Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Exodus 18:13-27

The 18th chapter, verses 13-27. Exodus 18:13-27.

And it came to pass on the morrow that Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood by Moses from the morning until the evening. When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he did to the people, he said, “What is this thing that thou doest to the people? Why sittest thou thyself alone and all the people stand by thee from morning unto evening?” And Moses said unto his father-in-law, “Because the people come unto me to inquire of God. When they have a matter, they come unto me, and I judge between one and another, and I do make known to them the statutes of God and his laws.”

And Moses’ father-in-law said unto him, “The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou surely wilt wear away, both thou and this people that is with thee. For this day is too heavy for thee. Thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. Hearken thou unto my voice. I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee. Be thou for the people to Godward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God, and thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt show them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do.

Moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers of thousands and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And let them judge the people at all seasons. And it shall be that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge, so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.

If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people shall also go to their place in peace.”

Moses hearkened to the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he had said. And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And they judged the people at all seasons. The hard causes they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves. And Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went his way into his own land.

Let’s pray.

Almighty God, we thank you for your scriptures. We pray now, Lord God, that you would help us to understand this passage of scripture to the end that we would walk and work in obedience to it. Help us, Father, to know your statutes and ordinances and your laws this morning regarding government. Help us, Lord God, thereby to learn better how to govern our families, our churches, and our nation and state as well. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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This is the fourth Sunday, the fourth sermon in our series of talks relating to the offices of the Old Testament leading up to a consideration of government in the church. We began some time ago with passing out sheets listing the qualifications for elder in the New Testament. We talked about the fact that these were qualifications that were, by and large, in lesser or greater degrees required of all heads of households—certainly, and indeed most of them are required of all God’s people.

And so at that time we encouraged you to use those sheets as we go over the next couple of months’ worth of study of offices and government in church and in the family and in our state and nation.

And I told you last week we’d have hands this week as to which men had gone over those things this last week. So if you took those qualification sheets for eldership and looked at them this week in some way, could you raise your hands now, please? Raise them high, please. Okay. We’ll be doing this for the next few weeks. So I would encourage you to read them this week, to look at them somewhat, to begin to meditate upon those qualifications and the meaning of them in your own household so that you’d walk in obedience to them.

And we’ll be reminding you every week by having you raise your hands if you’ve done that.

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Secondly, in our second talk, we talked about a general overview of Old Testament offices, and we used several passages of scripture there as reminder passages for us. Joshua 7 gives us the overall scheme of the structure of the family and of the people in the wilderness and as they came out of Egypt. And Joshua 7 deals with, of course, the sin of Achan.

And it shows how the sin was discovered, and in that process it teaches us that there are basically three levels of organization to the covenant community in the wilderness. We had the tribes—of course there were twelve tribes. Beyond the tribes we had clans, which were large groups of related people having a head over them. The clans numbered fifty-eight according to the census in the book of Numbers. And those fifty-eight clans plus the twelve tribes made seventy large groups of people.

And that accounts for the reason why we had seventy men.

Last week we talked about sharim, or officers, over the people. Then below the clan is the Beth Av, or the house of the father, and the house of the father consists of the father of course and then his descendants and their descendants and families as well. It’s an extended family—that’s the way to think of the house of the father.

Beyond that, there’s no mention in Scripture of the nuclear family—at least in terms of this organizational pattern. There’s no mention of the nuclear family as such—man, wife, small children, nuclear family that we have today—though that certainly has ramifications for us.

We also tried to point out that the fact that we have seventy large groups of people, clans and tribes, is a sign of God’s blessing upon the people that he gave them in the land of Egypt. They went into Egypt seventy souls. They came out seventy clans and tribes. God had multiplied them, and that was the blessing of God upon them.

We also looked at Joshua 23 and looked at the representation of the people there before Joshua, consisting of four offices: elders, heads, judges, and officers. And we were going to use those four designations of representatives of the people as our outline for the next few weeks.

