Dennis Tuuri

Scripture as it says in the bulletin is Numbers the 10th chapter verses 1-4. Numbers 10:1-4. “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver. Of a whole piece shalt thou make them, that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps. And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee.”

Let’s pray. Almighty and gracious Father, for as much as our whole salvation depends upon the true understanding of thy holy word, grant to all of us that our hearts being freed from worldly affairs, may hear and apprehend 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.

We continue this morning with our series of talks going through the Old Testament offices to the end that we’ll understand the New Testament offices better and all the ramifications. We’ve talked in the past about the qualifications of eldership and I’d remind you again that those lists of qualifications are to be kept in front of us for this whole series which might take two or three months in total.

But it’s important to understand all those qualifications are touched upon by all these Old Testament offices as well. And last week we mentioned that in Isaiah the 11th chapter the first four verses we have the marks of a spirit-filled man. And these qualifications are manifestations of the Holy Spirit indwelling the people of God. And so the qualifications really in a very general sense are applied to all heads of households and many of them to most believers.

And of course there’s also specific qualifications for elders in there as well. But it’s only a matter of degree as to exercise the function. We talked about the family structure of the old covenant offices which is important as we continue to go through these offices. We spent a couple of weeks discussing the offices mentioned in Deuteronomy 16:18. You remember that’s the verse that says that they’re to appoint judges and officers in every town in which they go into the land.

We talked about those officers, the choim officers, clerks of the court as it were, the administrative branch of the government as it were, assistants to the chief magistrate and to the other magistrates as well. And we talked about, we drew some correlations between the function of the shorenim or the officers and that of deacons in the New Testament. One of the implications that we talked about was the fact that the shorenim were given the same spirit that rested upon Moses that they might be ministers of God’s order in the congregation.

And so it’s a mistake therefore on the basis of that as well as many other teachings of scripture to see the shorenim as a lesser office somehow than other offices that we’ll talk about. It’s also a mistake I think to look at the deacons as somehow less in terms of importance or in God’s providence than the elders of the church in terms of office. Again it’s important to avoid that kind of mentality that sees the elders as spiritual officers and the deacons as material officers and so slip into some form of Manichaeism.

Manichaeism was the belief that there were two gods, one god of the spirit, one god of the physical universe. And many times we tend to slip into that kind of thinking when we discuss church offices. But the importance of the shorenim and we talked there about specifically the passage in Numbers 11. The importance of that we tried to stress was that they’re a spiritual office that administration is a spiritual calling as well as other judgmental offices as well.

Well, and so it should be seen as highly exalted in our eyes. That has implications for us as we administer our families as well. Of course, as we administer our businesses and the civil government as well. We talked then about judges and we talked about Exodus 18 and about how God created a system of graded courts as it were had Moses appoint that system of graded courts, heads of tens, 50s, hundreds, and thousands.

We talked about that 10 doesn’t mean 10 nuclear families, but 10 beth abot, 10 household of the father, extended families. And so there was an appointment of judges basically for the purpose of settling disputes. Although we also looked at the fact that judges throughout the old covenant are also seen as deliverers of Israel. So they really had two functions to settle disputes in the midst of the congregation as well as to rescue Israel from enemies from it as well.

We talked of course on the basis of Deuteronomy 16 again that the judges and shorenim are perpetual offices for the covenant community and their function is to be fulfilled in the covenant community and that has applications for us in the church as well. The elders of course have a judicial function to them and we stress the importance the churches once again should establish church courts and that’s an important function of the church.

It is a legal body. It is a court as it were and the elders exercise a judicial function in terms of judging very clearly pointed out in the new covenant. So part of the function of the judges is fulfilled by the elders. Of course there are also civil judges in the land which is a separate order of judges. But it’s important to recognize the importance then of the elders having a judicial function.

We also talked several weeks ago about the office of elder and how this was an all-pervasive sort of office. Last week I guess it was an all-pervasive office throughout the old covenant community you really didn’t have any functioning offices apart from eldership formed as it were the pool of men from which all these other officers would be drawn and elders additionally had certain official duties for instance in criminal cases or in criminal justice cases they’re responsible in the case laws given to us by God in cases that are seem to be characterized by revolving around family matters.

And so for instance, if a husband took a wife and found her not to be a virgin, the hearing of that case as it were went to the elders instead of to the judges first. And I think that’s because it was a family matter. And the elders were heads of households. They were representing families. And so the familial matters typically came before the elders instead of the judges.

