Bible has no problem because the same God made the universe.  And what is useful in God’s universe will fit God’s character.  So on the Bible’s basis what is pragmatically useful is always what is righteous and what is righteous always produces happiness, and what is happiness is always the most useful.  Why?  Why can we do this and why can’t anybody that starts on a human viewpoint base get all three of these things together?  You always fragment, people in human viewpoint always have trouble with this, they have to decide shall I do what is useful or shall I do what is right.  Under the concept of the biblical law of Israel there is no tension.  What is happy, what is right is useful.  What is useful is right, that’s the whole philosophy under Proverbs. 

 

The third thing about God’s laws; and this is the most important thing of all, and it’s this point about the law that is secretly working in the hearts of the unbeliever to use law wrongly.  Law has a sacred function; the Bible is very serious about law.  And I don’t mean just law, the Ten Commandments; I mean law period, in civil courts and other places.  Law in the Bible has a spiritual function of sanctification.  Law is an agent of sanctification and therefore man operating on negative volition always tries to take this instrument, this tool that God has given him for sanctification, turn it around and use it to develop security.  On the human viewpoint basis law is an agent of security; on a divine viewpoint basis law is an agent of sanctification.  God is the security; the law is the means, the stick, that God uses to sanctify.

 

Now we’ve said these three principles, now I want to take you to some passages in Scripture to illustrate some of these principles.  Let’s turn first to Deuteronomy 24:16; this illustrates the principle that the torah or divine viewpoint law is always respectful of the other institutions.  One of the other institutions is volition or individual responsibility.  And here is a beautiful verse that shows you once and for all that the Mosaic torah, God’s torah, respects the first divine institution.  And therefore in Deuteronomy 24:16 it says: “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers; every man shall be pout to death for his own sin.”  See, the first divine institution is respected in the inherent torah of the Bible. 

 

Another illustration of sphere sovereignty is Deuteronomy 21:1-9, a strange looking passage.  Let me explain why we’re going to this particular passage.  This illustrates the responsibility of a community.  You know, you hear a lot about government has a responsibility.  What does the government have a responsibility about and who does the government have responsibility to?  Deuteronomy 21:1-9 shows you government’s responsibility, illustrated in this concrete example.  This is only one of hundreds of examples to illustrate the principle but we’ll go here.

 

Verse 1, “If one be found slain in the land which the LORD thy God gives thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him: [2]Then thy 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 unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer, which hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the yoke; [4] And the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley,” or a wadi, “which is neither eared 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 hath chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the LORD; and by their word shall every controversy” the word controversy is rib, or a law suit, “by their word every law suit and every stroke” that means punishment, “shall be tried: [6] And all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley: [7] And they shall answer and say,” now the elders would be the city council.  See, what’s happened here is you’ve had a murder that’s not been solved, and you’ve had three cities and the murder may have been right in between and so what the Bible directs is that you measure off the nearest community, the nearest responsible community to that body and in this case it would be community A; community A would then have to do something; they would be responsible, as a government, these are representatives of government that come out, the elders come out to the body, the place where it was, then they’re going to sacrifice because they haven’t been able to solve the crime. 

 

Verse 7, “And then they shall say,” this is the city council of city A declaring, and this will be a decree from the city, “Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.  [8] Be merciful, O LORD, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel’s charge.  And the blood shall be forgiven them.  [9] So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the LORD.”

 

Now why did God have that particular procedure, doesn’t that seem like an intricate thing?  Not at all.  That was to teach that the government of city A has the responsibility of punishing crime.  And even when the crime cannot be solved the government, the fourth divine institution, is still responsible.  Government is, in the Bible, still held accountable for unsolved crime.  That’s interesting because we hear a lot of other things the government is supposed to be responsible for, the government is responsible for this group of people, for that group of people, for this problem, for that social problem, where do you ever see it said that the government is responsible for unsolved crime?  And yet in Mosaic Law, in God’s torah, that’s one of the key things that a government is held responsible for, and whether the police solve the problem or not the government is still held accountable.  These elders from town A would be held accountable before Jehovah God for not doing and responding to this unsolved crime this way. 

 

So this shows the sphere sovereignty implicit in Old Testament law.  The first divine institution was respected, the second divine institution was respected, the third and the fourth. 

