Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Scripture for this morning is found in Joshua 23, verses 1-8. And it came to pass a long time after that the Lord had given rest unto Israel from all their enemies round about, that Joshua waxed old and stricken in age. And Joshua called for all Israel, and for their elders, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers, and said unto them, I am old and stricken in age, and you have seen all that the Lord your God hath done unto all these nations because of you.

For the Lord your God is he that hath fought for you. Behold, I have provided unto you by lot these nations that remain to be an inheritance for your tribes from Jordan with all the nations that I have cut off even unto the great sea westward. And the Lord your God, he shall expel them from before you, and drive them out from out of your sight, and you shall possess the land as the Lord your God hath promised unto you.

Be therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that you turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or to the left, that you come not among these nations, these that remain among you, neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves unto them, but cleave unto the Lord your God, as you have done unto this day.

Let’s pray. Almighty gracious Father, for as much as our whole salvation depends upon our true understanding of thy holy word, grant all of us that our hearts being free from worldly affairs may hear and comprehend thy holy word with all diligence and faith that we may rightly understand thy gracious will, cherish it and live by it with all earnestness to thy praise and honor through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

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We return now to our series of talks going through the confession and covenant statement of Reformation Covenant Church. And this morning, we want to deal specifically with that portion of our covenant, or begin to deal with it, that talks about the leadership and the government of our church. It’s appropriate that we return to this at this particular time of the year following up the Christmas season and the joyous time that we’ve been celebrating in these last few weeks.

And after all, we tried to stress last week that Jesus Christ came to reign and to rule. In the scriptures, it tells us that we celebrated Christmas time, the birth of him of whom it is said, “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The Lord the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”

It’s also said of him that “For unto us a child is born and unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” So appropriate then to turn to a discussion of government in general and specifically relating to our church covenant and the institution of the church. We will spend the next perhaps month or two months dealing with some of the offices of the old covenant community.

Now these series of talks will not be restricted to a consideration of ecclesiastical offices for various reasons. One of the reasons is that it’s very important to recognize that Jesus Christ’s government is not found strictly within the boundaries of the church or the ecclesiastical institutions that he establishes. Rather, one of the great truths that is being rediscovered, I think, in Christianity in America and throughout the world is that there are whole series of spheres of government or rules of Jesus Christ over specific areas of our lives beginning with self-government.

We all are governments unto ourselves. That we know and then attempt to apply the word of God. We have family governments within our own household. We exercise Christ’s rights over our family through the heads of the households. Certainly that family government also can be seen as extending into the extended family and the government of the extended family. We’ll be considering much of that over the next few weeks looking at the old covenant community as a model for what we’re doing today.

Additionally, of course, when we involve ourselves in business, we have to run our businesses by government or by laws or by principles that we apply. And this again is a legitimate area or a sphere over which Jesus Christ exercises his crown rights. The church also is a legitimate government and then finally we end up at the top of that, or the outworking rather of that series of governments, with civil government itself—local civil government, state civil magistrates and then federal civil magistrates in our land.

But it’s important as we go into this study to recognize and reemphasize time and time again because we’re so quick to not remember this: government is not restricted to civil magistrates. Government is not restricted to the elders and the deacons of the church. It is a pervasive thing that Jesus Christ claims. His government is over all things. And it’s important to recognize that’s a great truth that’s being reclaimed today in the churches—that Jesus Christ has crown rights over every area of endeavor that we put our hand to.

Families, our individuals, our extended families, our churches, our businesses, our civil governments, and our culture as well. Well, now this really should never have escaped the mind of the church. After all, we’re told in the scriptures, even in the New Testament scriptures, we’re bringing every thought into subjection to Jesus Christ. And certainly, we think about business, we think about our families, and we think about all these things. And that means that all those thoughts, what we put our minds to, what we put our hands to do, should be governed by the law of Jesus Christ and his government.

So, it’s appropriate then that we consider these Old Testament offices to see them not strictly in the context of the institutional church. It is said of the time that is coming upon us that there should be upon the bells of the horses written “Holiness unto the Lord” and “The pots in the Lord’s house shall be like the bowls before the altar.”

