Dennis Tuuri

# CLEANED SERMON TRANSCRIPT – REFORMATION COVENANT CHURCH

Pastor Dennis Tuuri

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We would do last week. We set aside this week for consideration of the Constitution of the United States of America and its Christian and Hebrew roots. As some of you know, several weeks ago, I was asked to do a talk at a historical society in Oregon City by a very nice lady named Margaret Kale. She, by the way, is the one who made available the copies of the Constitution that are on the foyer out front.

And as I prepared for that talk it was somewhat ironic to think of the implications of the constitution and its roots and yet where the country is today. And I thought that in light of the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the signing of the constitution a couple weeks ago, a week and a half ago, it would be good for the church to consider what that signing meant to us originally and what the implications are for our country today.

As I began to prepare for that talk, I got out some old memory cards that Denny Woods had prepared several years ago. He had done a kind of an ingenious sort of thing. He had taken comments or statements out of the Declaration of Independence and also out of the Constitution and put them on little cards, like business cards. And on the back had a verse from the scripture relative to that particular statement in the Constitution or the Declaration.

Now, that’s a hard thing to do and I’m not sure you can really do it. It’s hard to try to distill down biblical principles to a single verse out of the scriptures to talk about a principle of government, but I guess that’s kind of where we’re at today. I think that the general population is so illiterate biblically and really constitutionally as well. That’s kind of where we have to start in terms of trying to show the correlation.

But in any event, one of the verses that Denny had on the back of one of those cards was Isaiah 33:22. And I think it was on the back of the portion of the Constitution talking about the separation of powers. But in any event, it certainly is an appropriate verse for that. And we’re going to use that verse as our outline this morning. As you can tell, if you picked up copies of the outline, we’re going to look at these statements about our creator, Jehovah, God, covenant God of his people, and about that creator.

There are statements made about him in this portion of scripture. And I think it’s important to recognize that when the Declaration of Independence acknowledged that we were creatures, that there was a creator who had produced certain inalienable rights, that has significance that we often overlook when we look at statements about the creator. But this church, I think by now, is well schooled enough in the scriptures to know that statements as to the creator of God and the creatureliness of man are absolutely foundational for understanding everything that we know.

We just sang our prayer that we would be illumined by God’s word. And we always sing that after we read the sermon text of scripture to help you recognize that those words are important too. They ask for God to reveal to us something about himself from the scriptures. The scriptures are a revelation of the person of God and then analogically from that we can understand things about ourselves in relationship because we’re creatures that came forth out of the hand of the creator.

And so God tells us something about himself. It has implications for us as individuals. And this verse in Isaiah 33:22 has implications for the way government should be partitioned in terms of its functions. They’re not partitioned in the Godhead, but because we have legislators and presidents and judges that aren’t God, so we have the separation of powers into these three specific branches in our constitution.

And so the fact that we begin then with a declaration of the person of God and that God exists as a judge, as a lawgiver, and as a king has implications for how civil government is to be formed. And we’ll see as we go through some of the references we’ll talk about in a minute here that both the Hebrew Republic understood the separation of powers and the delegation of certain authorities that were after all coming forth from the person of God himself into various branches of government.

Okay? And those branches of government should image God then in terms of being judicial, legislative and executive. And that’s what we find in the Hebrew republic. And that’s also what we find when we come to the United States Constitution, that the first three articles of that constitution provide for that same separation of powers into a judicial, legislative, and executive branch.

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All right. **First point, the scriptures say the Lord is our judge.**

And we’ll take these references the way the scriptures have them and we’ll see the correlation. Now, for those of you who have sat through the long series of messages we gave several months ago on biblical government, you’ll remember that indeed the Hebrew republic talked about in the Pentateuch and the old covenant indeed had a judicial branch to it. You remember that Moses had problems administering the people of God judicially by himself and that he took the advice wisely of his father-in-law who recommended that he set up courts, graded courts.

And so we find in Deuteronomy 1 and 2, we find the restatement of that occurrence. The original occurrence happens in Exodus 18, verses 21 and 22. And in Exodus 18, we read the following. We read about this establishment of judges. “Moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place over them to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of 50s, and rulers of tens, and let them judge the people at all seasons. It shall be that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge. So shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.”