 

Now let’s do something else; we said law also, point 3, was an agent of sanctification.  It is a tool in God’s hands, a big whip.  Now let’s turn to Romans and see this; Romans 3, let’s look at what the law does.  Now you think when you read Romans oh, that means the spiritual law—no, no, no, no, no, no.  The law of Romans 3 is just as physical as it is spiritual, they had commands to do all sorts of things in the Mosaic Law, so when we see the law in Romans think of civil law once, not just the typology, that’s there, yes.  But for the illustration this morning when you see the word “law” in these verses in Romans think law, just like we have law today.

 

Romans 3:20, “Therefore, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight; for by means of the law is the knowledge of sin.”  What is the function of law under God?  To expose sin.  Now if it’s law’s job to expose sin, doesn’t that teach you that if you didn’t have the law sin would not be so exposed.  So where you have a lawless society in the sense of no law at all, you may have sin but men aren’t going to see it as sin.  So one key function under the agent of sanctification, we’re still under that third point on the divine viewpoint of law, law is an agent of sanctification, these verses now I’m going to show you how law is an agent of sanctification.  Law starts its sanctifying work, and the thing about this is it’s true of any law, anywhere, any time you have a rule it’s going to expose man’s sin because men don’t like to keep rules.  None of us do.  So law always exposes sin.  “By the law is the knowledge of sin.”  People that work in law basically, if they’re thinking biblically, are face to face with the dregs of society because right where the law is being applied is where sin is most clearly seen. 

 

Now another verse in Romans about law and its sanctifying effect is Romans 7:7, the effect of law.  Paul says, because he’s so frustrated that the law shows sin, he says, “What shall we say then?  Is the law sin?  [God forbid.]  No, I had not known sin except by the law,” without law, in other words, Paul says, no knowledge of sin.  Then he adds, “for I had not known lust” until I ran across the tenth commandment that said “Thou shalt not covet.”  And immediately when the tenth commandment said you won’t do it, I said oh yes I will.  Now that response, “oh yes I will,” is what the law is to expose.  Law comes down with crashing authority and says you will not do this, and there’s something in that say oh yes I will, try me.  And that is the sin nature, that is rebelliousness against law.  And by the way, isn’t this significant that all these passages on law are written to the Romans; who was known in the ancient world most for the development of law?  Rome; so obviously the epistle to the Romans is going to emphasize law. 

 

Turn to Galatians 3:23, another verse that deals with law as an agent of sanctification.  “But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut upon the faith which should afterwards be revealed.”  Now verse 24, another aspect of law as the sanctifying our agent, “Wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ,” law has a function.  Believe it or not, civil law has a function to bring men and women to Jesus Christ.  Now maybe you’ve never connected outright pagan Gentile civil law to its gospel connection but here it is.  Just as the Old Testament law was to make men aware of sin and their need of a savior, so civil law today, to a lesser degree, yeah, but it’s still operating because under God that was the function of law.  You can have all the theories of lawmaking you want to, poorly written laws and all the rest of it, under God’s sovereign control in history law still operates to bring men to Jesus Christ.  It is still pointing out sin, and therefore it’s still pointing out the need of a Savior.  Law, then, after you see these verses, and there are many more, Leviticus 19:2 is another verse.

 

Law is a sacred thing in Scripture, and where you have had Christian communities that had centered on Bible doctrine, in the Reformation countries particularly, you always had respect for law.  One of the greatest professions a man could choose beside the ministry in the Reformation countries was in the courts of law or Parliament because the law according to the Puritan was a sacred thing; you don’t tamper with the law, law is God’s agent of sanctification for the whole society and it’s very, very precious indeed.  It was a very holy thing.

 

Now let’s look, after we’ve seen what law is, on a human viewpoint basis and divine viewpoint basis, we see from the human viewpoint basis law is something that is just a set of abstract principles, the nomoi, the n-o-m-o-i, just a set of principles, whereas on a divine viewpoint basis they’re instruction.  Think of the law as instruction, instructions on how to get some place.  They’re instructions, so for example, here is the point where you become a Christian; here’s the time when you die and you go to be face to face with the Lord.  God has a goal in mind for you; He has a goal in mind for the human race.  And when He starts making law it always has an instructive function; tough musar type instruction, yes, but it’s to instruct, to provide an immediate goal.  For example, you remember the problem, why was there polygamy in the Old Testament.  The law didn’t condemn polygamy, yet, because in God’s program of instruction that wasn’t the issue then.  God wanted to get across other issues so He made those, and incorporated those into His law.  “Thou shalt not have any other gods before Me” is much more important than polygamy.  So the first laws dealt to attack idolatry.  And after that we have more laws and more laws as God progressively reveals Himself in the prophets that expand the law code. 