We stand at a time where that is true, where we should be more and more seeing ourselves riding holy unto the Lord and to everything that we do—to the very little tiny bells that at that time were on the horses or upon the dressings for the horses or upon the pots in our kitchens. All these things should be seen as holy unto the Lord and governed by the government of Jesus Christ, the advent of his visible government we celebrate at this time at Christmas time.

Now hopefully also that means that as we go through some of these Old Testament offices, this will be helpful to us not just in evaluating what sort of church government we should have at Reformation Covenant Church, what is an elder and what is a deacon. Certainly that’s important, but these Old Testament offices should show us much more about government in general as applied in the old covenant community.

And so as we go through these offices, I hope that these things that we talk about will be helpful to you, not just in terms of thinking about the church, but in thinking about your families and thinking about your extended families and in thinking about how you govern your businesses as well. I think it should be possible for all those reasons.

Now, some might ask, why should we study government at all? Okay, there is government. We do have laws and everything, but why should we actually get into studying it at all? Well, it’s important to recognize that what Jesus Christ came to do was to restore us to a position that we had lost through the fall. What was that position? The original creation mandate. Well, it tells us in Genesis 1:26:

“And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and said unto them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’”

We see in this verse we are made in the image of God and one of the aspects of the image of God that are extremely important that we understand is the exercise of dominion over the created order that God has given to us. That is the very purpose for our being here in the scheme of God’s ordering of all things in the universe. We’re here to exercise dominion, to exercise government over ourselves and over all these other areas we’ve talked about and indeed over the whole world.

Government then is a subject that is appropriate for not just people who are going to be engaged in specific spheres of government but for all of us. Man and woman are created to exercise dominion. Woman to help the man in that task of exercising government in the world. That is our call before God and that’s the calling that Jesus Christ came to earth to put us in right relationship to God to effect. He calls us back or restores us to that cultural or dominion mandate to exercise government in all things that we do. So it is extremely important to study government and how it applies to what we do.

One might ask then why do we study the scriptural perspective of government? After all in our day and age, the common thing with government is to look at ways other nations do things, the ways other churches do them. I thought about this a lot this last week. To study the Old Testament offices is not an easy thing to accomplish. And certainly I think in most churches, many people would think why we need to study government. “All our church has always done things this way and so why don’t we just continue doing them that way?”

This is convenient. This makes sense to me after all to do things this way. But the scriptures tell us that there’s a real problem with things that make sense to us. The scriptures tell us that in spite of our original calling by God to exercise dominion, we fell from that calling. We rejected the word of God in our covenant federal head Adam and we fell into unrighteousness and unwise ways of thinking that appear righteous to us and yet are unwise before God.

A brief look at some of the statements in Proverbs. Keith last week talked about the importance of wisdom and obedience. And certainly Proverbs tells us how to be wise in God’s sight. We’re told in Proverbs 3:5 for instance: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes, fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.”

It’s our health to look not to our own wisdom, but to look to the scriptures, to God’s word. Proverbs 13:13-14:

“Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed. But he that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded, blessings and cursings. If we attempt to exercise government based upon our own common sense, we’ll incur the wrath of God. The law of the wise is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death.”

There are snares of death in attempting to discern things on the basis of our own understanding of how the world works. Proverbs 22:17-19:

“Bow down thine ear and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge. For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee. They shall without be fitted in thy lips, that thy trust may be in the Lord. I have made known to thee this day, even to thee. Have I not written to thee excellent things and counsels and knowledge?”

And then finally Proverbs 30:5:

“Every word of God is pure. The word pure there means refined. It is no dross in it as it were. It’s completely refined. It is pure gold to us. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.”

And finally in Proverbs 16:25:

“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

There’s a way that seems right to us and how he should govern things, and what might work in our families and what might work in our businesses and in our country. But the scriptures tell us that the way that seems right unto a man, the ends thereof are the ways of death. Our ways are fallen. The scriptures tell us in Romans 1 that man in his unregenerate position before God suppresses or holds down the truth of God in unrighteousness.

How is the truth of God communicated? It’s communicated through revelation both generally and specifically in the scriptures. And so, our common trend will be to suppress that truth, to suppress the communication that God has given us. And that’s why the unregenerate hates the word of God and will not turn to the word of God or his direction for anything. He is overt about his rejection of God’s word and suppressing it and holding it down.

