Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT
## Numbers 10:1-4

Here is Numbers 10, the 10th chapter, verses 1-4. Numbers 10:1-4, the 10th chapter of Numbers:

“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 God, we thank you for yourself. We thank you, Father, for the gift of your word. And we thank you, Lord God, that because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, we can go to that word by the power of the Holy Spirit, understanding it that we might obey it. Help us, Father, to understand these scriptures now this morning. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

We’ve already had several references this morning to the government of Jesus Christ. I hope you noticed in that Acts passage where Jason was one of the believers and the result of their believing was they turned the world upside down. Why? Because they served another king besides Caesar, a king—Jesus Christ—who claimed to be king over Caesar, over all earthly kings.

And we just sang in a song about how God gives us dominion on earth. We’re to understand our dominion as being under the dominion of Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And so we have to understand what that means to us.

We’ve been, over the last couple of months here, looking at the government of Jesus Christ and the Old Covenant community—the government of the covenant keeper to come, Yahweh—and then we will make application as we go along in this series to the government of the church and also the civil society we live in.

It’s important we recognize that we frequently make references in this church to the kingdom of God, the kingship of Jesus Christ, and his crown rights. It’s important that if we’re going to be obedient to those crown rights, we understand the implications of those things for our church and for our civil government. And so we go to the Old Testament to get the basis for what God has done in the new covenant people.

This passage of scripture we read this morning is the same passage of scripture we read last week, and I told you last week we’d be talking about it again this week. The passage has to do with the assembling of the people in two groups. They had two trumpets made. If they blew one trumpet, the nasi—or what the King James version refers to as princes—of the congregation would assemble.

We said last week that really they’re not princes, not nobility in that sense. They’re presiding officers or presidents of the tribes. Specifically, in the case here in Numbers, we looked at Numbers 1 and saw that each tribe had a president, as it were, a head—a nasi—a chieftain, a ruler. But if two trumpets are blown, then the whole congregation is to assemble at the door of the meeting place.

And so this morning we want to talk about what is that second group of people? What is the congregation that assembled there? And I suppose that when you just glance at these scriptures and other scriptures that refer to the congregation, you may first believe that it’s all the people who get together. Of course, you’ve got a problem with that because at this time in the wilderness, we know from the census that there is over 600,000 fighting men.

On the basis of that, and the size of the families, we have good reason to believe there were probably right around 2.5 million people in the entire congregation. And it’s hard to believe that 2.5 million people would assemble at the doorway of the meeting place when they blow the second trumpet. It’s possible, I suppose, but I think that there are other explanations given to us in scripture. And we’ll be looking at some scriptures this morning indicating the representative nature of the congregation and its assemblies, and also the representative nature of other factors of God’s government as well.

The fact of representation in terms of the covenant with God is not a new thing to people in this church. We have heads of households come up and sign the church covenant, for instance, representing the entire family. And we have good reason to do that. In Deuteronomy 29:10, Moses summons all the people to him and he summons specifically the heads of the tribes, the elders, and the officers of the people.

And he then calls them to the obedience of God’s commands. And it says there that in this covenant taking that goes on in Deuteronomy 29, that all the men of Israel went into covenant with Jehovah God. And yet we know that Moses specifically had summoned the heads, the captains, as it were, of the various groups of the tribes—the elders and the officers. And we know that not every man was there.

But they represented, as it were, all the people underneath them. And so even though there were officers who said yes to God at the assembled group there, yet the scriptures tell us that all the people of Israel spoke through those elected representatives.

Again, in Exodus 19, prior to the establishment of some of these governmental officers we’ve been looking at, in Exodus 19:7-8, Moses calls the elders to meet with God with him. And God then instructs the elders in the laws for his people. And it says there that all the people again answered, “Whatever God commands us to do, we’ll do it to the best of our ability.” And so we see there again the elders representing the entire congregation.

The idea of representation is throughout the scriptures. And we want to look at it now in terms of the specific word that’s translated here as assembly. Its normal translation in the King James version is congregation. There are two common words used in the Hebrew to designate the assembly or the congregation of the people of God. And for those you are interested: one of them is edah, and the other is kahal. These are really fairly synonymous—most commentators believe—and so we won’t make differentiations in terms of them this morning.