We talked, we gave a lot of scriptures last week, and I know I went very fast through all that, but we do have tapes if you want to go back and study those scriptures. We talked about how pervasive the office of elder was.

And then we looked on the basis of the pervasiveness of the office of elder, the fact that the new covenant uses officers who are called elders. And then we looked in Revelation where we see the 24 elders representing all the people of God as it were before God. And it’s significant that God doesn’t have the people of God represented by kings or by civil rulers or by priests, but he has them represented by 24 elders who stand before the throne and give worship and praise to him.

And we talked about the importance of elders. Then both in the civil government, both in the church government and in our families of course in our businesses leading the worship of the creation to God. If you look at Revelation, what the 24 elders do is they begin the worship to God in Revelation 4 and 5 that then is carried out by the angels as well and then goes down to the lower levels as it were of all the creation then worships God but being led by the elders representing the congregation of God.

Today we turn to a new office. Remember we started this in Joshua 23 and 24 where we have four groups of people that represent the people that go up to Joshua and Joshua talks to them. Those four groups were the elders, the judges, the shorenim officers, and the ro or heads of heads as it were. And we talked about how the fact that that fourth group encompasses several different offices. This morning we’re going to talk about one specific office as it were that’s represented in that overall office of heads of the tribes.

That office this morning we’re going to speak about is the word nasi in Hebrew. It’s frequently translated either prince, chief, or chieftain in the scriptures. And we’re going to be talking about that today. We’ll look at some distinctives of what that office was, how that office was appointed, or how they came to be to fill that office, and then talk about some implications for that for government, for civil government, for family government and church government as well.

The passage we read this morning, Numbers 10th chapter is important. Many of you thought that Vic had just kind of lost his mind last week when he took that big trumpet and blew it to call us to communion. But the reason he did that and the reason why Roy had that trumpet was because he was teaching the kids downstairs from this passage in Numbers 10 where the trumpet was used to several trumpets were used to summon various bodies of God’s people for various reasons.

I didn’t read the rest of the chapter, but it also talks about how the trumpet led the people forth into battle. There’s a lot of implications for that passage which we won’t be able to touch on this morning, but I’m sure you could start to think them through yourself and perhaps spend part of your Sabbath day considering that passage and the implication of calling people forth to battle, calling people forth to worship God and to resolve disputes as well by the use of trumpets.

And of course, that would tend to represent the preaching of the gospel. But we’re not going to speak specifically about the use of the trumpets this morning. We’re going to talk about one of the two groups. The passage that we read in Numbers 10 says that when they blew both trumpets, then the congregations came out. When they blew one trumpet, then the princes of the people came out. That’s in verse four.

Now, when we started this series, we said that in July and we recommended that many of you read Wines’s book “The Hebrew Republic.” Wines takes this passage in Numbers 10 and uses it as his motif basically for establishing the fact that the Hebrew Republic had two sets of representatives a Senate as it were in a house of representatives paralleling our American system today. And I think there’s some truth in that.

But I think that Wines also makes some errors in his evaluation of this passage. He sees for instance in Numbers 10 he sees that those who were called together by the use of one trumpet as being the 70 that were appointed in Numbers 11 to administer the people with Moses. Now we did an extensive study several weeks ago and I think we demonstrated fairly convincingly that what those 70 were officers.

Remember one of the qualifications for that group of people that they were already showing because they were going to serve in that capacity with Moses and administering the people. So I think that Wines is incorrect in seeing a direct correlation between Numbers 10 and Numbers 11 in terms of those princes and then the shorenim of the 70 elected in Numbers 11. It’s of course important and Wines acknowledges this difficulty in the passage that Numbers 10 precedes Numbers 11 but you’d have a hard time giving instruction for calling together people which had not been constituted yet.

In other words, there weren’t any 70 yet at the time of Numbers 10. And so God could have of course looked forward to the time when they’d be appointed. But I don’t think that’s what happened. And in fact, there’s much evidence that we don’t have to go to that correlation. There are many other verses that correlate better to that office of the nasi or the princes.

Well, let’s begin to talk a little bit about that office. Then the term nasi is used somewhere around 100 times in the old covenant. Practically half of those occurrences or somewhere in the order of half of those occurrences, maybe a little more in the book of Numbers itself. And then maybe a good third or more of those occurrences occur in the book of Ezekiel. So it’s interesting how that term is used in various books of the Bible. Most all the occurrences occur in Numbers and Ezekiel.