However, within our churches, we don’t have people being quite so forthright about it. There the attempt is not to necessarily challenge the authority of the word of God, although that is happening with more and more frequency in our churches. But in the churches, the tendency is to ignore the word of God. When we decide to make decisions about church government or about counseling in terms of economics, we ignore the clear teaching of God’s word. We won’t challenge the authority of it because we’re supposedly Bible-believing Christians. But we’ll ignore it and not turn to the detailed study of God’s word which requires hard work and application for us.

Having said that, we are not going to do that. We’re going to pay attention to what the word of God says. There’s one final way to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness, to hold down that communication of God: not simply by challenging it or ignoring it. The final way to do it is to study God’s word and then not to do it. And of course, the scriptures tell us that is a great temptation to us—to look into the law of God, forget what we see therein, and go out to our own ways.

So, we’re going to be going through a lot of instruction. We’re going to study God’s word. We’re not going to challenge it. We’re not going to ignore it. But, it’s going to be important we emphasize that we have to do these things. It does us no good to study them and not put them in practice. And it’s important, as I said, to recognize that sin does easily beset us, as we read in Hebrews 10, and that our tendency will be to reject God’s word, either through ignoring it or through failing to apply it once we’ve studied it.

So, we should study the scriptures to determine the correct perspective of government.

Having said that, question might be, why study the Old Testament? After all, we’re going to spend a couple of months now in the Old Covenant at the various offices over the Old Covenant. Why should we do that? We have a New Testament after all and that’s enough for us. It tells us the churches should have elders and deacons. Let’s just have them and get to work on this thing. What does it mean elders and deacons?

Now certainly there are indications in the New Covenant as to what an elder is and his proper function as a deacon. But almost everybody would acknowledge the fact that the New Testament church basically assumed the structure of the synagogue system that was handed to them from the Old Covenant community. After all, Jesus didn’t come as some kind of new God. He came as the same God who gave his law on Mount Sinai. And he came to give, to renew that law and to create righteousness in his people through his imputed righteousness to us—a right standing with God—that we may walk in obedience to the law.

He came to fulfill the law, to put it in effect and to empower us with the Holy Spirit so that we may obey it. So we have one word from God and it would be the epitome of foolishness to take the tail end of that book—the last third of that book—in isolation from the first two-thirds of that book and to try to study things out and claim we can get to some kind of good understanding based solely on the new covenant.

I didn’t plan this, but even in the scriptures we read this morning about in Acts where it talks about the tribes and the rule of the tribes and the kings and the prophets and the judges—those things you simply cannot understand them unless you study the Old Testament to understand what he’s talking about. What was that succession of governments that led to the coming of the great high priest, the great prophet Jesus Christ, and the true king of kings? You have to study the Old Testament to understand those things.

And so, we’re going to do that. It’s also true that our covenant statement that we’re in the midst of studying of course tells us that there’s basic continuity between the covenants. The discontinuity that exists between the new covenant and the old covenant is one of amplification, of increased blessings upon those who walk in obedience to God. The great king has come. The great covenant mediator has come and effected all these things and put us in right relationship to God once for all.

And so the discontinuity that exists is simply an amplification of blessings. So there’s basic continuity. And so to understand government, to understand government in our churches and our businesses, we must look to the Old Testament, which we will do.

So, let’s turn to the Old Testament and think about some of these things that we talked about. We’ll turn just a minute to the passage in scripture in Joshua that we looked at this morning. But it’s important before we turn to that to get the background of those offices. It’s important to recognize the family context of the old covenant offices.

Now, we know that there are various ways of dividing up the scriptures to look at the history of redemption throughout the ages. We know that we could start, I suppose, the institutional government in terms of Abraham. So certainly want to start with Adam, but there we don’t have a lot of details in terms of specific offices. So we’ll start with the time of Abraham. Then from Abraham to the time of Moses there’s a patriarchal system of government in place where we have various heads of households.

From the time of Moses there are various other offices instituted by Moses, but it’s important there to recognize, as we’ll see in a few weeks, that isn’t some sort of great cleavage either. He builds on what was there prior to him. After the time of Moses in the wilderness, we then have the organization of the covenant community in a specific geographical location in Canaan. And so there we have some more developments to the government of the old covenant community.