I should note, however, that Bahnsen in his book Scripture Doctrine of the Church does make a distinction between these two terms, although not a distinction that would affect what we’re going to say this morning. But he does quote extensively from a commentator known as Vitringa who did some fairly heavy word studies on these Hebrew words, and there is some differentiation that he makes. But for the point of what we’re going to be discussing this morning, they’re basically synonymous, and there are certainly passages in the scriptures that show they’re synonymous.

It is interesting, however, that the Septuagint translates these two words. The word for congregation or assembly in the Hebrew—the word we have this morning for assembly—they normally translate as synagogue, and the kahal they normally translate as ecclesia. And so you can see there the two terms applied to the New Testament church: ecclesia—the gathering of the people, or the synagogue—the assembly or the congregation.

And again, those are somewhat synonymous, although there may be technical differences between the two terms. Certainly, we know that the scriptures tell us that we are both. We are an ecclesia, a called-out people gathered together to God, but we’re also a synagogue. If you remember correctly, the root word of synagogue—to call or to appoint, call to an appointed place—basically is what that means.

And remember, we talked about in Hebrews 10:25. In Hebrews 10, we talked about the necessity of attendance at Sabbath services—Sunday church. We spoke about the fact that in that specific reference, we’re called an “epi-synagogue” in the Greek word used there. And so we know that the congregation of God’s people, the church, is a synagogue. In fact, it’s a super synagogue because it’s a new covenant synagogue, not like an old covenant synagogue.

We stand on this side of the coming of the covenant mediator, Jesus Christ. We’re now a super synagogue unto God. And God has an appointment. He’s appointed us a place to meet. And for this congregation, that place is here, and the time is Sunday morning at 10:00. God keeps his appointments, and he expects us to keep that appointment as well.

That’s the basic group meaning of the word congregation. Now, in the sense that we’re going to use it this morning, however, while it can refer to the entire congregation, yet there are also passages of scripture where it obviously means a representative group. I believe the scripture we just looked at in Numbers 10 is that sort of occurrence. And we’ll just go briefly now through maybe six or seven specific instances of the use of the term congregation to indicate an assembled body—not necessarily everybody altogether.

And you’ll sort of get the drift of where we’re going with this as we go along and see what this congregation—a representative group of people—did when they got together.

**Numbers 27:1-2**

Numbers 27:1-2. And I won’t take the time to read these things, but it’s important that you write down the reference if you’re doing a study on this. Numbers 27:1-2: we have there—and we’ve talked about this a couple of weeks ago—the daughters of Zelophehad, who had no male ancestors left in the line to have an inheritance in the land that they were going to go into. And so the daughters were concerned that they would lose the inheritance of their land. They wouldn’t have any place to go. They’d be swallowed up by another tribe.

And they then come to the officials of Israel in the wilderness to say, “We have a problem here. What are we going to do about it?” And it’s interesting who they come to. They come to Moses, to Eleazar, the high priest who was also there at the time, and to the leaders of the people—that’s the nasi, the presiding officers that we talked about last week. And I’ll probably, during some of this talk this morning, make correlations between them and a senate, where we’re familiar in this country with the term senate—a group of people who are a smaller group in number than the house of representatives.

But anyway, we’ll use that term senate for the nasi. We’ll get more details on that in a couple of minutes. So they came to Moses, to Eleazar, to the nasi, and to the congregation. And so when the daughters of Zelophehad made their plea for the continuance of their land in their line—even though there were no male heirs—they made it to this group.

So we’re talking about an officially convened group of people here to hear a dispute that had arisen over the inheritance of these people. Now, we know the nasi, or the senate, or the presiding officers, had specific jurisdiction over inheritance. We talked about that last week. It was their duty to apportion the land amongst the census people that had been taken in Numbers 1.

But we know also that in correlation to this is the congregation. Now, it’s hard to believe that the daughters of Zelophehad took their query about what to do about this situation to all 2.5 million people together. We don’t believe that’s what happened. We believe they went to an assembled group of people representing the whole congregation, but a different group than the nasi, or the senate, or the princes of the people.

Now, as to how that was resolved: actually, neither the nasi, nor the congregation, nor Moses knew what to do about it, and they took it to the oracle. They took it to God, and he gave them instructions. The important point to remember there is that there’s an assembled group of people—an official representative body—to which a problem dealing with inheritance in the land was taken.

**Numbers 35 and Criminal Matters**

Second occurrence is in Numbers 35. And these are just representative occurrences, by the way. We’re not going to go through all of them. There are many of them. We’ll just give some representative ones. As representative occurrences of the involvement of the congregation in judicial and criminal matters, you can look at Numbers 35:24.