 

Now the second question is, after what is law; now who makes the law?  Turn back to Romans 5:13, “For until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not credited [imputed] where there is no law.  [14] Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression,” so from the time of Adam to the time of the flood, even after the flood when the government had formed, I want you to notice this, the fourth divine institution was formed right after the flood but law was not given to government; law wasn’t given until 1440 BC.  Now the ancient world had law codes but none of them were God-given.  And it’s it significant that if we date the flood, say at 3000 BC, for 15 centuries God had government with no law.  In other words, God leaves us as Gentiles to make up our own laws.  And only for one nation has He ever given a law code by direct revelation.  Only one—Israel; Israel is the only nation that God has provided the legislative function.  All the rest of the nations of the earth, including our own, we have had to make up our own laws.  Not Israel, however, because this says there was no law, and then when law came; law did not come until Moses. 

 

If you turn to Romans 2:14-15 you’ll see what Gentile nations have to do in their lawmaking functions.  The Gentiles, outside of Israel, we all must make up our laws out of our own God-consciousness.  God leaves it up to us, and that’s why in Romans 2:14-15 it talks about God-consciousness and the conscience and it says, “For when the Gentiles, who have not the law,” that means they don’t have any law, there is no legislation from God in any other nation except Israel, including the United States; we have the House of Representatives, we have a Senate and they are called lawmakers, but God says that’s not My law; My law is in the Old Testament only.  And “the Gentiles, who have not the law, but when they do by nature the things contained in the law,” that means when a Gentile, out of God-consciousness design legislation that reflects Mosaic concepts, when legislatures in the United States and other countries make our laws patterned after Moses law, then these, God says in verse 14, “having not the law, are a law unto themselves.”  In other words, then the more a nations laws conform in principle to Mosaic legislation then God recognizes more the laws of that country.

 

Romans 2:15, “Who show the work of the law written in their hearts,” now usually when Christians read Romans 2:14-15 they’re not thinking in terms of civil law, they’re thinking in terms of conscience.  Well, that’s true, but today we’re going to think of one other area and that’s civil law, and what it’s saying is that here we have the USA and obviously we have the fourth divine institution functioning, obviously then we need a lawmaking ability.  The lawmaking ability of our government, from our divine viewpoint, must fit the Mosaic categories.  Christians will always then, in their (quote) “social concern” (end quote) will always try to generate legislation patterned after Mosaic principles.  This will always be the pressure and you as a Christian citizen should try to learn the Mosaic Law.  Most Christians don’t even know the Mosaic Law, that’s the problem.  The result is we have very little wisdom at designing legislation. 

 

You’ve got a model, in other words, in the Old Testament, when God ruled the nation Israel He gave us a complete model of legislation on how to do it, but nobody ever reads the Old Testament.  So nobody ever has the wisdom on how to generate good legislation.  But the principles are all there, you can just watch, well how did God do this?  In the Mosaic Law how did God handle this kind of a problem that we face today; how did God handle that problem, how did God handle this problem.  Look in the Mosaic Law how He handled it and you’ll learn the principle and the principle then can carry over and be used in modern society.

 

To show you that God again is going to take up law, turn to Isaiah 2, going back to the fourth civilization, the antediluvian up until the flood, from creation to the flood, postdiluvian civilization from the flood to the Second Advent, and the millennial civilization, the millennial kingdom from the Second Advent to Christ’s starting of the eternal state, during the millennial kingdom of the future in Isaiah 2:2 you have God once again breaking into history and legislating for man.  In other words, in the nation Israel you have an executive function and you have a judicial function but no legislature; there was no House of Commons, there was no House of Parliament, there was no Senate, no House of Representatives in the nation Israel in the Old Testament, they had Moses.  Now in the millennial kingdom of the future, when Jesus Christ comes again, there’s going to be no legislation.  It’s going to be interesting.  What is going to be different about the government of the millennium?  Many, many things, but one of the things is there is going to be no legislative function.  God is going to directly take care of the design of law.

 

And so in Isaiah 2:2-3 is a prediction of this time: “It will come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established from the top of  the mountain” (this is referring to world government from Jerusalem) “and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it” (that means world government, world authority) “and many people shall go and say” (now, watch what the people are saying, verse 3) “Come ye, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us”. Notice, He (the subject of the verb), He will teach (there’s your word, teach, or train) “us of His ways and we will walk in His paths.  Now for out of Zion will go forth the law.”  Where is the law going to come from in the millennium?  Jesus Christ.  Who is going to be the Lawmaker?  Jesus Christ.