And then finally, of course, we can see at the coming of Jesus Christ and the expansion of the kingdom of God over the whole face of the world, an evolution, if you want to look at it that way, of these offices into the old covenant community. But it’s important to recognize the basic continuity here that we’ll see. And so we’re going to start then by looking at some of the things—the offices of Abraham and of the time of Moses and then into the wilderness time and then also into the time of Canaan by looking at some specific offices.

But it’s important to recognize the background for all of that is the family. And when we say it’s the family, it’s important to recognize that’s not necessarily the same thing as saying the family today. When we think of the word family today, we think of what people call the nuclear family where you’ve got a single head of household and his wife and a couple of children perhaps. Now I guess in the last few years that’s even being redefined as to what a family is, and I guess only I think I saw one statistic where maybe 17% of the people fit that traditional model of the nuclear family, which is not the traditional model of course—it is a winnowing down, as it were, of the extended family that this country we had originally.

But it’s important to recognize that in the United States today, we have a sense of rugged individualism. The individual is all important and the family in isolation from the rest of its relatives is seen as the family unit. The scriptures weren’t like that. However, in the time of the Old Covenant community in the Old Testament, we don’t see the family in that sense. And you have to be very careful how you read the references to family in the Old Covenant.

Just as an example, last week we talked on Micah 5, and it talked about Bethlehem. This is the place Jesus Christ was going to come from, and it says that Bethlehem was too little to be numbered among the clans of Judah. That’s one translation. Another translation is that Bethlehem was too little to be numbered among the thousands of Judah. And the word actually there that she uses means thousands but it’s translated clan. Well, that gives you some idea of the structure of the family.

And it’s important to when we understand to understand properly these verses that we understand the structure of the family. Now in Israel in the covenant community, the basic unit was the family, but as I said, it wasn’t the nuclear family. And I’m going to, by the way, as we go through this study, be using some Hebrew words here. And I don’t do that trying to demonstrate any kind of knowledge of Hebrew. All I did this last week was use lexicon studies to develop some of my understandings of some of these words. But it’s important to look at these words because the words are rather distinctive in terms of what they’re talking about.

And a lot of times the translations tend to mix up these terms and use the same word to translate them. The original basic family unit in the covenant community in the old covenant was the Beth Ab. Beth, or Bethlehem—house. Remember we said Bethlehem is House of Bread. Beth means house and ab is a shortened form of abba, in the new testament where we know that our spirit cries out “Abba Father” and that’s what abba means—father. Beth ab means the house of the father. That’s the basic family unit in the old covenant.

But the house of the father was not, as I said, the nuclear family. It was rather a man with his children, with any of the people that the children would marry, and with those children as well. It was an extended family. In other words, the individual husband and wife were not seen in isolation. The basic unit that’s talked about in the scriptures repeatedly is the Beth, the house of the father, which would include the head of the household and his wife and then the sons and the daughters, the people that the sons would marry, and their children.

Now, this isn’t really foreign to us. We just don’t think of it that way. Most of us this Christmas time spent time with our extended families. And for instance, my wife and I went over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to her relatives’ house where her father was there and his three children and their respective families. And when you think of that gathering together, what you might have gone through at the same time at Christmas time, that’s the basic unit of the old covenant community.

The family was seen as an extended family encompassing all these other people. Over that unit there would be an elder. Okay. And the Hebrew word there is zekanim, elders. The elders we read about throughout the old covenant. We’ll get into this more in detail in the next few weeks. But those elders normally are spoken of as heads over these houses of the fathers, these extended families. They would have an elder over them.

That extended family would be lumped in with another unit at another level. When Micah 5 said that Bethlehem was too small to be numbered among the clans of Judah, we have to understand the clan was a thousand or a larger group. These be’s, these houses of the fathers, would come together at yearly times or for various times for various festivals or feasts or sacrifices to form a clan.

And so for instance in 1 Samuel 20:6 and 29 David says that if your father asks where I’m going tell him that our family is going to have a time of sacrifice someplace, and when he used the word family there the word there is mishpaha which means a clan. He didn’t refer even not to the nuclear family nor to the clan family but rather not to the house of the father but now he’s referring to the clan which is a large collection of people. You have for instance my wife again—we’re using our family as an example. My wife’s father, Mr. Nielsen, he has various brothers and sisters throughout the land and if those people came together for a big family reunion which occurs in some families, that would be a gathering of the clan and we have that usage somewhat in our terms today.