So he had the establishment of judges over 10. Remember we talked there that these weren’t isolated nuclear families with heads, they were houses of the fathers which were kind of like extended families, fairly good-sized groups, and there were to be judges over 10 of these houses of the fathers, above that judges over 50s, hundreds and thousands, so you have this idea of graded courts being talked about in the Hebrew judiciary under the old covenant and that then became an important element of the threefold nature of the Hebrew republic.

We recognize those from this also though that these judges were not to be arbitrary in their decisions in these cases. Rather, the judges were ruled by law. The judges had to render decisions not on the basis of their own opinions, but on the basis of God’s law. And if they didn’t understand the law that was delivered to them well enough, then they had to throw the matter up to the next higher court. If it was too hard for the heads of tens, they would call in the heads of the 50s. If it was too hard for them, they’d call in the heads of the hundreds. If it was too hard for them, they’d call in the thousand court judges, and then if it was too hard for them, they’d go directly to Moses, who would then seek advice and counsel from God himself.

The Hebrew judiciary operated under a rule of law and that’s very important. This Hebrew constitution was an outgrowth and a development of the Decalogue itself, the Ten Commandments. And it was to this law, to the Ten Commandments and its accompanying inspired casuistic applications in the Pentateuch, that they were to be the standards then by which the people were to be judged by these judges established by Moses. So there was a rule of law that occurred in the Hebrew republic.

Initially, there was equal justice for all. And in Deuteronomy 1:16-18, we read that they had to not have one law for one person, another law for another person. They had to judge correctly and wisely according to the one law that God had given to them. In Deuteronomy 1:16-18, we read the following.

“And I charge your judges at that time, saying, ‘Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother and the stranger that is with him. He shall not respect persons in judgment, but ye shall hear the small as well as the great. You shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s, and the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.’ And I commanded you at that time all these things which ye should do.”

So they were to have equal justice for all, the strangers in the land, as well as the freeborn citizens, the ones who are full covenant members with full covenant voting rights in the assemblies and the congregations. Equal justice would be meted out to both groups of people in all of the land, whether rich or poor, whether small or great, equal justice based upon the rule of law administered by a Hebrew judiciary.

Fourth, we find later in the scriptures that they met in the gate for the hearing of these cases. And so there we have the basis for public hearing of cases. The judges would meet in the gate to decide matters. The gate was the central place of the city into which the city was entered. And anybody who wanted to could go out into that city gate as it were, to the courtyard there and hear the judicial cases being heard.

Additionally, there was indication that in Ruth 4:2, we have perhaps the initiation of a jury system in those gates. Boaz at that particular time selects out 10 elders to sit and to hear the cause that he is going to enter into against the relative of Naomi who would not perform his particular obligations. And so we have Boaz then selecting 10 elders in the gates to hear this case. And that very well is seen then as a jury system in germinal form there in the book of Ruth 4:2.

There was a right of appeal because as we see here they had these graded courts and if there was a reason to think that the original judge had not ruled according to the scriptures, had not understood it well enough and not been able to get the facts correctly, there could be appeal to a higher judge. And so these graded courts and the right of appeal is inherent in these graded courts.

And finally there was a supreme court then to which these appeals would be put. In Deuteronomy 17:8-11, we have the establishment of a supreme court or a final court of appeal as it were, operating separate from the chief civil magistrate. Now a supreme court, as it were, who was the top judge who would hear the final courts of appeal to him, and then his decision was final in the matter.

The final point is that the supreme law then that governed the people and established the judiciary and established the basis for hearing these cases was ratified by the people. In Exodus 19:8, the supreme law, which as we said was a direct working out of the principles of the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 19:8, the people after being given a call to obey God and to do all that he was going to command them to do—in verse 8, the people answer together and they say, “All that the Lord has spoken, we will do.”

And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord. At that point, then God gives them specific directions in terms of the application of his law over their lives. So the supreme law was ratified by the people. It was not thrust upon them as it were, but God called for the ratification of the process.

That’s the Hebrew republic. And we find striking examples and correlations between that Hebrew republic and the old covenant and the American republic both in the constitution and the working out of the laws of the states as well.