Numbers 35 talks about the cities of refuge. And you remember that Howard gave a real good talk at communion a couple of weeks ago on the cities of refuge. And remember, if a man killed somebody, if he did it accidentally, he could go to the city of refuge to avoid being killed by the blood avenger. The blood avenger was responsible on behalf of his family to kill the man who had killed—who had murdered—a member of their family.

Numbers 35 gives distinctions as to how you can determine whether or not it was intentional murder or if it wasn’t, and whether or not the man was to be delivered to death, or if he was to be given back to the city of refuge and given refuge in that city until the death of the high priest.

And the important part about that is that in verse 12 of Numbers 35, it says that the man’s slayer is not to die until he stands before the congregation for trial. Or in other words, for judgment. So the slayer of the person has to stand before the congregation to determine whether or not he is a murderer or whether it was accidental.

If it’s unintentional, Numbers 35:24 says that if the man did it unintentionally, accidentally, and not with malice and forethought, then the congregation shall judge between the slayer and the blood avenger, and deliver the slayer from the hand of the blood avenger, and restore him to the city of refuge.

So apparently what had happened here: the man had killed somebody by accident. The blood avenger wanted to kill him. He goes to the city of refuge to take refuge. Then he comes out for a trial before the congregation to determine the basis of whether or not it was intentional or unintentional—whether or not he should be given to the blood avenger or whether he should be returned back to the city of refuge into safety.

Now, we in Deuteronomy 19:12 see the elders are also involved in this process, but they’re not synonymous with the congregation. We know that because in Deuteronomy 19:12, the elders of the city are responsible for taking the slayer and delivering him to the blood avenger. So the elders simply carry out the decision of the court or the assembly—the congregation—here in terms of this activity, if the man is found guilty of premeditated murder.

So the man who was in danger of being killed by a blood avenger goes before the congregation—the assembled people—in the representative nature here, I believe, for a trial. Again, there we know that all the people of the town didn’t come out. All the people of the tribe didn’t come out to try this man. There was definitely a select group of people representing the people. And so identified with it in terms of the use of the term congregation.

Then, if the congregation—if we refer to them as the house of representatives of that particular district—if the house of representatives found the man to be guilty of murder, he would be delivered to the elders of the city that the murdered man came from, and they would turn him over to the blood avenger. So there’s a distinction between the trial itself and the judicial decision being carried out by the elders.

The trial occurred at the congregation. A couple of other cases dealing with capital crimes:

**Numbers 15:33**

Now, in criminal matters, the congregation is involved with in Numbers 15:33. The man gathering wood on the Sabbath is brought—they bring the man to determine what to do with him before Moses and the congregation, again the assembled people. Again, we don’t think every single man was there. It was a representative group of people elected by the people to hear these cases. And the congregation then is responsible—after God’s oracle says the death penalty is what he needs—the congregation are the ones responsible for stoning him to death.

But see, when you read these passages, don’t get the idea that everybody was out there throwing stones. You’d have two and a half million stones on top of this body. That’s not what occurred. We had a representative group of people here. That’s important.

**Numbers 14**

In Numbers 14, just the chapter before Numbers 15, we see another interesting occurrence where, again, it’s very easy, I think, to misread what scriptures tell us. In Numbers 14, remember the 12 spies had been sent out into the land, and they came back. They were going to spy the land, and 10 spies gave a bad report and two spies gave a good report. The name of our bookstore came from that good report—that’s where we got that passage from for our newsletter.

We used to have as well. Well, in verse 9, the two good spies, Joshua and Caleb, they say to the people, “Don’t rebel against God.” Okay. And then in verse 10, it says the congregation bade stone them with stones. And then God intervenes and says, “No, you can’t do that.”

Now, it’s easy to think that what happened was these spies came back. Two and a half million people are gathered around and say, “Well, these guys, we don’t want to listen to them. Let’s kill them.” That’s not what happened. I think what happened, if you understand the congregation here as a house of representatives—an officially convened group of representatives of the people—was this:

The spies came back, and there was a dispute amongst the spies as to what happened. And two of the spies accused the other 10 spies of rebellion against God. They tell the people, “Don’t listen to these guys. Don’t rebel against God.” They’d accused the 10 spies of rebellion, which was a capital offense.