It’s important to recognize though that was a specific organization of the family apart from the house of the father, the extended family. Now you’ve got your clan which is a larger gathering of people and over the clan there are also heads, and now we’re not talking about elders necessarily—now we’re talking about a head of, or a chief. Sometimes the word is used prince. There are various Hebrew words that are used to designate this head of this clan. Sar is one word meaning ruler.

Another word that’s very interesting that’s used to speak of the head of the clan is Aloph, which comes from that same word that’s found in Micah 5 referring to the clan of Judah, thousands. The word Aloph apparently has its origins in the Hebrew word for thousand. And so a head of a thousand would be head of a clan. That doesn’t necessarily mean to be a thousand members of that clan, but roughly it’s a larger group than just the extended family that we spoke of.

So there’s whole set of officers, as it were, over that particular organization of the family and then finally those clans when considered together form tribes and we have the 12 tribes of Israel. A tribe then it’s a gathering of the clans altogether and the clans can be seen in terms of an organization under a head. Again now there’s some question as to what that head was. One word that is used specifically to speak of the heads of the tribes in Numbers 7:2 is Nasi, or prince, again, but it’s a specific Hebrew word that’s used there to speak of the head of this tribe.

And the word there for tribe, by the way, is there are two different words used—mata and shevet. Both those things mean a rod or a staff or a scepter. And so a tribe is not simply a physical lineage back to an individual. It is a group of clans all who have a common ruler or scepter over them. And that’s where the name of the tribe comes from—scepter, staff, rulers. We talked about a few weeks ago when we talked about rod of authority.

So these divisions are very important to keep in mind as we go through the old covenant offices: the extended family, the basic division, the clan, and then the tribe beyond that.

If you turn in your scriptures to Joshua 7:14, we have a specific example of this. The context is the sin of Achan. And they have to find out what has happened to the nation here that suffered defeat for the first time. And God gives him instructions. In the morning then you shall come near by your tribes. Okay, that’s the big group there, the tribe. “And it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes by lot shall come near by families.”

And see, now here’s an example where we have clan actually, or thousands, translated as families. So it can be very confusing. I’m reading the New American Standard Version. But that second division down is this clan we talked about or thousands. “And the family which the Lord takes shall come near by households.” And the household is the beth, the house of the father, the extended family.

Okay, first the tribe comes forward. They pick out which tribe. Next the clans come forward. They pick out which clan the person who has the sin is in. The households come forward, the extended families, and they pick out the specific person who did the sin from them and “the household which the Lord takes shall come near man by man.”

Now that’s interesting isn’t it? That from the extended family to the individual there’s no grouping like we have today in nuclear family. There’s nothing like that in this passage of scripture. You go right from the extended family, the beth of the house, the father to the individual.

Now, if you think I’m playing with words here, I’m not. If you want to, it’s easy to understand how this will apply because then in verse 16, Joshua does just this. He brings forth the tribes. And it says in verse 17, he brought the family—excuse me, verse 16—”he brought Israel near by tribes and the tribe of Judah was taken.” Or indicated somehow. “And he brought the family of Judah near.”

So, this family of Judah. He brought the tribes then of Judah near, okay? And the various clans. “And he took the family of the Zerahites.” And so Judah had underneath itself various clans. And one clan was headed by the lineage of Zarah or the Zerahites. “And he brought the family of the Zerahites near man by man. And Zimri was taken.”

Okay. So now we know that the head, the beth, the house of the father that the person who sin belonged to was Zimri. And he brought this house over near man by man. “And Achan son of Carmi son of Zabdi son of Zerah from the tribe of Judah was taken.”

And we see there that Achan, the specific individual that committed the sin, was the son of Carmi who was the son of Zabdi. And both Carmi and Achan and then later we find out that Achan had children as well, and his children were all of the house of the father that was indicated here of Zimri. So the small division before the individual was Zimri and that Zimri was head of a whole extended family of which Achan was an individual member. And that shows practically working out the organization of the families that is talked about in the old covenant.