 

All right, so the second question, Who makes the laws?  God makes the law, and we Gentiles who live in this historic interim from the fall all the way down to the Second Advent, in this interim of time we are left to design laws as best we can from our God-consciousness, but God has not given us specific pinpoint legislation.  He’s only given us the Mosaic corpus as a set to illustrate principles; He leaves it up to us to get along as best we can.  You say why did God abandon us.  Because He chose Israel.  God abandoned us because we historically first abandoned Him.  Our problem in designing legislation is a problem historically because of our rebelliousness.  We didn’t recognize God’s authority historically and therefore one of the manifestations today is that we’re left without a direct thing on law.  We just don’t have a direct link with God on law; it’s part of His abandonment.  He has turned over the Gentile nations and one of the signs of it is the Gentiles have no basis for law; we’re left having to get it as best we can.

 

In conclusion let’s turn to Deuteronomy 4:8.  This will set us up for Proverbs.  Proverbs, you see, doesn’t have any legislation in it.  In Deuteronomy 4:8 here is the great testimony that we should always remember; we’re going to conclude with a third question.  We’ve asked: What is law?  Who makes the law?  Now the final question is: What can we do in the USA today as believers?  Well, Deuteronomy 4:8 is the principle and this sort of controls our attitude toward law.  It says, “What nation,” this is a test­imony of Israel’s law code, “What nation is there so great, and has statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?”  Deuteronomy 4:8 tells, then, where do you go for legislative model?  The book of Deuteronomy, the book of Leviticus and so on. 

If you’d like to read up on this and I realize facing you with reading Leviticus and Deuteronomy is asking an awful lot, but if you are interested in legislative design in these kinds of things may I suggest a book, it pulls it all together, about 600-700 pages long, but it’s a handbook, and if you want to go for a particular piece of legislation or a particular thing, it’ll tell you the verse and it’ll explain the biblical concept for you.  It’s called Institutes of Biblical Law by a man by the name of Rushdoony, published in 1973 by Craig Press.  And this book will give you a key on every conceivable area where the Bible has a model.

 

Let’s say this: the first thing we can do as Christians in taking chokmah of the fourth divine institution in the area of law is this: first, know the Old Testament law.  We’ve got to know what the Old Testament law was like, we’ve got to see how God worked it out so we’ve got at least one historical illustration of how to handle the problem.  So the first thing you can do as a Christian citizen, trying to apply the Word of God to every area, is know your Old Testament.  Read the book of Deuteronomy, at least Deuter­onomy will give you some of the law, it’s scattered in Exodus, some of it’s in Leviticus, some of it’s in Numbers but if you read Deuteronomy you’ll get at least the basic idea.

 

The second thing you can do is break out of what I call evangelical anarchism where Christians say well, I’m just teaching the simple gospel, we don’t bother with these areas.  Now if what we have said today is true, don’t you get the idea that law is very important to God?  If God, when He breaks into history uses law to sanctify people, isn’t the law important in His eyes?  Isn’t the law always important in any group?  Shouldn’t the law be a matter of prayer, a matter of concern on the part of believers?  So make yourself heard if you see legislation on the books that you don’t like, or coming up.  Express yourself with letters and so on.  When we had the textbooks reviewed I find it very interesting, I go down there every summer when the new books come out; in the state of Texas we have a very, very fine system of reviewing school textbooks, they all have to get the approval of one committee in Austin, and you can knock out any book by hitting that committee and it’s a very, very fine system, and yet you can go down there, 300-400 books and in all the state of Texas there will be 3 or 4 people, from the whole state of Texas that have the gumption to go down there, read and comment.  Now why are Christians losing?  By default; we’re not being prevented from doing stuff, we just don’t do what we can. 

 

The third thing that we can do as Christians; as society becomes more and more lax we may have to do what the early Christians did in very lax social situations, and that is start enforcing law within the local church.  On Crete, in Corinth and in other places where society did not provide adequate law, the Christian communities established their own law interior to themselves and ran themselves by that law.  Now it’s a mess to get into but we have historic precedence for doing it and that is one way Christians can respond to a society that’s just gone chaotic.

 

And finally, one last thing in the light of the book of Proverbs, teach your children respect for law.  The generation going doesn’t have it; at least we can try to change the next one.  Teach your children the law is important, that when Christ comes again to set up His law He considers law so important He personally takes over the lawmaking function.  God saw law so important He took over the lawmaking function, He didn’t even let Moses touch it, He didn’t let David touch it, He didn’t let Isaiah touch it, God alone made laws.  Doesn’t that say that laws are very important?  It sure does.