And that’s important for reasons we’ll talk about a little bit later. The Septuagint translates those passages that refer to the nasi normally as the word archon which is a generalized term for ruler or chieftain. For instance, one of the passages we’ll be talking about in a little bit is Exodus 22:27 when part of the case law again says you shall not curse a leader of the people and the leader there mentioned is the nasi and the Septuagint and Paul when we have that Paul referring to that passage when he talks to the high priest and reviles the high priest and they said you shouldn’t revile a high priest and Paul says you’re right I shouldn’t have because he’s a ruler of the people and he quotes this case law from Exodus 22 he uses that term archon which is a generalized term for ruler so that gives us some idea now Ezekiel I’ll say this before we get into these several points here about their selection what they did Ezekiel in his use of the term prince uses it for two purposes basically or nasi he says first of all that many of the problems he’s having with the nation of Israel that the prophet is telling them they’re faults on are faults of the princes and then secondly he says toward the end of Ezekiel he says that when the ideal ruler comes when David comes again God will make David a nasi of the people not a king necessarily here he uses the term nasi twice to emphasize the fact that David will now be the prince or the ruler of the people in a different sense than a king would be now because people have seen that as I think one of the reasons why we see that translated prince in the scriptures is because they see then that David is somehow a little bit lesser than a king and of course a prince is a step down from the king but I think that’s an improper way of translating it and I you’ll notice I’ve titled my talk this morning presidents or princes and I think we’ll see as we go along that the nasi are better thought of as presiding officers or presidents rather than princes and that there’s connotations to the office of prince that simply are not found in the nasi throughout scripture but it’s important to recognize that Not only do we have the nasi referred to at the beginning of the establishment of the government of the congregation of Israel in the old in the wilderness and then in the land, but we see it also where Ezekiel talks about the coming kingdom of God of course brought to fruition in Jesus Christ and accomplished in him and seeing that the leader of his people will be a nasi and not a king.

So the term both precedes and then follows the monarchic period where we had kings in Israel and Judah. Okay. Well, what were these people exactly? The passage we have before us, I think has to be interpreted in the light of the other chapters that precede it in the book of Numbers. And in Numbers 1 and 2, we have a list of various nasi. And it’s obvious from that passage of scripture that the nasi there are actually the heads of tribes.

And they actually give the names of the heads of tribes in Numbers 1. It goes through Numbers 1 and verses say 5-15 talks about various individuals who are to represent Israel at the taking of the census. Okay. And in verse 16, they say these were the renowned of the congregation, princes of the tribes of their fathers. And the princes there is nasi. So these guys were nasi. And so we obviously say the tribes were headed by an individual who was a nasi or a prince of that tribe.

And remember, we got 12 tribes now. So we’re going to have 12 princes. Later on in other passages of Numbers where the 12 tribes bring forward offerings to the tabernacle as it is established. The 12 princes again come forward to bring forward offerings for each tribe. And each tribe is represented in the bringing forth of sacrifices and offerings also by a particular prince, chieftain or captain of that tribe, nasi.

So we know that the nasi at least referred to the heads of tribes. But other passages of scripture tells us that they represented more than just that in and I won’t take the time to read these, I don’t think, but I will just give you the references and then you can do the study yourself, but in Joshua 22, let’s see, in Joshua, I’m sorry, in 1 Kings 11:34, we see there the fact that Solomon is going to have his kingdom removed from him because of wickedness.

But God says that Solomon will be the nasi of the people. And again, we have an instance there as we do in the prophetic talk of Ezekiel that the head of the 12 tribes also is a translated prince in some verses or a presiding officer of the whole people of God. In other words, Solomon was to be an individual nasi at the head of the 12 tribes. Not only were the 12 tribes each had their nasi, the 12 tribes corporately together now also had a nasi over them and Solomon and then when Ezekiel of course gave the revelation that God would prophetically bring forth a ruler to be a nasi over all the people as well.

So then also refers to the chief political officer of the congregation. Okay. In Joshua 22:14, the nasi referred to as heads of the house of their fathers. And the house of their fathers there talks about the clans. Remember we talked about you had tribes, clans, and then the beth, the house of the father, extended family. But the house of the father is talking about in Joshua 22:14 says the house of their fathers among the thousands of Israel.