Now at this point you may be saying well that’s very interesting and maybe one of these days I’ll understand it and it’s a little complicated but if you keep that Joshua 7 passage in mind and continue to refer to it to help your own remembrance of this organization of the families you’ll understand. And if we do understand it, what implication does it have for us? I’ll just give you one example now. We’ll give you many more as we go through this study.

But in Numbers 11:16, God tells Moses to select 70 of the elders with their officers to come to Moses. And these 70 earlier had communion as it were with Moses and they ate a meal before God. And now the 70—God takes the spirit of Moses and puts it upon each of these 70 heads or elders that are brought forth with Moses to receive the spirit that they might share in the governance or government of the old covenant community.

So it relates to government. Now it’s interesting if you look at the genealogies of Numbers 26, we have a specific census taken there and you see the 12 tribes and actually you see 14 tribes listed there at that time and underneath that you see the clans. There are 58 clans. Okay, tribes, clans, households. There are 58 clans. There are 12 tribal heads. And so the 70 elders that were selected to go with Moses to receive the spirit of Moses have a direct link to the specific organization of the old covenant community in the wilderness at the time.

Okay? That organization of the family. And what I’m saying is it’s important to interpret properly the 70 to have the spirit of God taken from Moses and put upon them. You have to understand the division of the tribes and the clans and then respectively the households. And when we get to a specific discussion of the elders and the judges and other offices, we’ll see more application of the necessity to understand this tribal organization of Israel.

That’s by way of background. Also, by way of background, I’ll give you now the various offices we’ll be talking about over the next month or two. We’ll obviously be talking about Levites, priests, prophets, and kings. Those are a rather obvious necessity to study those out and get some sort of idea of what they were under the old covenant community. There are four other officers, however, four other sources of government, however, that we will also be studying.

And now, if you turn back to Joshua 23, we began this morning the passage of scripture. And Joshua at this time is old and he brings forward Israel. He calls for all Israel. And it’s important to recognize here that Israel at this time was several million people. He didn’t call for all the people to come before him—he couldn’t hear him probably if he did. But how are they represented? They’re represented by four groups.

Verse two: “Joshua called for all Israel and for their elders and for their heads and for their judges and for their officers.” Four specific offices here spoken of the time of Joshua now in the land by which the whole of Israel is governed or ruled as it were through the mechanism that God had provided. We will be studying each of these four offices over the next few weeks.

One of these offices—well, actually two of these officers are judges and officers where it says he calls for the elders, heads, judges, and officers. Judges and officers are specifically told—we’re told in Deuteronomy 16:18—that in each of the places that they go into inhabit in Canaan, they were to appoint judges and officers.

Now, that’s very important. We’ll discuss those offices in more detail later. A judge is a rather obvious thing. What is an officer, however? An officer, a shoter here or a shoter, was an individual apparently who kept ecclesiastical records. He kept other things like that. We’ll also see more functions that he had in future weeks in terms of also selecting people for combat in terms of fighting or not and calling people into fighting and giving them marching instructions as it were.

At this point in time, I mean, I don’t want to make any strong statements here, but I do think that there is reason to study out the relationship that the officers had to the judges and to the Levites to the modern-day equivalent of deacons to the office of elders. The shoter, the officers, would be appointed in every town in which they went into in the promised land, and they were appointed in conjunction with judges. They might be thought of as clerks of court. That may be another useful way to think of a shoter. And we’ll talk about it in more detail in following weeks.

We’ll spend one whole week talking about each of these four offices. But it’s important to recognize there’s two of the offices. There are judges and officers or clerks of the court. Additionally, there are rosh—here is the word used for head. And that word is a little more complicated to deal with. It means princes or heads of the people somehow. It various times refers to combat heads—people who headed them up going into combat or other matters.

There are words—sar is a generalized term. It in it encompasses the sar which we talked about before, or the Aloph, which were the heads of the clans. The heads of the clans were rosh—as it were part of that general group. And so we have to understand that particular office as well in the old covenant if we’re going to understand the representation of the people of Israel in these four offices.

And then finally the fourth office that’s called forward to come to Joshua is the elders of the people. He calls for their heads, their judges, their officers and also their elders. And we talked before that Zakanim, the elders, were those men that ruled over the extended families. Those were elders by and large.