Now, this congregation—I think there’s reason to believe this. The congregation said, “No, we don’t believe the two. We believe the 10.” And the two therefore made a false accusation against the 10. And what’s the penalty for a false accusation? The penalty is that whatever you wanted to happen to the other person had to happen to you. That’s a real important thing, by the way, as we talk about these child abuse laws. Malicious reporting of child abuse should result in severe action against the people that report those things illegally or maliciously.

The biblical concept—which cut down on a lot of false accusations, of course—was that if you were proved to be a false accuser, you had to suffer that penalty. So the two spies are trying to get the 10 spies executed by calling them rebels. But the congregation believes the 10 spies and not the two spies for whatever reason. And then they said, “These guys are going to be executed—the two spies.”

I think that’s what’s going on there. A lawfully convened group of people making a decision about what to have done here. Now, God then intervenes. God specifically appears to Moses, and it’s obvious that everybody else knows what’s going on, and he stops that whole process.

So we have the intervention of God here. But I think that again, if you understand the congregation as a convened assembly of the representatives of the people, you see these things a little bit differently.

So the congregation had some authority in capital crimes. They had some authority in some official matters such as the avenger of blood disputes and in the inheritance. The congregation also, in Judges 21, are said to be the group that sends out 12,000 valiant men to strike Jabesh-Gilead.

**Judges 21 and Matters of War**

Later on, we’ll talk a little bit about some of the implications of this for us today. The people of Jabesh-Gilead did not go out. The confederated tribes of Israel declared holy war on one of the tribes, Benjamin, because of what they had done—with some very terrible things involving a Levite’s wife, and whatnot. But anyway, the point was they had called out a holy war against one of the tribes. And people from the town of Jabesh-Gilead refused to come up.

And so then, when everything was all over, the tribes then sent, as a congregation, now sent 12,000 men to strike Jabesh-Gilead. It was not optional to go out to war for the nation of Israel. Well, in Judges 21:10, we’re said specifically that it’s the congregation—the edah—the assembled representatives of the people—that send out those 12,000 men. Okay?

**Joshua 9:18-19 and Matters of Peace**

Matters of peace: In Joshua 9:18-19, we talked about this last week. The affair with the Gibeonites. And Joshua enters into covenant with the Gibeonites. It says that Joshua and the nasi—the princes, presiding officers, the senate, as it were—the people are the ones who make covenant with the Gibeonites.

And then it tells us in verses 18 and 19 that the congregation then murmured against the princes, or against the nasi, or the senate. And I think there again, it doesn’t mean every last person in the assembly of Israel murmured against them. It meant that an officially elected group of people here—representatives of the people—murmured against the affairs that had been entered into in terms of a peace treaty.

Now, that’s interesting too, I think, because of this. Apparently, the congregation didn’t make an official protest here. They couldn’t do anything about it. It was within the realm of responsibility for the senate, or the nasi, in conjunction with the chief magistrate, Joshua, to enter into covenant with the foreign group—with the Gibeonites—to make a peace treaty, to have foreign relations with them, if you want to look at it that way.

Now, that’s interesting to me because according to the United States Constitution, foreign affairs are given to what branch of office? They’re given to the president, but he needs the advice and consent of the Senate—not the representatives. And so this is a very similar thing going on here. We have the peace treaty being made by the head of the country—the chief official civil officer, which is Joshua—with the advice and consent of the nasi, or the senate of Israel—outside of the jurisdiction of the congregation. But the congregation isn’t happy about it, and they complain about it.

And right now, you know, we have a lot of complaining going on about how foreign relations are waged or conducted in this country. It’s important to recognize that I think we have a biblical system here where it’s a responsibility of the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to handle those things. And really, the House of Representatives may complain that they have no official jurisdiction in these matters.

It’s important to remember that when you see a lot of this stuff going on TV in terms of what we’re doing with Iran or other countries: it’s the responsibility of the president to conduct foreign relations with the advice and consent of the Senate. And I think that’s why I think our system was based upon this system. I think that’s why we have it that way—is because the scriptures say that’s the specific group, the nasi, the senate, who are to conduct foreign relations in accordance with the chief civil officer.

But the congregation murmured, and the nasi listened to them. They don’t just say, “You have no business in this. Cut it out.” The nasi, the senate, listens to the house of representatives here, and they say, “Well, we’ll do this. We’ll make them servants forever—of wood and doing all this work for us.” They propose a compromise. We’ve made a treaty. We can’t kill them, but we can enslave them. Okay. And so they come up with a compromise to ameliorate the concerns of the congregation.