Remember we said that the clans were sometimes represented as thousands or an aleph. There was a ruler we’ll talk about in the future known as an aleph who was ahead of a thousand militarily, not just as a judge. And so the clans were often referred to as thousands in the old covenant. So we see here that the thousands themselves, not just the tribes, not just the chief political officer, but now the clans themselves each have their own nasi.

So there’s a lot more nasi than just 13. Now we’ve got the clans represented as well by nasi or heads of those individual groups. Not only this but in Numbers 3:32 we have further confirmation of that fact when we have there’s discussion of the division of the tribe of Levite. Levite had three clans underneath them. The Kohathites, the Merarites and the Gershonites. And each of those had a nasi according to that passage of scripture Numbers 3:32.

And then over those Eleazar was nasi over those three different nasi representing Gershom and Kohath. So we see there again that we had chief political officer, we had tribal nasi and we had clan nasi. Finally in 1 Kings 8:8 Solomon gathers together the chiefs of the fathers of the children of Israel not making reference to a thousand group here. So this is to be understood as the beth of the extended family.

And so we see that the extended families themselves in some cases had nasi or princes over them. So this particular office was present at the top at the tribal level and also underneath that at the individual households as well in congregation. So what we see there is that the nasi were a multi-tiered office as well. This is important to keep in mind as we examine what these people were.

Further confirmation of this fact that there were many nasi and not just one or 13 or even 70 is the fact that in the rebellion in Numbers 16:2 talks about the rebels rose up before Moses with certain of the children of Israel 250 nasi princes of the assembly. So now we have princes of the assembly as well presented by 250 people. So there were many more nasi than just one 12 or 70 even. There were also various subgroups as well.

So that’s the first point is that the nasi were not restricted to tribal leaders but rather were found pervasively throughout various tiers of the government of the Old Testament.

Now, the second thing I wanted to bring out as we get into this discussion is that in Numbers 7:2, we see that one of the qualifications for the nasi is that they were recognized family heads in order to be a tribal head. That’s found in Numbers 7:2. “That the princes of Israel, heads of the house of their fathers, who were the princes of the tribes and were over them that were numbered, offered.”

And then it talks about those offerings I talked about earlier. So it says the princes of the people were also heads of the house of their fathers. And so we see that the princes were also in this case had a precondition that they be head of the house of the father before they could be exalted to the level of the nasi or representing that particular group of people. So we see also then that not only are the nasi present through many tiers of government of the old covenant, but they’re also duly recognized leaders at lower levels that they then get promoted to higher levels.

There’s a series of gradations here. Now, the fact that they are part of the normative covenant government is also spelled out in many places in scripture. That’s the third point. They’re part of the normative covenant government. But that means that throughout the generations of the old covenant and I think that also their function has to be fulfilled in the new covenant. We see nasi operating and we said that Ezekiel talked prophetically about the coming nasi to come.

We said that case law in Exodus 22 refers to obligations to the nasi that you cannot curse a nasi. That means they have perpetual office. In Leviticus 4 also prescribes sin offerings for the nasi that’s different from the priest, the elders and then the people themselves. That again shows there were perpetual duration as it were. It’s not just a one-time occurrence to meet a particular situation. In fact, well that’s important.

So we sense we see three things the nasi were present at various levels of government. They had to be heads of families before they could be heads of tribes. And then third, they’re perpetual office. In other words, that there always people exercising this function in Israel or in the covenant community. It is obvious through these scriptures as well, of course, that these are civil rulers. They are not ecclesiastical rulers even though they did have to provide sacrifices for certain sins that they performed.

The fourth point I want to make is that these were elected rulers. And again, this is not always necessarily evident, particular if you’re using the King James version of the scripture. Numbers 1:16. that we read a little bit earlier, we see that the nasi were the renowned of the congregation. And you might just think there that people recognize them as being rulers of some type or good people, but that’s not really what the term renowned means.

I won’t go into the technical analysis of that Hebrew word, but I will just quote from various other translations to give you an idea of how it’s universally translated. Apart from the King James version, which of course is probably that word renown has this implication as well, but not for us today in 20th century America. The American Standard Version says that they were the called of the congregation.

The New King James Version and the RSV says that they were chosen from the congregation. Okay. The Knox version of the Bible says they were chosen out of the whole multitude to represent tribes and clans. And that’s important to recognize in this passage as well. They weren’t just called out of the tribes. They also represented clans as well. The Amplified Bible says that they were chosen from the congregation.