Now, those are the offices we’ll be looking over again: Levites, priests, prophets, and kings. And then these four offices in Joshua 23. So, if you remember Joshua 7 for the division of the families into the groups and then remember Joshua 23 to help you understand the various offices we’ll be talking about in terms of the four that represented Israel at the time, you’ll have a basic thrust of what we’ll be talking about for the next couple of months.

And what we’ll be doing specifically basically is looking at each of these offices of the old covenant and how they relate to how their functions change as we go from a patriarchal system into the wilderness and then into Canaan. And on the basis of that we have a good understanding about how the people of God were governed at the time of the coming of our Lord and the establishment of the church which then takes over that organization and reduces the offices down to two—elders and deacons.

There’s a continuity involved there. To understand this, we have to understand where it came from. To understand the old covenant offices, we have to understand the old covenant tribal structure and we’re going to be doing that and making reference to that over the next two weeks.

Having said that, finally, I just want to touch this morning again by way of introduction to this whole series—that’s all we’re really doing this morning—is to stress again the importance of the family in this whole structure. The elders, the zakanim, which are many more elders of course than there were princes and there were judges or officers. There were many elders. There was an elder over every clan, or every—not over every clan rather but every—over every household. Elders were many in number and they had many functions and we see in the scriptures then a continuity from the beginning of the covenant period from the book of Genesis itself with the establishment or the existence of elders up to the new covenant community and the call to appoint elders in every city.

We see a continuity of office in eldership. Now it’s not the only office. These other offices will help us understand the new covenant elder. But there is basic continuity in eldership. And it’s important of course to recognize that the word elder comes from a family term meaning the oldest person in the family or the oldest servant in the family who is exercising a function within the family.

The elder term then reinforces to us the idea that families are extremely important for the government of God’s community. Eldership—and we’ll see this over the weeks to come—the elders were the source of material from which these other officers were drawn. Okay? The heads of the households were the basic pool of men from which all these other officers were formed. And it’s important as we as we pointed out several weeks ago to recognize in this church that we all are elders in a sense. That we all are heads of households today.

Now, it’s important to recognize also some people believe in the old covenant the term elder itself was used of every household head. And I think it actually has its root words in a word meaning one who has a beard. I’m not saying you have to have a beard to be an elder in this church, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt if that’s what the term is. But it is important to recognize the importance of the family in all this.

The importance for men to see that we’re all called to the qualifications of elder. We’re all called to govern our families, aren’t we? And we read in the qualifications for elder that the man must be a head over his household, presiding as it were over the troops that God had given it into his care. It’s important to recognize that.

It’s interesting that the very first use of the term in terms of an office is in Genesis 24 where Abraham takes his eldest servant and assigns him the task of going and getting a wife for his son. And if you look at the Septuagint how it translates Genesis 24, it translates the word “eldest servant” as the continuity with the office of the synagogue and with that original officer that Abraham appointed to take charge of a very important task for him. We’ll get more into elders later on, but it’s important to recognize the importance of the family and to recognize that as we go through all these offices, these things are vital for the men of this church particularly to understand and to begin to apply in their households.

We are called to exercise govern our households and the family is extremely important.

To that end, I’d remind you that three or four weeks ago, we passed out sheets dealing with the qualifications of elders. And if you’ve lost your sheet by now or don’t have your sheet, ask me for a new one and I’ll give you a new one. There’s a set of three sheets with 21 qualifications. And I’m going to stress throughout this series for the next couple three months that the men of the church continue to make reference to those list of qualifications, continue to judge themselves by it, and continue to set marks for yourself—or goals for yourself—to aim to.

And it’s indeed important also the younger men in our church, the boys in our church who are loyal, to be men. See those qualifications as things that they eventually will be called to exercise before God, the function of elder in their household or in their clan. I wanted to close this morning by giving an example of the importance of the family and of the biblical context of the family or the biblical sense of a true family and the importance of the family to how a nation lives its lives.

Now, this is a very strange story for most of us because we live in a day of isolated families and of rugged individuals and the nuclear family. We live in a day where we want to make our own decisions about everything that we do. The story I’m going to read now from the scriptures is quite different from that. But hopefully what the point of the story is to invigorate you to establish these sort of households in your family, to establish the authority of the father, your zealousness for God in your family and thereby to bring about obedience of your offspring from now through the success of generations as well.