**Heads of State**

Our fifth area in which the congregation has an official capacity: heads of state. In 1st Kings 12, after Solomon’s death, his son Rehoboam reigns. And you remember we talked about Rehoboam a few weeks ago, and we talked about the elders of the people. And while Rehoboam was the king, he didn’t listen to the older, wiser council that was available to him. Rather, he listened to the young people that he had kind of grown up with—his buddies—not the gray-hairs.

And as a result, he did a very foolish thing and turned the people of Israel against him. And that led then to the split—the division of the tribes of Israel into the 10 and the 2 tribes. What happened then was Jeroboam became the first northern king after the collapse of Solomon’s empire, and Rehoboam became the king of the south. Jeroboam becomes king of the north.

Well, the important thing to remember about that is that when Jeroboam becomes king, it says that all Israel call him to their assembly. And it’s at the assembly they make him king. And that word where he becomes king—it’s the congregation or the assembly. So what we see here is they bring a possible candidate for the kingship of the northern tribes, Jeroboam, before the assembly. And it’s the assembly then who makes him king.

Does that mean they took a vote of, you know, hundreds of thousands of people? No, I don’t believe it does. The assembly is an officially convened group of people now who have power to install a man into the office of the chief civil officer of the land. And that’s what they did.

The same thing happens in 1st Samuel 10:17-27. Now, Samuel has already been shown by God that Saul is the one—the king that they will get in response to their request for a king. But Samuel then calls all the people together in assembly. And they respond, “Long live the king.” When Samuel tells them that this is the man that God is going to have reign over you, they say, “Long live the king.”

And this is very similar to the way, for instance, the old Roman Senate used to work. The Senate would declare to the congregation—to the assembled group of people, similar to our House of Representatives: “It’s resolved that this will occur. Do you concur?” And they say, “Yes, we concur.” And now we’ve got a law. We’ve got an act passed.

And so this is the same thing that happens here. Samuel says, “Here’s Saul. He’s the king. God’s chosen the king.” But still the people have a voice. They say, “Long live the king.” They give their assent to the kingship of Saul. And the people here are represented by assembly, or by representatives rather, in a convened assembly before God and man.

The same thing happens in all kinds of other cases. Joshua and Jephthah—remember we talked about him. The elders go out, make an offer to Jephthah that he comes back to the assembly of the people, and they then make him judge over them. It happens in with Samuel himself.

Again, in 1st Chronicles 29, when David makes Solomon king. It’s interesting that in chapter 28, God tells David to make Solomon king. Solomon’s his chosen one, and David makes Solomon king. But then in 1st Chronicles 29, in the context there, he has an assembly of people—all the officers of Israel, it says all the heads of various heads of state and whatever groups were represented—which means everybody here. These people are in assembly, and it says specifically that those people met together in assembly in 1st Chronicles 29 and they say that they make Solomon the king a second time.

I better look that up because I got two references here. Let me look that up real quick so we don’t get people confused. Yeah. 1st Chronicles 29:22-23. Verse 22: “So they ate and drank that day before the Lord with great gladness.” And this is this assembly of people again—the representatives of the people. And verse 22 goes on to say, “And they made Solomon, the son of David, king a second time. And they anointed him as ruler for the Lord.” And Zadok as priest. And then Solomon sat on the throne, and he prospered, and all Israel obeyed him.

They made him king a second time. And you have that repeated pattern in the old covenant where the head of the people—the chief civil officer, being a king or a judge—is made that position first by God, appointed by God, and then the people make him the king the second time, giving their amen, as it were, to that man to rule over them.

And the people in most of these occurrences are represented by a group of people coming together as the congregation or assembly. And by the way, they probably were called together to do those things by those trumpets that God had him make in Numbers 10 that we just read about. Numbers 10 says there’ll be a perpetual reminder before the Lord. And I’m sure that’s how they convene the assemblies of both the nasi, or the senate, and then the congregation, or the house of representatives. It was they were convened by the blowing of trumpets.

So all these occurrences, it’s very likely that’s how they brought the people together.

**Consultation with the Chief Civil Officer**

Then also, they didn’t just elect people, as it were, to be their chief civil officer. They also were consulted by the chief civil officer. An example of that is in 1st Chronicles 13:2-4. It says in verse 2 that all the assembly of Israel are consulted by David. He gets all the assembly of Israel together to consult them as to what to do about the ark.