First, there is a judiciary. And if you have your little constitutions there, if you turn to article three, the Constitution itself begins on page nine. Article 3 begins on page 21. And article 3 of the Constitution establishes a judicial system for federal courts. And so we see the American constitutional republic also imaging this nature of God in terms of God being a judge over us by establishing human judges who would image God by judging correctly and righteously—a judicial branch.

Secondly, the Constitution states in article six, the first section—that’ll be on page 24, paragraph 2—it says that this Constitution, etc., shall be the supreme law of the land. The middle of that second paragraph of Article six of the Constitution. The Constitution itself was the rule of law under which the judiciary had to make correct judgments. Again, they weren’t able to impose arbitrary standards upon the people. They had to refer—the federal judiciary did—to the Constitution itself as the supreme law of the land.

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Now, I want to take a little divergence there for a couple of minutes to develop this concept of the law of the land because it’s an interesting one. We often probably talked lightly about the law of the land without even beginning to consider where that term came from. And it turns out the term “law of the land”—the supreme law of the land—comes from the origins of the Magna Carta in 1215, article 39 of the Magna Carta.

And by the way, much of what I’m going to be giving you for the next couple of minutes I gleaned from Steve Samson’s doctoral thesis “Crossroads.” If any of you ever have some time to read a 600-page thesis, that would be a great one to read and it’s just chock full of incredible information. And I’ll be quoting from that much of the sources for this next section will come from Steve Samson in his doctoral thesis.

But in any event, the Magna Carta adopted in 1215, signed in 1215 by the king, in article 39 protects the freeman from arrest, detention and other harms except—and this is quoting now directly from the Magna Carta—”by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.” So the term “the law of the land” goes back to at least the Magna Carta. But I think that the origins of the term “law of the land” has roots even deeper than that. If not the term, at least the concept. Helen Sylving, writing in a book entitled “Sources of Law,” says this about the term “the law of the land.”

“One of the most difficult notions is the lex terra, which may refer to the biblical idea of the land functioning as a sanctioning agent under the oath as a self-blessing or in the alternative as a self-curse—the promised land for one who keeps the covenant or the charter, in the land that spews out the one who does not. It is possible that at the time of the Magna Carta, this conception of lex terra, the sanctioning land, stood for the law upon which the land functions as such an agent or for the form of proof that will be regarded as admissible or sufficient under such a law.”

What she’s talking about is that the scriptures in the old covenant repeatedly talked to the people of Israel and warned them to be true to the covenant or else the land itself will spew out the inhabitants thereof. The land is seen as a sanctioning agent, as it were, as an oath ratifier. The people that take covenant and the land itself would spew the people out, and their removal from the land by God—of course not the land acting autonomously of its own, but their being spewed out of the land by God by the creator of that land—would be an indication that they had broken the covenant.

And so the “law of the land” found in the Magna Carta and in the Constitution probably has roots back to this biblical precedent, that the land served as a law to the people and that it would spew them out for their unrighteousness.

Now there’s strong evidence to suggest that this is the correct understanding and not just—we don’t have to just jump from the Constitution back to the Magna Carta and then from the Magna Carta to say there’s possible references to the Old Testament. But if we look at the origins of the Magna Carta itself and follow this chain back, we’ll see more reasons to believe that’s what this concept of “law of the land” refers to.

The roots of the Magna Carta itself—the Magna Carta itself was an attempt to restore the pre-conquest customary law and particularly the legal code of King Alfred, who reigned from 871 to 899. And that code is known as the Liber Iustialis. Philip Schaff, writing in the history of the Christian church, says of the code of King Alfred the following:

“King Alfred’s code is introduced with the Ten Commandments and other laws taken from the Bible. It protects the stranger in memory of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. It gives the Christian slave freedom in the seventh year as the Mosaic law gave to the Jewish bondman. It protects the young man in his Sunday rest. It restrains bloodthirsty passions of revenge by establishing bots or fines for offenses. It enjoins the golden rule in the negative form: not to do to any man what we would not have done to us.”

Now I could quote—I think we have in this church in times past—more extensively from King Alfred’s code of judicial system, but we don’t have the time this morning. But if you search out a history book and find—and I could, you could look at my copy of a book that I have that gives a reading of King Alfred’s code. You’ll find that it was, as this author says Philip Schaff says, premised specifically on Old Testament law, the Ten Commandments, and built upon it.