Last week we talked about officers. Today we’ll be talking about judges. Next week we’ll have a special service of vigil in commemoration of the Roe v. Wade decision of the Supreme Court regarding abortion. But the following week we’ll be considering the office of the position of elder, and then following that heads. So those four groups in Joshua 23 are among the four general classes of offices in the Old Testament, the organizational pattern in the wilderness we’ll be looking at.

Additionally, of course, in the future weeks we’ll be talking about prophets, priests, and kings as well as Levites.

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Then last week we got specific in terms of the officers themselves. We talked a lot about the sharim. That’s the Hebrew word. We use that word because “officers” doesn’t really say much. We’re talking about officers and these are officers. And the word sharim is translated a couple of different ways in the scriptures. So it’s a little more convenient to use the Hebrew word in that particular case, which is sharim, that comes from a root word meaning “to write”—by the way.

And we talked about the fact that in Deuteronomy 1, in the middle of Deuteronomy 1, we have a historical recounting of the institution of offices and organization in the covenant community in the wilderness. And we have two events being put together—or one event, or at least that’s my understanding at this point in time.

In Exodus 18, which we’re looking at this morning, we’ll be talking about judges and we see that process in Exodus 18 ending up with tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands—judges over people.

And in Numbers 11, we have the selection of seventy men to assist Moses in the administration of the people. Remember, those seventy men had to be sharim already. They had to be pre-existent officers, as it were, in order to be those officers who would assist Moses in the administration of the people.

And then we trace the development of the office of the sharim throughout the wilderness, of course, then into the land and its use as well with the kings and the various tribes. And we found out there—as Keith Bahnsen suggested—is that one way to think of them is as the executive part of the government. They were administrators and they were to assist the chief magistrate certainly, and they assisted Moses. They assisted Joshua in his preparation in Joshua 1, and then later on they also assisted the kings. They were also however assistants to the judges.

And these two offices—judges and sharim officers—are mentioned specifically in Deuteronomy 16:18 as being perpetual officers when they go into the land. God said, “Appoint officers and judges in each of your towns.” So the assistance also to the judges themselves [was] decentralized throughout the land.

I might mention there that we’ll talk more about this in future weeks, but Gillespie in his classic book *Aaron’s Rod Blossoming* mentions the sharim and suggests that perhaps one of their specific functions was the writing of sentences. Once the judge made a judicial decision, they would assist in the writing of sentences and then carry the sentences out with the people in terms of whatever the requirements were. They would assist in the writing of those judicial decisions. That’s certainly one of their functions, but basically they were in ministry.

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That brings us to today. We’re going to discuss today Exodus 18 and talk about the selection of judges. This office is of course somewhat more familiar to us than the office of sharim or administrators, and particularly in terms of the church. We tried to point out last week some definite correlations between the sharim and the collection of deacons in the new covenant and new covenant church.

We’ll talk more about that in future weeks. I’m not necessarily saying there’s a one-to-one correspondence, but I think that some of the administrative functions handled by the officers in the old covenant, the sharim, are fulfilled primarily through the selection of deacons in the churches.

Also, it’s rather obvious that the selection of judges under the old covenant has a correlation in the New Testament in the judicial function of the eldership in churches. And we’ll talk more about that in a couple of minutes, but it’s a little bit more familiar office to us.

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Now, judgment is familiar to us because in a world, in a fallen world such as we live in, strife and disputes among people are inevitable. Although the western man attempts to be individualistic, attempts to see himself as an island unto himself in isolation from other people, yet practically speaking that is impossible in our world.

God has created us to have relationships with other people. And those relationships, because of the fall, will often produce strife and dispute among us. And so there’s always a need—a pre-existing need—for judging, for judgments to be rendered, for judicial decisions to occur either informally or in a formal sense. And that’s certainly true in our nation. We’re always going to have law breakers. We’re always going to have disputes come up between people, similar disputes among various concerning various things.