He wants to bring the ark back into the land and up to its proper place now. And he assembles the group—the congregation of the people—to consult with on that matter. And it says in verse 4 that all the assemblies said that they wanted that was a good idea and they wanted to do that and they would do that with him.

So again, you see here the head of the Hebrew republic, as it were, calling on an elected representative group of people representing the people for counsel and advice about an important religious affair. In this connection: the bringing up of the ark. And they then concur with that, and so it’s done.

**Summary of the Congregation’s Role**

So what we see then is that the congregation is a representative group of people, undoubtedly elected. Now we don’t have specific remembrances that say they’re elected to that post. But we know that in every other current we’ve looked at, these people were elected. The heads of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands were chosen out from the people to be representatives before God in terms of judicial affairs.

And so we know that the congregation as a whole is represented by a representative group of elected officials that are closely linked to the people.

Now, remember, the nasi also are elected. They’re elected out of that assembly. Remember it says in Numbers 16:2—and I think Numbers 1:16, and number 16 refers to the rebellion of Korah and the 250 princes—it said that they were elected out of the congregation or the assembly. In Numbers 1, it says that these are the princes of Israel called out of the assembly, elected to office by the assembly.

And so what we have here is a house of representatives—the congregation of the people—that are elected by the people to represent them at the next layer of government up. Then those people in convocation meet together and they select the princes, the nasi, the senators, as it were. And they represent a separate political body with separate civil affairs in mind.

So the congregation then, the group that is convened by the blowing of both trumpets, is a larger group. They’re more directly linked to the people, and they’re elected directly by the people. Whereas the princes, or the senators, are elected by representative groups—by the assemblies themselves—not by individuals.

The congregation of the people then had involvement in inheritance matters, judicial affairs, war, sending out of troops, establishment of peace treaties. They at least had some say in that. They were responsible for the selection of the head of the state. And then they dealt also as general counsel with the heads of the state in terms of matters of state policies.

So the congregation or the assembly here that’s convened in Numbers 10 is a political and civil reality in the covenant community, and they’re assembled by trumpets. And as I said, they’re the basis then for the selection of the nasi, or the senators.

**Commentary on Representative Government**

Now, this is very important. By the way, what I’ve said is not really all that novel to you—it may sound a little bit novel—but if you look at, you know, Kuyper and Ditch, for instance, or Winthrop’s commentary on Leviticus 4, most commentators would agree that this group of people that’s brought forward are an elected group of people representing the people and doesn’t mean all 2.5 million people coming forward at the blowing of the second trumpet.

So what I’ve told you is not something out of the ordinary. It’s fairly commonly accepted in its basic thrust. Maybe not in the specific details in terms of selection, but it’s real obvious as you do this sort of study of the scriptures that the congregation had a specific elected group of people to represent them before God. And so they represented another whole office, as it were. And that’s what we’re studying—Old Testament offices—and they represent another layer of government, as it were, of the people.

The representative nature of this group is quite important. What this means is that the people are directly involved in their own government. It’s a representative community. It’s a republic. It’s not a pure democracy. There are no plebiscite votes cast for the heads of state or for other important matters. The people are represented through their elected officials, and that gives the people a great deal more—a much greater amount of—representative government with God.

It means that it truly was a government of the people in that sense. And that’s why our country is known as a republic under God and not as a democracy as such. It’s a government of the people with representative officials from the people ruling over them.

This means that the people that are elected—also, since we have a representative government here—elected by the people—their responsibility is to serve those people in all their various offices. They serve, as it were, at the permission of the people. And their failure to serve the people result in their ouster from government.

So we have here another important concept here. We have, with representative government, we see here in two different bodies of representative officials, as it were, the idea of checks and balances also. And self-government—decentralized self-government. This has obvious implications if we think about it for the civil government we have. And also, I think, if we think about it a little bit further, for the sort of church governments we’re going to have.

This country—we got to with the form of government we have. And the United States Constitution of this country is based in large extent upon this sort of government that we see outlined under the Old Testament polity of the covenant people. It’s the same sort of government. These are not just coincidences. We have two bodies. I believe, because people understood the need for two bodies for checks and balances within the system.