The NIV says they were appointed from the community. All these translations correctly give the implication of this verse that the nasi were not inherited offices. They were elective offices. The people that they were going to represent elected them. The same thing is borne out in Numbers 16:2. Numbers 16:2 where we talked about the rebellion that happened and this the again the King James version uses the term that there were princes of the assembly famous in the congregation.

Okay. The Knox version translates that they were that they stood high in the council of the people. New American Standard they were chosen in the assembly men of renowned Amplified called to the assembly well known and of distinction. The New King James Version representatives of the congregation. The NIV is that they were appointed members of the council. So they represented the group at the next higher level of government as it were in this tiered government and they were elected by the group they represented.

That means that if you had for instance a clan and each clan had their various elders one of the reasons why you might see the development of a nasi is that let’s say you have a group of families together and you’ve got various older men in that group of families. Who’s to govern that particular group? These scriptures tell a story there’s somebody to be elected out to govern that group of preside over them.

And what they do there in that case is the people that they’re going to represent elect them. In other words, well, the perfect example of this is the American Constitution. When the United States Constitution was drawn up, the senators were not elected directly by the people. Okay? The senators were elected by the legislatures of the various states. The senators represented the states as a unit, not necessarily the individual people.

That’s the sense here that we have with the nasi. They represented councils of people at the next level up. They presided over them and represented them for instance when the 12 nasi met together as tribal leaders. They didn’t represent the individual people necessarily. They represented the individual tribes that they came from that tribal group and the clan that then elected them. As I said, a perfect example is the Senate.

And now that was changed, of course. And today the senators are elected by direct vote of the people. And I think that’s a movement away from biblical government which is representational. That was of course precipitated by a move toward more of a pure democracy in this country as opposed to the representational government that the founders originally set up in our country. The senators would represent the states at the federal level and so the then the house of representatives then would represent the people the individual people in the districts that they represented and so there was a balance a check and balance system there well the same thing is true of these nasi they were senators as Wines draws that correlation to the extent that they represented other elected officials at another higher level up.

Okay, for that reason then the term presiding officer may well be a very good one. Additionally, these nasi seem to operate individually in most cases. They didn’t necessarily act as a council in all cases. They’re did problems referred to them from below for their individual adjudication as well. The Encyclopedia Judaica tells us and I have no reason to doubt them that the term nasi was the Hebrew word that’s being translated in modern Israel for the term president.

And so the president of Israel today is known as a nasi or the head of the people represented head again elected by representative groups. This is common throughout. additionally this is seen also in the development of the Sanhedrin and the synagogue system as well and in intertestamental times and to this very day and we’ll talk about that in a little bit as well. But it’s important to recognize that the nasi were elected people elected by representative groups and not by a direct vote of the people themselves.

They were called of the assembly to preside over that assembly. This means then that the nasi ruled to the consent of the governed to use a phrase out of our own governmental functions in this country. They ruled to the consent of the governed. They were in office because this other level of officers had elected them to office to preside over them. And so they were responsible to those people that elected them and could be removed from office.

Perhaps a good illustration of this is found in a non-Israelite nasi. You remember the story of and Dinah when Shechem lay with Dinah rather when Shechem lay with Dinah and took her by force and then the people of the heads of the various groups in Israel then were going to have the men of Shechem and this other nation covenant into their group. They said they had to be circumcised first then he could marry their daughter their sister Dinah then they could covenant in they circumcised all their men and they and the people of the covenant community then killed them all.

Now the reason I bring that up is that it says in that in Genesis 34 where that is recounted for us that Shechem was the son of Hamor and Hamor was a nasi of the people and we’re told in Genesis 34th chapter in verse 2 and then in verses 20-24 something of the workings of Hamor as a nasi of the people around him. Now frequently when they encountered non uh when they encountered pagans or other people in the land they would be represented by a king.

So is a bit of a distinction here in being called the nasi. And we see that in terms of its function when Hamor goes back to the Hivite people that he is the nasi over. He goes out back to the elders of the gate when he is offered this proposal by the covenant people to covenant into them through the right of circumcision. In verse 20 of Genesis 34th chapter, we read that Hamor and Shechem his son came into the gate of their city and communed with the men of their city, saying, “These men are peaceable with us.

Therefore, let them dwell in the land and trade therein. For the land, behold, it is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters unto us for wives, and let us give them our daughters. Only herein shall the men consent unto us for to dwell with us to be one people, if every man among us be circumcised, as they were circumcised.” So, Hamor now is going back to the people of the cities, the he represents as a nasi.