It’s certainly true in the state of Oregon. We’re going to have disputes among people. There’s a need for judgment.

It’s also true, of course, in our families. We have disputes within our families. If we have children, if we have even just the husband or wife disputes, there’s a need for official actions there as well, although more informally speaking.

Well, this is no less true, of course, in the church. The church is a covenant community because we’re a group of people. We’re going to have problems amongst various people. There’s going to be sin and then there’s going to be other disputes that just come about as a result of two individuals both seeking to interpret something in their own way. Disputes and strife that are inevitable. And so judgment is inevitable.

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This was also true, of course, of Israel in the wilderness. And Exodus 18, the passage we just read, begins with the pre-existing condition of strife and disputes in the covenant community and the need for judicial decisions. When Jethro arrives and meets up with the covenant people as they’re coming into Sinai, he sees this pre-existing condition and he sees how it’s been being handled so far and then gives some instructions to Moses, which are good, godly instructions.

And Moses instructs—or rather Jethro instructs Moses—that if he does these things that God will be with him and bless him. And that’s certainly the case. And so in Deuteronomy 1, when this retelling of the selection of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands occurs again, it’s a verification out of God’s own word that it’s his structure that he has used Jethro to instruct Moses in. So it’s confirmed as being God’s instruction.

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Now, it’s interesting here that Jethro’s solution doesn’t involve specifically or at least overtly family heads. By that I mean, what Jethro could have done is he could have said, “Well, listen, you know, they have these family groups. They now have the Beth Av, the house of the father. Have them take a lot of these judicial decisions.” He doesn’t do that, and there’s lots of reasons why I think. But one thing that’s important to recognize here—and we again pointed this out last week about the sharim—is there’s a transition here from a patriarchal system to an organization of a covenanted community brought together not on the basis ultimately of bloodlines but on the basis of having a common king, who is Jehovah, on the basis of having a covenant and a covenant law. Which is a transition from a family-based situation here into more of an institutional, organizational base based upon a community or a family of faith.

Now that doesn’t mean the family’s done away with. The family is certainly important as part of that function. But it does mean the family can no longer assert that it only has the right to try judicial cases.

In the same case, the sharim—there were pre-existent officers among the various families in Egypt. They told people how many bricks they had to make and they had to give the people the bad news. They didn’t have straw to make bricks anymore. They were pre-existing offices, and yet God says, “Select out these children,” and now Moses will appoint them as head over the people.

There’s a transition then from a kind of organic situation to an institutional, imposed situation by God. That’s important to notice.

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We’ll talk now then specifically about some of the qualifications required for the office of judges. We’ll talk then about the actual appointment process itself. We’ll talk a little bit about the functioning of judges and then we’ll conclude with some applications.

First, in terms of qualifications, the verses before us give us the qualifications. Of course, it’s just a matter of breaking out the words and kind of thinking through a little bit of what they mean.

I might add, by the way, that judgment is inevitable this morning. As you listen to the words that I speak this morning, you’re going to have to judge those words on the basis of scriptural content. You’re going to have to discern for yourself whether the words I speak correlate with the words that God issues in his scriptures. So judgment is inevitable, and it’s important to recognize that we all have that function, whether or not we care to exercise it in God’s fashion or not. So now, if you would consider some of these things judicially, in a judicious manner, and determine whether or not this is the truth of God’s word.

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Let’s look at the qualifications required of the judges that Moses was to appoint here. And Jethro gives us the qualifications of some of these men in the passage before us in Exodus 18 when he says to Moses in verse 21, “Thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers of thousands,” etc.

So we have there several qualifications listed by Jethro. And of course these are reaffirmed by God in his holy word here as to the qualifications for judicial officers or for judges.