Why do they need checks and balances? Because man is sinful and man will make incorrect decisions. And so we have to have a system of checks and balances. And so we saw that in operation, for instance, when the senate, the nasi, make a treaty with the Gibeonites. Yet there’s a check and balance against that in the part of the congregation who raise a voice up against that. And then there’s an accommodation made through that process.

Then the nasi and Joshua entered into a covenant with the Gibeonites really in good faith but with bad advice and bad counsel. They hadn’t thought it through correctly. So there’s a system of checks and balances. It’s very important. And in this country, we have checks and balances because we recognize the sinful nature of man—because of his fall into depravity.

The idea of representative government also, of course, is fundamental to an understanding of the covenant. We stand in covenant relationship with God because of a representative for us—Jesus Christ. And so the whole idea of covenant and a people voluntarily compacting together, making a covenant with one another for various activities, is based upon a biblical principle again of representative government.

The term federal in terms of the federal system that we have here comes from the term covenant—comes from the term foedus, which was the Latin term for covenant. And so federal theology, as it were, is covenant theology. And federal government has its roots in government with represented heads of people who are directly elected by the vote of the people and other checks and balances besides.

Another important implication of all this, of course, is that we don’t have a top-down government. It just burns me when people who espouse a position that God’s scripture should provide the basis for how our civil governments run in this country—how those people are characterized by the media as Ayatollah Khomeinis or some sort of religious dictator. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The system that the scriptures point out that we looked at briefly this morning—where you have checks and balances, where you had elected officials directly elected by the people, those people meet in convocation and elect the next higher group, the nasi, the senators. They also meet in convocation and select their chief officer as well, ordained by God, of course, and selected by him, but also confirmed by the people.

That’s true representational government. That is bottom-up. It’s not top-down. There’s no attempt to see a top-down system in scripture. It’s always bottom-up. And the idea that we’re somehow going to elect somebody like Calvin to the presidency of the country and then get him to rule everybody with a rod of iron is just crazy.

What we have is a bottom-up government, which, of course, stresses the need for evangelism. We’re not going to have proper government in this country until we get out there and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and convert men. And as a result of that conversion, teach them what the kingdom of God is all about—how it’s to be run in terms of civil affairs, which is representationally, through various checks and balances, with bottom-up government.

And that’s how this country was founded, of course—is bottom-up government. As a result of that, there was a need for virtuous living on the part of the people, and this was stressed in the early colonies and it should be stressed today as well.

You: if government is representational, it’s going to be closely linked to whatever the affairs of the people are—whatever the spiritual state of the people are. And so if we have corrupt leaders today in America, it’s because corrupt people elect corrupt leaders. If we have a national deficit in America and a representational form of government, it’s because the households have domestic deficits, as it were. They’re in debt.

And so if the people lose faith, they’re going to elect men of no faith, and hence provide a check and balance against themselves as well—working out, as it were, of God’s judgment against them.

Now, what’s interesting though is that once that happens—when a people loses faith and begins to elect people who don’t understand the principles of God’s government—you’ll begin to see the erosion of those middle-level layers of government which provide liberty and freedom to the people. We talked about this a little bit last week, but in this country, three things occurred fairly in 1913. One was the creation of the Federal Reserve system and a centralized banking system as a result of that.

The second thing was the constitutional amendment that allowed for the unlimited taxation of the people by the federal government. And the third thing that happened was the change—the constitutional amendment—to change the selection of senators.

Remember we talked about that last week. Senators now, the US senators, are directly elected by the people, aren’t they? That’s a direct violation of what God teaches us in these Old Testament political governments. He teaches us that the nasi were to be called out of the congregation, elected by representatives of the people.

And so in this country, you had originally the senators, the US senators, being selected by the state legislatures. The state legislature—the house—was elected by the people there. They then would send a nasi, or a senator, to Washington to serve as a US senator and represent the state as a whole, and not the individual constituents of it.

We talked about the electoral college also, and how that was changed. They didn’t need a constitutional amendment to change that. The Constitution of the United States basically said that the electoral college was comprised of however many electors there are. However many representatives there are at the US House plus the number of senators is the number of electoral votes, and that’s apportioned by those districts.

And what the Constitution said was it’s up to the state to send people to the electoral college to select the president by whatever means they think is best. Implied in all that—and what happened for the first, I don’t know, 50 or 100 years or so—was the state would have individual electors selected by the people in correlation to the selection of representatives at the state government. But what’s happened as a result of that little loophole left in the Constitution: the states now have said we’re going to have direct popular vote for the president, for a slate of electors dedicated to a president, and winner takes all.