King Alfred’s code, as we said, in the late 800s of England’s history became then the basis for these customary laws or this common law that was developing in England at the time. And that history then is what gave birth to, or what the Magna Carta was attempting to restore from a despotic king, restore those common law based upon King Alfred’s code, which was based upon the scriptures. And so this chain goes back to the history of England itself.

By the way, of course, England itself had deep roots in the Christian faith. According to tradition, Christianity was promoted in Britain in the second century under King Lucius. The common law was referred to by Ch. Woo Joan—John rather—in “Fountains of Justice” as a “cradle Christian,” and citing Maitland. This author traces its earliest roots back to the reign of Ethelbert, who expunged all traces of the old pagan religion from the law.

Ethelbert, the king of Kent, was baptized along with 10,000 of his subjects by the monk Augustine on Christmas Day in 597. So Ethelbert himself attempted to take out the pagan influences from the Christian law which was then operating in England, which then became formalized later under King Alfred’s code.

So you’ll see this chain going back involving the term “law of the land,” and you see the common law itself, which was the basis for Magna Carta and was established more fully by Magna Carta, that was the basis for our Constitution, of course. And that all has its roots back to Alfred’s code, which has its roots back to King Ethelbert trying to expunge foreign or pagan ideas from the Christian law code at the time.

Douglas Kelly gave a just remarkable talk on this several years ago at the Reconstruction Conference up in Seattle. If anybody knows what that tape is, I’d like to find it. We have not been able to find that tape in the last few weeks. I’ve been looking for it. But suffice it to say that at that talk he gave an incredible amount of evidence to support the theory that the English common law itself of its two traditions—the written tradition and the oral tradition—predating back directly to Old Testament times and the Christian times, with the written tradition being the Decalogue and the casuistic application of the Decalogue in the Old Covenant.

And the oral tradition being the tradition established by the elders sitting in the gates who would discover the law of God, how it applies to this particular case. And so that’s the roots of the Magna Carta and the Constitution.

The Constitution then, in Steve Samson’s own words, stands in a long tradition of limited government based on the rule of law which dates back to pre-Christian times. Now the importance of this rule of law being the basis over which the Constitution was built is extremely—it cannot be really overstated.

You must understand—or you may not have been exposed to this—but the fact is that the English system was unique in that most European nations, all except England, based their system upon the Roman law code. Now the Roman law code was one of imposition of law dictated by fiat by an emperor or a Caesar over the people. So the Roman law code is an imperial law code. It says whatever the magistrate, chief guy in the land, says that becomes law then.

But English common law never was along that line. It had its basis back to biblical law, a law outside of the dictates or wills of the king, and under which the king himself was subject. That’s the whole basis of English common law. And that’s the law of the land that then became the basis upon which our Constitution attempted to establish a government. That’s extremely important to see those two distinct origins of law.

There’s a quote by Roscoe Pound from a book entitled “The Development of Constitutional Guarantees of Liberty” that I’ll read. He has distinguished these two traditions according to Steve Samson, according to their sources of authority. And this is quoting now from Roscoe Pound:

“Whereas in the final Roman theory, law proceeded from the emperor, was made by him, in the English theory, it was pre-existing and was found by the king or by his justices and applied to the cases before them as something binding upon them no less than on the parties.”

Okay, you see the difference? One was an attempt to create law by fiat. The other was the elders sitting in the gate. And they, of course, as we saw from the Hebrew Republic a couple of minutes ago, had their basis in the Decalogue and the casuistic applications in the Pentateuch.

And so the “law of the land,” we have—or we have many reasons then to suppose that “law of the land” referred to in the Constitution indeed hearkens back to that use of the land as an affirmer or witness to the oath of the people as they entered into covenant faithfulness with God and with the civil authority that he had ordained for them.

So there was a supreme law under which the Constitution was attempted to be founded, and the Constitution then became the law of the land. The land would then spew people out of it if they acted in disobedience to the law behind the law, which was the Ten Commandments or Decalogue. Jehovah was the preeminent judge, and it was upon his standards then that the federal judiciary and all the state judiciaries as well in our land were to rule.