**The first qualification is that they must be able men.**

Now that word “able” is also translated in other passages of scripture as “strong men,” “valiant men.” When we talk about Pharaoh’s host in the wilderness, it’s that same word here for “able men.” It’s a strong group of people. And because they’re a group, they’re strong. Wealthy men are talked about also as being valued men. I think that behind all this is the idea that these men must be men who are forceful to a certain degree. They must have some weight to what they do. They’re not to be weak men. They’re not to be impotent in that sense. They’re supposed to be strong, forceful men, valued and able to do the task set before them.

That’s of course very important. It is a requirement of course that we have strong men who can lead people. And judges are to a certain extent leaders. They have to exercise judicial actions, and they have to do so in the light of very trying cases many times and a lot of disputes that are not friendly disputes, sometimes. And judges have to be able men, forceful in the situation according to which God has given them.

**Secondly, they must fear God.**

This is a very important qualification for many things in Scripture, of course, but specifically here we are told by Jethro that he must take men such as fear God. Now, the fear of the Lord is, of course, the beginning of wisdom. And so there’s a correlation here, of course, to the wisdom that we talked about last week, being one of the requirements that’s listed in Deuteronomy 1.

And by the way, the requirements that we talked about last week in terms of sharim—pre-existent functioning before God, wisdom, understanding, these conditions, known men—they had to be known for their good actions. These are all conditions also applicable to the judges.

In Deuteronomy 1, as I said before, we have Numbers 11, the selection of the seventy. In Exodus 18, the selection of the heads of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands combined into one historical account in Deuteronomy 1. And so the qualifications listed in Deuteronomy 1 apply to both groups of men. And there’s some specific things to each side, but those are general qualifications that apply to both. And wisdom is one of those things. But the fear of the Lord here is mentioned specifically as another requirement.

Now, there’s many things in scriptures about the fear of the Lord, but I wanted just to run through a couple of verses here and show the importance of this in terms of the judicial function they’re called to do.

In Proverbs 2:5, we’re told that if one attends to the words of wisdom, the words of God’s scripture, then they shall understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. So the fear of the Lord cannot be isolated from an understanding of God’s scripture and a cleaving to it and a trying to study it out for the purpose of obeying it. So that’s an important aspect of the fear of the Lord: it’s related to the scriptures of God.

In Proverbs 8:13 rather, we read, “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride and arrogance and the evil way and the forward mouth do I hate.” If we’re going to fear God, we must hate those people and those actions that try to pervert God’s justice in the land. And so the man who fears God will hate evil, and he will hate the lying tongue and those people that are part of those actions. He will evaluate those things on the basis of God’s word, not on the basis of an understanding that we’re to judge all things on the basis of the good of the man involved necessarily.

We want to judge things on the basis of God’s righteous judgment first.

There’s a relationship between the fear of God then and a dislike, a distaste, and an actual hatred for evil, both in ourselves and in the actions that we see around us as well. It’s important that churches begin to cultivate that sense of an abhorrence of those actions in our country to God’s word.

Next week we’re going to have a service of vigil. And that’s very unusual. It’s unusual. I don’t know if anybody, any other church in this state will be doing such a thing. But it’s important that God’s people begin to understand that the Psalms instruct us specifically to sing songs that call for God’s wrath upon people that are doing things that he hates. We’re not to like those actions. We’re not to like those things when they occur in our land. And we’re to hate them. And that’s part of the fear of God.

Judges must dislike evil intensely.

We’re also told in Proverbs 23:17, “Let not thine heart envy sinners, but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long.” The fear of the Lord is a safety, is a restriction—what I’m trying to say there—that will prevent us from envying sinners. Now, you can see where that’d be particularly important for a judge. He’s going to know about a lot more sinners than most of us are going to know about as he tries judicial cases.

And if he is a person that doesn’t understand the fear of the Lord and doesn’t have it in his heart to fear God and to reverence him and to be fearful of his judgments upon him, if he doesn’t do that, then he’s going to be more likely to envy sinners, which is a sin and which would pervert justice of course and produce sin in his own life.

So the fear of the Lord is necessary for the judge also so that he can avoid envious desiring of what the sinner accomplishes in his life.