He’s going back probably to what we’re functioning elders is and to use a term governors of the city at the city gate here and he’s telling them these people we think it’s good that we covenant together with these people they live with us but they’re only consent to that if we ever circumcised and come into their religious community through the right of circumcision. And what he’s doing is here is he’s pleading with the men that he represents or he’s counseling with them.

He’s trying to get them to agree to this arrangement and they then see the reasonleness in that of that and they then consent to the circumcision of all the men and they go over and they all get circumcised. The point is Hamor didn’t go back to the city and say, “We’re all going to be circumcised. Line up. We’re going down there and doing this thing.” He didn’t, I think, because he was a nasi. He was a represented elected leader by these people and therefore was accountable to them.

And that is consistent with the biblical use of the covenantal use of the nasi and the covenant of Israel who were elected by representative groups and therefore accountable to them. So that’s the nasi. Now there’s several things we should note from this fact that we’ve seen so far as we said they’re multi-tiered. They had to be heads of lower offices for their elevated to the higher offices.

They were elected groups and they were therefore accountable to the individual groups that elected them. Not the individual people but again they presided over councils. What does this tell us? The first thing this tells us that the biblical nasi were people of authority. The authority of these officeholders is clear from the scripture. Now there are various areas in which they were specifically given authority for instance in the dealing out of inheritance.

It was the nasi who had to be consulted if any change of the inheritance happened amongst the people of Israel. So the daughters of Zelophehad had remember when they had no man to inherit the land for them. They took that problem for resolution not to their elders. They took it to the nasi because they were responsible specifically for doing out the inheritance of the people in the promised land.

Additionally, it says in Joshua 9 that when Joshua made the covenant with the Gibeonites, the nasi or the princes or as we would call it now, the presidents or presiding officers of the people of Israel are the ones who entered into covenant with the Gibeonites with Joshua. So Joshua plus the nasi represented the covenant community in terms of a covenant with the Gibeonites. So they did have authority in that sense.

Additionally, as I said earlier, Exodus 22:27 says not to curse the ruler of the people. And that obviously is referring to a correlation between the ruler and God because they’re told not to revile God as well. So they were rulers. They did have real authority.

Leviticus 4, as I said earlier, gives a system of graded sacrifices that were required as a sin offering for various people. At the top of that list were the high priest and the elders representing the congregation. Either one of those people for the sin offering had to bring forward either the elders representing the congregation or the high priest for his own sins had to bring forward a bull without blemish.

The next level down is the nasi, the rulers of the people. For their sin offering, they had to bring a male goat. The next level down at the people themselves, the individual men who had to bring forward a sin offering. It was not it was compulsory in nature. They brought forward a female goat. So there’s a system of graded sacrifices because there’s different levels of authority and as a result different levels of responsibility taught by Leviticus 4.

And so the high priest had a very great responsibility akin as it were to all the people of Israel. And then as the next level down, we had the nasi who also had a system of authority and responsibility for them as well.

One side comment there: That tells you a lot about the importance of the ecclesiastical leaders in the community, doesn’t it? The sin of the ecclesiastical leaders, which were the high priest, the priestly line there, were their sin required as a sin offering a bull without blemish. The same sin offering is the whole congregation had sinned in a matter. That means a lot to us today. And that’s why we have said repeatedly in this country that it’s the responsibility of the church to get off the dime on this in this country and to begin to instruct every layer of government that exists in this land and I mean by that families, businesses, the civil government as well and its responsibilities to obey God’s law.

Judgment begins at the house of God. It begins the representatives of that house of God ecclesiastically, which are the pastors in this country. The pastors have a tremendous judgment upon their heads in this country for allowing what’s happened in this country to occur without raising the voice. For instance, as we did several weeks ago in terms of abortion, we have a responsibility to proclaim forth the righteousness of God.

It’s important to think through that implication. I won’t dwell on it now, but it is important to see that’s very important to recognize from Leviticus 4 the importance of ecclesiastical rulers and of sins of ecclesiastical rulers. But the point I’m trying to make here is that they did have a real authority over the people. The nasi did.

As I was thinking about this, I thought of the movie “The Mission” that we saw a couple of weeks ago. And one of the things that happens in the movie is I don’t remember exactly the issue that came up, but this Jesuit priest who has some other guys serving underneath him. They want to do one thing and he wants to do another thing and he and the young intern priest as it were says, “Well, myself and these other guys, these other priests also think that we should do it this way.” And the leader over the mission says, “Well, you got to remember this is not a democracy. This is an order.”