Now, why is that a bad thing? I mean, it seems so democratic, you know, to have senators elected by the people, to have the president elected by direct vote of the people, and not these intermediate layers of government select the upper offices. The reason why that is a bad thing—look at the electoral college, for instance—is that if you’ve got a tight election, let’s say, and Oregon is about 50/50 on a particular which candidate they’re going to go for, a small dedicated group of radicals can provide whatever leverage is needed to put the one person over the top.

And so really, you end up with manipulation of the entire population by the part of a small dedicated group of people. What should happen is if you got a 50/50 vote, then one president should get 50% of the electoral votes, and the other should get the other 50%. But what we’ve gone to is more of a strict democracy. And so what do we end up with? We end up with media candidates.

There’s no way for the average person to know who he’s selecting, usually for US Senate or for the president. However, if we had those positions selected by people as they used to be—by the representatives that we’ve already picked—those people at an upper level of government can know the candidates, can know the implications of that candidate. That’s the biblical system. And it makes sense, and it worked in this country.

And now, when people have lost faith, they’re turning their back on the biblical system of representational government and stripping out those intermediate layers of government. Another important layer of government in America and its founding was the county level. People would elect county officers, and they had a lot of control over the people. But now that layer of government stripped away also because people have lost faith and so moved away from a biblical concept of civil government.

They’ve gone away from this representational nature that we saw in Numbers 10. They’ve gone away from the checks and balances. And have everybody directly elected by the people. And when that happens—when all the layers are finally stripped away—what you have is a civilization, and you can look at this historically: it always happens. A civilization that veers back and forth between the will of the people—the voice of the people being the voice of God, so to speak, no check and balance from the top—or to that usually ends up with a dictatorship where you have one man at the top making all the selections for the people.

Biblical government is government that produces freedom for the people. We need to in this country reestablish biblical government, representational, bottom-up, with these very bodies being elected by the constituent elements of the people. But the house of representatives selected by the people, and senators elected by the house of representatives or by the representatives of the state. That’s what we need to reestablish in this country.

And I’m telling you that almost nobody out there in the street understands any of this. Now, what I hope to do here is, as we go through these series of Old Testament government and church government—also make application to the state, because we’re involved there also. And we should—each man in this congregation, the women as well, to whatever degree we can—we can educate ourselves in these things. We should be talking to people about the nature of civil government and explaining to them from the basis of scripture the need for representational government and checks and balances.

We have to restore the faith of the people, which means the faith of people in the whole word of God and God’s counsel as it applies to representational government as well.

**Implications for Ecclesiastical Government**

Now, it also, of course, has implications for ecclesiastical government. What we see is the same principle should be followed in ecclesiastical government as well. In church government, we have elders elected by the people. And that, as we said before from last week, there’s good reason to believe that there’s another layer of government on top of the elders—the senators, as it were, of the elders in convocation together.

Churches would in this country form denominations. And originally, the idea behind that was a biblical one. They would band together in voluntary associations of churches. As a result of their banding together as local, self-governing churches, they then would delegate certain authorities to the denominational representatives that they would have elected.

And so if you want to look at a denominational situation that would be biblical, you’d have churches electing elders, elders selecting men out of their group to go and represent themselves at these denominational meetings. And the people be represented not by a direct vote in terms of denominational affairs, but rather by the elected officials coming out of their own governing group of people in their own church. And so we then have a system of checks and balances.

And that’s what happened in this country originally at the establishment of denominations. Many of them were formed on this very principle: a voluntary association of churches with higher courts over them. It’s important to remember, though, that these higher courts are a delegated and advisory court. In other words, the federal government, for instance, going back to the civil government, only has the powers that are delegated to it by the state. That was the original idea.

With denominations, you’d have the same idea going on here: that only whatever powers are delegated to the denomination on the part of the church is what would occur at the denominational level. In other words, they’d have real authority—as we said at the nasi—but they wouldn’t be authoritarian. They wouldn’t end up ruling the entire church, as it were, and making all the decisions for the people.

The federal government shouldn’t end up making all the decisions for the people. And with the erosion of biblical government and with the system of checks and balances and the civil government that we talked about in Numbers 10, we see just that. The federal government and the state government become more tyrannical in everything that they do and begin to run the affairs of the people and no longer see themselves as a delegated authority from the people.