In Proverbs 14:26-27, we’re told that “In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence, and his children shall have a place of refuge. The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death.”

The fear of the Lord is important for the establishment of justice. The fear of the Lord demands individual life, establishes him and his place in the land and his calling that God has given to him. And if we’re going to establish justice in the land, the judges that God calls forth to judge his judgment upon us must have the fear of the Lord so they can be established in their own calling as well. And also the fear of the Lord produces life and escapes the snares of death.

A man who has the fear of the Lord communicates that fear and understanding of God’s requirements to the men that he judges. And in so doing, he produces life in the hearers of his words as opposed to death. To the extent that a judge does not fear the Lord, he brings about death and his councils are the councils of death in a very specific way in terms of judicial action.

So the fear of God is extremely important.

**We’re also told though that these men must also be men of truth.**

There be men such as fear God and they’re to be men of truth. Now again, the Proverbs gives us many instructions about the importance of truth. Several weeks ago I talked about one of the little catchphrases that stayed with me from my year I spent in Oklahoma Bible school—that evaluated experience is what we need and not just experience. “Experience is the best teacher.” Evaluated experience is the best teacher.

And another thing that I remember from one of the classes I had, a man who taught Greek at that school, he said it was important to tell the truth because Satan is after all the father of lies. And when we tell a lie, we in effect worship Satan. We do what he wants us to do instead of obeying God who commands us to tell the truth. And so it’s an important thing to teach our children that lies are a terrible thing and that truth is extremely important to the people of God.

It’s a manifestation of our love and our worship for God to tell truth and to be men who love truth.

In Proverbs 22:21, we read, “That I may make thee know the certainty of the words of truth that thou mightest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee.”

So here we have the instructions out of the Proverbs where to know the words of truth so that we can communicate those words of truth also to people that inquire of us. And it’s an important requirement of a person in the office of judge to know truth, to love truth, so that he can instruct people in that truth.

Proverbs 12:18 says, “There is that speaketh like the piercing of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is health. The lip of truth shall be established forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.”

We talked about that verse several weeks ago—that it’s important that we watch our tongue, that wisdom will teach us to watch our tongue and that it produces life, not death. And specifically here we’re told in verse 19 of Proverbs 12 that “The lip of truth shall be established forever.” And additionally, it’s important we’re going to establish justice in the land. And established judges, they be men whose lips are lips of truth and not lips of lies.

Proverbs 14:25 says, “A true witness delivers souls, but a deceitful witness speaketh lies.”

Proverbs 29:14, “The king that faithfully judgeth the poor, his throne shall be established forever.”

So we have the importance of faithfully judging the poor in relationship to the truth of God and that the true witness delivers souls. So truth is important in the Proverbs also in a judicial context. The king must be a king who honors truth. Witnesses must be people of truth. And so it’s an important thing as we—that we require of those men who would be appointed to offices that are primarily judicial in function that they be known as men of truth.

**Finally, we also have another qualification here, the men that hate covetousness.**

And that’s pretty straightforward. And one of the things that we should think about as we hear some of these things is that all these qualifications we’ve been talking about last week for the sharim and then this week in relationship to the judges really have very many parallels. As we pointed out last week, to that list of qualifications for the eldership.

And if you go over those lists this week, you’ll probably note a lot of those correlations between these qualifications we’ve just talked about and the qualifications given us under the new covenant church for elders and also for deacons. I won’t go over all of them here, but some of them are rather obvious in terms of, uh, the hating covetousness for instance. But a good deal more of them are correlary to one another.

There’s continuity in terms of these qualifications. For instance in the list of qualifications you have hopefully in your homes—and if you don’t have a copy, please ask me and I’ll give you a copy—we’re told that the man who is to be an elder cannot and should not be a striker. He should be patient and gentle. He should not be a brawler. And those three things all relate to the qualification we talked about last week of sharim and judges also being men of understanding.