In 2 Kings 10:15, we read that Jehu, who was on his way to give Baal worshippers their just deserts, I guess is one way to think of that. And he was on his way to execute a number of Baal worshippers. He comes across a man named Jonadab. And on his way to doing this thing, he asked Jonadab, he says, “Why don’t you come with me and see the zeal of the Lord?” Jonadab was a historical personage at the time of Jehu the judge. And Jonadab was zealous for God. And so Jehu took along Jonadab with him to witness the zeal of the Lord and executing God’s wrath upon the Baal worshippers and upon the officers and the servants of Baal. Jonadab was a zealous man for God and that’s why Jehu took him along.

Now in Jeremiah 35, we have an interesting account of a number of men. It’s important to keep in mind as we look at Jeremiah 35 that this occurred 250 years roughly after the time of Jonadab, 250 years have passed. Jeremiah the prophet is chastising the people of God for their disobedience to God. And God tells Jeremiah to gather a family known as the Rechabites and to bring them into the house of the Lord into one of the chambers and give them wine to drink. And so Jeremiah does what he’s told. He goes out, he gets the Rechabites. He brings them into the chamber and he has the men of the house of Rechabites bring forward pitchers full of wine and cups. In Jeremiah 35:5. And he gets an interesting response from this group of people that by the way have lived in the desert to this time but now have been driven into the populated areas because of the advancing troops against them.

The Rechabites say: “We will not drink wine for Jonadab the son of Rechab commanded us saying you shall not drink wine, you nor your sons forever. And you shall not build a house, and you shall not sow seed, and you shall not plant a vineyard or own one, but in tents you shall dwell all your days, that you might live many days in the land where you sojourn.”

Drop these Rechabites—for these Rechabites have been living for 250 years now in obedience to the commands of Jonadab, the household that they were associated themselves with. And look at the commands they were obeying here. There are commands that we today would have said ridiculous. Don’t you know that wine is given us for pleasure? God wants us to drink wine and be merry. Don’t you know that cities are a good thing? We exercise dominion. Don’t you know that plants are important to grow for food and whatnot? And you can’t just live off other types of food. You have to grow crops and so nourish yourselves that way.

Those are some things that we might have responded to with the Rechabites, for 250 years honored their father Jonadab by obeying all these things that he had commanded them to do. Now, we may think that Jeremiah the prophet of God here would bring his wrath upon these people for doing such a foolish thing, but that’s not what happens at all. And you get a clue that not what happens well. They tell us here that they’ve been obeying these things under the command of their father. And he told us that you may live many days in the land where you sojourn. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The first commandment of the promise is to honor your father and your mother, that your days will be long in the land in which you go. He called them to honor him by walking in obedience to commands which were very difficult and they had honored him for 250 years in obedience to the command of God. Now God uses the Rechabites in this passage to bring the people of Israel to shame.

Verse 13: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, go and say to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, will you not receive instruction by listening to my words? The words of Jonadab, the son of Rechab, which he commanded his sons not to drink wine, are observed. They obeyed their father. For 250 years, they’ve been obeying in that household. They do not drink wine to this day, for they have obeyed their father’s command. But I have spoken to you again and again, yet you have not listened to me.”

Verse 16: “Indeed, the sons of Jonadab, the son of Rechab, have observed the command of their father, which he commanded them. But this people have not listened to me.” So he uses the Rechabites as an indictment against the people of Israel because they didn’t listen to him with these people listen for 250 years. Well, maybe that means he just sort of use them as an object lesson. But no, he rewards them in verse 19.

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Jonadab, the son of Rechab, shall not lack a man to stand before me always.”

And why? Because of verse 18: “Thus says the Lord God of hosts, because you have obeyed the command of Jonadab your father and kept all his commands and done according to all that he commanded you, you obey him. I’m honoring you for him. I’m honoring him because of your obedience and because of your obedience and the family that Jonadab built and the dynasty, if you want to look at it that way, of his descendants who served God zealously and demonstrated their obedience to God’s commands—to honor their father and their mother by abstaining from things which are lawful in and of themselves, yet they did it to honor their father.

God then rewards that entire household by saying that the son of Jonadab shall not lack a man to stand before me always.