And it’s important that we recognize that in the covenant community as well. We don’t have a pure democracy at work here. We do have nasi. We have chiefs of the people, princes who exercise real authority both civilly and then also ecclesiastically not the nasi but other rulers the elders of the congregation for instance they do have real authority over the people and that needs to be stressed because we live in an age where people tend to reject all authority today and I’ve seen many as Christians become more involved politically it seems that what we see increasingly around us is that they do so not from a system of God’s law But they do so being self-ruled.

For instance, as many of you commented when we passed around the petition in terms of child abuse and the alternative agenda people, the petition starts with the fact that the family is an autonomous institution. Well, now we don’t really believe that, do we? Or if you do believe that, you haven’t thought through the implications of what I’m trying to say here. The family is not an autonomous institution.

The family is responsible under God to do certain things. It has an authority over which is God and his law. And God’s law says that authority over the family is administered through various functions or offices. And one of the functions of the old covenant was the nasi, the civil officer. And he had real authority over the people. And that’s important that we recognize that this church, this covenant community, both ecclesiastically and civilly, is not a democracy either.

It is an order. There is a discipline to it. And there’s a system of authority. Having said that, another implication of Leviticus 4 is that is that the office is not that high above the people, the nasi who have this very real and direct authority over the individual men here or the rep the units that they represent. They have a real authority and yet their offering is a male goat and the individual’s offering is a female goat.

Really not that much difference. And that begins to that is one element that tells us that their authority that while the nasi have a real authority over the people, they’re not to be authoritarian. They are not to become overly involved in the people’s lives. They’re not to over governed. They’re not to overstep their correct bounds the scriptures give them. They’re not to go about looking into every little household and every little thing that was going on or every clan and see what problems were.

They weren’t to be authoritarian. They had real authority, but it was a limited authority as well. By the way, also a good analogy for that idea that when you have more authority and a greater responsibility, another good way to think about that couple of analogies is that one and said that while individuals watch may go awry and be off a little bit, it’s not that big a deal. But if the town clock itself, as many towns used to have, and we still have in some parts of Beaverton today, if the town in Portland as well, if the town clock is off, that’s a real big deal because everybody sets their clock according to that clock and now everybody’s off.

Or if the teacher, for instance, gets up and writes in the blackboard and to instruct the children on how to make their letters and makes his letters in a scrawly fashion or incorrectly, he has a greater responsibility for that sin or that error because it’s going to be repeated amongst the people that he represents. The kids are going to say, “Well, that’s an A. You know, it’s got the tail over here instead of over here, but that’s an A.” The teacher says, “So, they’re going to repeat that error down through whatever they’re involved with.” So, that’s why that as men have authority or the other men, it is important that they understand that authority and the nature of that authority that it comes with an additional responsibility and culpability for judgment if they perform the office incorrectly.

That’s real important, you know, as we begin to look, as I said before, about choosing elders for the church. Those men should look for that office and it’s a good thing to desire the office of an elder. But it is a work. Remember we talked about that. It’s an important work and you’re going to be judged on the basis of how you perform it. It also has implications of course for our families because we as heads of our households we have that same kind of responsibility and culpability.

But they’re not to be authoritarian. In Ezekiel, this is really stressed quite clearly. One of the things that God has Ezekiel will do is to act out as it were the prince or the nasi trying to escape from the city. And he has Ezekiel tie a thing on his back, dig a hole in a wall and try to sneak out this wall, the house as it were, to try to escape the judgment of God. He acts this out in front of the people.

And he’s acting it out representing the nasi or the presiding officers of the presidents over the various groups that we’ve talked about. And he does that because this is what the nasi will do as judgment of God comes upon the city. They’ll try to sneak out the back door as it were. But God says, He’ll spread a net for them to catch them and the judgment will come upon them taken off into captivity.

Why is that? Well, Ezekiel tells us the reason for that is that they did not fulfill their function correctly. Instead of distributing the inheritance to the people through their exactions, he says, you’ve taken away the inheritance of the people. And so then judgment comes upon you because you haven’t done the function that God has appointed for you to do, which is to allot out his inheritance. Among other things, you’ve taken things from the people through exactions.

through high taxes and this kind of thing, you’ve stole back what was rightfully theirs in the first place. And so the prince that is overstepping his balance and that’s important implications today too of course for our civil government and the levels of taxation we suffer under today. They are through that taxation doing the very reverse of what they’re supposed to do. They’re oppressing people instead of allowing people the freedom to create wealth in this country.