Men of understanding of a situation and not acting unwisely. Wisdom of course produces a restraint upon our actions. That’s also talked about here. The qualification not to be given to wine for an elder is again a demonstration of wisdom or restraint in the use of alcoholic beverages. Not greedy, not a lover of filthy lucre is one of the qualifications for elder, as is not covetous. And both those things of course relate to the qualification we just mentioned that the judge must be one who hates covetousness.

There are many other correlations, and there’d be one way—if you’re thinking of a way to go over this list—to look at those qualifications that we just talked about the last two weeks of sharim or officers and judges, and then look at them and correlate them to this list here, and you’ll see many similar qualifications required.

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These qualifications are summed up for us, I think, both lists are summed up very nicely in Isaiah, the 11th chapter, verses 1-5. It’s an important verse to keep in mind whenever you think about some of these qualifications for government. In verses 1-5 we read the following:

“There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears, but with righteousness shall he judge the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.”

These things obviously are talking about the coming Messiah, our savior Jesus Christ. But the important thing I wanted to point out here is that all these various qualifications—wisdom, understanding, might, being able, fear of the Lord—all these things are manifestations not of personality traits. They’re manifestations of the spirit of God. The verse tells us in Isaiah 11, the spirit of the Lord comes upon his servant and that spirit is the spirit of wisdom, truth, the fear of the Lord, discerning and understanding.

So the things that when we go through the list for the other qualifications that we passed out and the qualifications we just talked about, we don’t want to understand them as character qualities necessarily that are somehow innately in each individual and not in others. They’re a manifestation of the spirit of God.

What we require then of officers and of judges, of elders and deacons, is that they be spirit-filled men, not manifesting fruit of the spirit that shows itself as some sort of miraculous healing or miraculous gift of tongues or something. That’s not what the Scripture tells us are qualifications. The qualifications to demonstrate whether a man is spirit-filled is: Does he exercise wisdom? Is he a man of understanding? Is he a man who fears the Lord? If he is, these things are evidences of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in that man and an enablement of that man to exercise those qualities in his character that God has given him of his Holy Spirit.

So it’s important to recognize these qualifications are manifestations of the spirit.

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**Secondly, and very importantly, it’s important to recognize that we are spirit-filled for a purpose.**

These qualities don’t exist in isolation from the calling that God has given us. What do I mean by that? Well, maybe by way of example. We all know that Solomon was the wisest man to walk the face of the earth until our Lord came, of course. And sometimes when we talk to our children about Solomon, we’ll say that, you know, he asked God if he would give him wisdom. God gave him wisdom. So he’s a wise man and people came to him and heard him say very wise things. That’s certainly true, but it leaves one important part of the whole story.

In 2 Chronicles, we’re told in 2 Chronicles 1:10, Solomon says the following:

“Now, oh Lord God, let thy promise unto David my father be established, for thou hast made me king over a people like the dust of the earth in multitude.”

Again, he references the blessing of God and the multiplication of the covenant family here. And then he says, “Give me now wisdom and knowledge for this reason, that I may go out and come in before this people. For who can judge this thy people that is so great?”

Solomon asked for wisdom and understanding and knowledge so that he might exercise the office of king, which was a judicial office, wisely and in the spirit of God. He didn’t ask it for some kind of abstract character quality. He asked it for a purpose, for the function and the calling that God had given him. And God granted him that wish for that purpose. God said to Solomon:

“Because this was in thine heart, and thou hast not asked riches, wealth, or honor, nor the life of thine enemies, neither yet hast asked long life, but hast asked wisdom and knowledge for thyself, that thou mayest judge my people over whom I have made thee king—wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee, and I will give thee riches and wealth and honor as well as these things.”

Solomon asked for this quality of wisdom so that he might judge the people. God granted him wisdom and knowledge that he might judge the people as a wise king. And Solomon did just that. His wisdom was primarily demonstrated through judicial cases and his establishment of a hall of justice at his temple—at his throne room rather. So it’s important then to recognize when we look and think of these qualifications, they’re manifestations of the spirit and the manifestations given to us for a specific function, not in isolation from a calling to a task.