So there’s a correlation there.

Additionally, there’s a correlation of course in that our system has equal justice for all, just like the Hebrew system had. Our system is based upon public hearings. If a person’s up for trial, you can go in and sit in on that trial. It’s held in, as it were, in our courtrooms today. There’s a right of appeal in our process as well, and you can’t just have a frivolous appeal. There has to be a basis for that appeal and the judge has to concur in that basis. And so there’s a right of appeal with restrictions of course that were biblical as well.

We have this whole idea of graded courts. And in the federal judiciary we have another set of graded courts over which the Supreme Court itself, established in article 3 of the Constitution, was to rule. And there is that Supreme Court, just as in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 17, we had one final place of appeal at the head of this whole system of graded courts.

And so in the Constitution itself, it provides for a Supreme Court at the head of this whole system of graded courts in our land, ruling under law, not under their own wills or whims. Equal justice for all. Meaning in public. And then of course the Constitution itself had to be ratified by the people the way the people said that we will do all that God has commanded us to do in the old covenant with the adoption of the Decalogue and the case laws. In the same way the Constitution then was ratified by the people before it came into effect. It was not imposed upon the states by fiat.

Okay. So the Lord is our judge and we have systems then in the Hebrew republic which were based upon that, which attempted to image God in the judicial sphere. We have a tradition in article 3 of the Constitution of a judiciary in this country which also operates under law and under the restrictions that God has given to us. And there’s a correlation then.

Now you may, having been raised in a land that has rule by law instead of rule by tyrant, it’s easy for us to take that for granted. But if you think of the descriptions of the cultures around Israel in the old covenant and you think of the radical nature of their particular form of government in terms of it being quite different from the rule of authority or power around the people in that particular framework, you understand then the importance of that movement in the advance of humankind—with God giving us civil law based upon justice, based upon a code from God himself and not upon tyrant rule.

Remember the nations around Israel were bloodthirsty nations. They ruled by force, by might rather, not by force of law. And so it was a tremendous advance for the people, an advantage for them to have rule by law. And this country had the same thing in the writing of the Constitution, its adoption. We were asserting rule by law and not rule by men. That’s important.

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**But secondly, the passage in Isaiah 33 says that the Lord is our lawgiver.**

And so in the Hebrew Republic, there was a legislative branch. And again, if you were in our talks several months ago, you’ll remember most of this probably. But in Numbers 27, there’s a legislative assembly referred to. Zelophehad’s daughters—their father had died. They had no male heir to take the land. They wanted to know if they could own that land that had been given to them on the basis of the apportionment to the tribes and the families within the tribes, or if they would just have to—what would they do if they couldn’t have this land that their father had owned, which had no male descendent to receive it?

And so they brought this case through legislative action to the legislative assembly. The legislators were gathered together to hear this. It says that the congregation and the princes were gathered together to hear the matter with Moses. And they didn’t really know what to do. And so they then talked to Moses about it. Moses then sought the oracle out from God, and God said yes, they can keep the land as their possession.

And the important part of that then is that they went to a specific group. The oracle spoke, and then that law became enacted.

Looking at Numbers 27:11 of that account, it says the following:

“And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsmen that is next to him of his family and he shall possess it, and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment as the Lord commanded Moses.”

It became a statute of judgment. Then they had—they didn’t understand what to do. They were trying to discover this law, we were talking about earlier, that was pre-existent. And then with apparently the meeting that occurred here, which was the meeting of the legislative assembly of Israel, they then decided this would be a statute forever. God had instructed it. It then became one of the laws by which people were to rule by.

There was a legislative body there in effect. And remember that we talked about the fact that this legislative body in the Hebrew Republic was a bicameral legislature. In other words, it had two houses to it. In verse 2 of Numbers 27, it says that Zelophehad’s daughters stood before Moses and before Eleazar the priest and before the princes and all the congregation. Two groups there—the princes and all the congregation.

And you remember we talked about Numbers 10, the blowing of two trumpets. You kids who are in Mr. Garrett’s class at that time, you remember he brought that horn and he would teach you about how if they blew one horn, then one group of people would assemble, they blew the other horn, both horns together, both groups would assemble before God. Well, that’s right out of the Bible in Numbers 10.