They’re taking that wealth away with exactions and God will exact from them what they’ve stolen from the people. So they’re not to be authoritarian although they do have real authority in the civil government. What are some of the implications for this? as we sit here today well obviously as I’ve pointed out in various occasions here there are implications for the civil government itself.

We said we saw the civil governors the nasi the presidents or presiding officers the senators as it were that they had to bring a compulsory sin offering for their sins of omission, for the sins that they didn’t realize they were committing. They had to do that. That means that civil rulers are bound to obey the laws of God and to understand the ramifications of their disobeying those laws. That’s important to recognize here. And as we just said, part of that is their levels of taxation in this country which tend to steal from the people that which they’re supposed to protect for the people.

Their implications for civil government with the nasi also of course is the very form of the civil government itself. I think that the scriptures teach because of this representational nature, a system that is very akin to what we have in America today. I wouldn’t necessarily draw the specific correlation that Wines does to the Senate and the House of Representatives. And we’ll talk about that second group out of Numbers 10 next week, who those were and what who they were that assembled when both trumpets were blown.

But it’s important to recognize their implications for the civil government in the office of the nasi. It’s also important to see if there are implications for our church. You remember back when we talked about that list of qualifications for elders from 1 Timothy 3 and verses 4 and 5. Remember we stressed the idea there that God said that in order for a person to be an elder, he had to be able to rule his own household.

Well, remember that and remember we spoke at the time of what that word rule was. It literally means to stand before in the Greek and it is properly interpreted as preside over to rule as a president or presiding officer over a group over a council whatever you’re ruling over. This has tremendous implications of what we just studied. That’s what the function of the nasi were to be presiding officers over specific councils.

And God says that for a person to be able to rule the church of God, he must rule his own household. Well, he must be a good presiding officer over his own household. Why? Because then he can take care of the household of God. He can be a presiding officer over the entire congregation as well. In 1 Timothy 5:17 where it says that the elder is worthy of double honor, who rules well and teaches well, Well, the ruling there and we always hear about ruling elders.

That word for rule in the New Testament is the same word to stand before, to preside over. It’s not archon, which is the more generalized sense of any authority, any person who had authority over another person. It talks about the ruling elder then as somebody who presides over the people that he represents. If it’s an individual elder, the people that he represents. If it’s a well, we’ll talk about that implication in a minute, but the qualification was one of presiding over having that ability preside over your family because elders are to preside over the church of God.

And so they fulfill some of the functions of the nasi in the covenant community. They’re presiding officers. They don’t have unlimited authority over the people. They have a very restricted sphere of authority. They’re responsible. You’re not to curse those rulers. You’re not to reject the authority that God has placed legitimately in them. But they’re not kings over the congregation. They are nasi.

They’re presidents. They’re elected officials who represent the people and are culpable then for any way they overstep that bound of authority. Tremendous implications. There are also implications in terms of church polity here and I won’t go real detailed into this but if you think through what I’m talking about here that you had individual councils of clans or households or tribes that then had a presiding officer over them who was a nasi that has implications for how we run our church government as well, doesn’t it?

What it says is that when you have a board of elders, we can assume if we’re going to assume continuity that’s fulfilling some of the functions of the nasi, we can assume that in that board of elders, there will be a presiding officer, can’t we? If we see that throughout scripture that each level of government had a presiding officer over it individually, then we can see that will probably be the form we’ll look to also in the new covenant.

Now, I won’t get any detail on that yet. As I said, of most of these things we’re talking about, we’re trying to look at all these Old Testament offices and see implications for church government in the new covenant. And we’ll get more specific on those implications as we go into the new covenant in a couple of weeks or a couple of months probably and look at the specific verses that talk about elders and deacons.

But we’ll see this. We’ll see that there are presiding officers as well over the board of elders. It is quite likely that this was one of the factors that led to an episcopal system of government as opposed to that necessarily coming out of a localized head over a whole region. It is more likely that some of that development occurred when we had presiding officers over elders. Then the presiding officer of those elders of various churches in a region would get together and they then would elect a presiding officer or a nasi over that group.

And so you had the beginning of bishops and the Episcopal form government. I’m not endorsing that, but I’m saying that’s probably one of the elements that led to that as well. This whole system of the nasi and continuity with that and the new covenant church.