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Having talked about the qualifications, let’s look at the appointment process itself now for a couple of minutes. And we’ll be going back and forth between Exodus 18 and Deuteronomy 1. Both those two passages of scripture talk about this appointment process. And so both are important.

And what we see in the appointment process first of all is that there’s basically three steps. First, there’s the selection of the men themselves. Secondly, there’s the approval by the sitting magistrate or judge. And third, there’s the installation in office. These things are pointed out very nicely in Deuteronomy 1, first chapter, verse 13. Moses telling the people what they have to do:

“Now, he says, ‘Take you wise men, understanding and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.’”

So the instruction is for the people themselves to take wise men. There’s a selection process by the people that are going to be represented by this individual in terms of judicial action. And in terms of the sharim officers, they were to take those people themselves and nominate them or elect them. The selection process then is one of the covenant community taking upon itself the act of selecting out its representatives.

“Moses, you take those people, wise men, and I will make them rulers over you.”

They’re selected by the people, but that isn’t the end of the process. The other step is that Moses makes them rulers over the people. So there’s a two-fold action here: the selection by the congregation, the covenant community, the approval of the sitting eldership or the judge or the magistrate or whatever the case may be, the approval of the one in power now that God has placed there by his providence. And then as a result of that, we now have a judge.

But the process isn’t finished there either because Deuteronomy 1 goes on to tell us in verses 16-18:

“Moses said, ‘I charged your judges at that time saying, Hear the causes between your brethren and judge righteously between every man and his brother and the stranger that is with him.’”

And he goes on in the next two verses to continue the charge that he gives to the judges. So after the selection by the represented group, after the approval of the authority structure, then the people are installed into office with an oath, and he instructs the judges here what they’re to do and the requirements of their judgeship.

This same pattern of selection or representation of the congregation, approval by the representatives who are in authority at the time, and an installation is also seen, for instance, in Judges 10 and 11, where we read the story of Jephthah. And the same process is gone through there. We have two groups represented—the elders and the people—and both groups consent to the governance of Jephthah as their judge. Both groups, the elders, the sitting authority, and the people, give assent to Jephthah being made their judge. And then he speaks all his words, it tells us in Judges 11:11, at Mizpah, which is talking about the oath that he was to take in office and the instruction of the charge he was to receive from the law of God as a judge.

So these same patterns are found there.

This of course is the same pattern that we have in Acts 6, that we talked about last week a little bit in terms of the selection of deacons. The apostles then instructed the people to select out wise men. Well, let’s look at that passage in Acts 6. Look at the wording. I suppose it’s important to note that the selection process is the same process. There’s continuity here between the covenant communities, again in terms of the selection process of the representatives, judges, and administrators over them.

In Acts 6:3, the apostles say, “Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business.”

And you see there that same qualification—the wisdom manifest, the indwelling and the filling of the Holy Ghost, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom—”whom we may appoint over this business. You select them out, known men, qualified men, and we’ll appoint them over this business.”

So you have that same dual selection process here in place. That’s important.

Just one other comment here, by the way, about what we talked about last week—the idea of pre-existing leadership being demonstrated by the people chosen. There’s an interesting thing, and this also will hopefully affect the way you tell some of these Bible stories to your children. We know that Moses began his career as an adult, so to speak, in Egypt by killing an Egyptian. The Scriptures say at the age of forty, he wanted to go visit his people. And he goes to part of the land where the covenant community were dwelling at that time.

And he sees an Egyptian beating up an Israelite and he kills him. And the next day he finds two Israelites struggling amongst themselves and tells them to stop fighting amongst themselves. Now many times we tell this story to our children and say that Moses should never have done this thing and it was just a terrible thing, etc.

But it’s interesting how Stephen uses that particular portion of God’s word in his defense in Acts 7. In Acts 7, verses starting at verse 23, it says:

“When he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him and avenged him that was oppressed and smote the Egyptian. For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them. But they understood not. And the next day he showed himself unto them as they strove, and would have set them at one again, saying, ‘Sirs, ye are brethren, why do ye wrong one to another?’ But he that did his neighbor wrong thrust him away, saying, ‘Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday?’”

And then Moses recognized that what he had done was known, and he then leaves the land.

The point I’m trying to make though is that the Scriptures say, and this is Stephen’s whole point, that whether or not there was sin involved in Moses’ part, we know that his smiting the Egyptian and his trying to settle disputes among the people was the beginning of God calling them for deliverance of his people. He says that Moses supposed his people would understand that he was going to deliver them, but they understood not.

Now I’m not saying necessarily that Moses’s actions were justified. But what I am saying is something we have to think very carefully about condemning his actions in that matter when Scripture doesn’t give us strong condemnation or any hint of condemnation that I can find in itself. I bring that up to show the fact that Moses here, prior to his selection by God to that office in a formal sense and being brought into Egypt to deliver his people, had already been selected by God and begun to exercise that office in his calling. Pre-existent functioning of the office is demonstrated there.

We’ll go back to that passage in a minute. But I just wanted to mention that briefly.

So in this selection process, we have the sitting authorities, the people being represented, both install the person, and then there’s an installation process in terms of a charge to office.

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One other thing we can note from the appointment of the heads of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands in terms of judges is that there’s a system here of graded courts that’s rather obvious, and the point has been made frequently. One problem with that whole idea I brought up last week is we’re not exactly sure what the division of those gradings is. What they’re saying is: what were they? It says there “heads of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands.” Tens, thousands. Well, certainly it wasn’t individuals. We know that for sure. Most people today would say that they were families.

And yet, if we look at that structure that we talked about before and the fact that the three groups that are mentioned in the organizational structure in the wilderness were tribes, clans, and beth edim—extended families—I think there’s reason to believe that selection over ten: there’s over ten beth edim or house of the fathers. Remember, these are civil officers we’re talking about. These are judges being put into office for hearing civil cases. And it would be somewhat unusual to expect a country to have one judge—rather for every ten little families. It’d be less unusual to have one judge for every ten extended families. And I think that’s what we have here.

That’s important of course because what we’re getting here in terms of these graded courts, the delegation of authority, the tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands, is a structure of government that God has told us is a good structure of government to use with a large group of people, organizationally. And that pattern is important for us to look at as we go throughout the Scriptures and as we go about our lives in this community that we live in today, to use that same structure as the basis for our actions. It’s God’s given structure, and it’s important that we understand that structure so that we can apply it today and decide, for instance, when we should have elders, when we should have civil judges, how many of them should we have.

Obviously the fact that they’re graded means there’s representation. And it also means that of course one of the reasons for this whole thing is that they would have a fair, equitable, and quick justice brought to the people. They wouldn’t have to wait all day before Moses or several days or weeks or whatever it would be in order to have their cases heard. And that’s important too as we consider how we apply this in our society.

Another aspect of the establishment of the appointment process that we know here is that the appellate nature of these graded courts is not immediately obvious. Now I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. I haven’t really done the study that’s required to really speak to other manifestations of the appellate process throughout the Scriptures. They may be there in a more overt sense. But what I am saying is that it is, I think, an imposition onto the text to assume that the reason for these graded courts was that people, having not gotten a satisfactory answer from the judge they take the matter to at the first level, would then appeal it to the second level.

I think that’s reading into the text. There’s no indication that these judges are provided as judges of appeal. What it says is that if the matter is too hard for you to decide, then you kick it up to the head of the next level of courts, and eventually it’s kicked up to Moses himself. So the process of the graded courts reflects more an ability of people to discern the law of God and to make application of case law that God has given us—and it was given them through Moses at the time—to a particular problem.