In Numbers 10, we read the fact that these two horns would be constructed and they were used then for assembling either the princes or the congregation in joint house with them. In Numbers 10:3, he makes these two trumpets:

“And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.”

As we said when we did a study of this word in the old covenant, that doesn’t mean every last person. It means the elected representatives of the people. In verse 4:

“And if they blow but one trumpet, then the princes which are heads of the thousands of Israel shall gather themselves unto thee.”

And so they had two separate, distinct assemblies here. One that was a more common representation of all the people by the elected representatives. And secondly, the princes or the heads of the thousand groups or these big family groups that constitute the various tribes of Israel. And so you had these two different groups then—you had as it were a house of representatives and a house of princes.

You remember we talked about that in that message several months ago, that those princes were selected by these representatives, not by direct election of the people. They were men of renown in the assembly, and the assembly then would appoint these men as princes or heads over these various clans. Okay? So it’s a bicameral legislature in the Hebrew republic.

By the way, it’s interesting here that the priests are the ones who are specifically commanded to blow these trumpets to convene the assembly. If you think about the fact that all legislative assemblies at one time in this country and probably still to some extent are convened by an invocation given by a priest or a clergyman, you’ll see the correlation there to the priest blowing these trumpets and calling the people to order.

Three, there was the concurrence of both bodies, apparently, that were necessary to enact these laws into the Hebrew Republic—laws that were not laws in the sense of new laws, but were laws in the sense of applying the case law and the decal law to specific situations. The concurrence of both was necessary.

Four, a declaration of war came from both assembled groups. And that’s found in Judges 20. We won’t take the time now to look at that, but in Judges 20, they were going to make war against the tribe of Benjamin for what they had done in terms of their evil acts. And both groups assembled there for that declaration of war.

Five, the legislative assembly here that we’re talking about served as a check and balance against the tyrannical chief magistrate should one occur. We find that in 1 Samuel 14:42.

In 1 Samuel 14:42, you remember that story—the story of Saul. He had commanded the people to fast all day and they were running after the Philistines to try to win in battle there. His son Jonathan apparently didn’t hear the order, was running along after these enemies of God, got hungry, saw some honey there, takes his staff, dips it into the honey while he’s running, puts it to his mouth, and his eyes brighten. These men were being fasted to death as it were and run after the enemies. There’s no call by the way for men, after pursuing godless enemies, to fast like that. Saul was completely out of line in telling his people to do that.

And then Saul was going to have Jonathan executed because he had broken this law of the king that he had set forth and he said the penalty for that was going to be death. He’s going to have Jonathan executed. And it says that the people then—and apparently in this legislative representative group of people—then met to contradict that and to tell the king no, he will not surely die. He’s not going to be put to death for this matter. And so the legislative assembly—this bicameral representation of the people and that of the elected representatives themselves—could serve as a check and balance against the chief civil magistrate in that case, Saul, in his unjust actions.

Well, we find the same thing in the American republic in the Constitution. In article one, we find the establishment of the legislative branch of government. Article three was the establishment of the judicial branch. Article one establishes the legislative branch. And section one says:

“All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

And so we have this establishment of a bicameral legislature in the Constitution itself, and the selection process also mirrored the selection process of the assembly and princes of the old covenant.

Most people in this church, I think, know, but maybe you didn’t know until the last couple of years, that the senators themselves were originally selected according to this very Constitution—not by direct election of the people but rather by the selection of the state legislators, of which they would that they would represent in Congress. And so you had a House of Representatives established in the Constitution—direct election of the people—and those representatives were apportioned on the basis of the census of each of the represented states. So if a state had twice as many people, it would get twice as many representatives. And that’s why Oregon doesn’t have anywhere near as many as California as California is far more populated.

But the senators—now, they were to represent a different level of government. Another check and balance as it were, as part of this system imaging the princes of the old covenant. And remember we said those princes were men of renown according to the congregation or the assembled representatives of the various tribes. They each had their legislative bodies as well. And these people were selected by those people.

Well, it’s the same thing. Originally, the Senate of the United States—the individual state legislators were commanded to direct for themselves two senators to represent that state at the federal level. They were not elected directly by the people. They weren’t really representing the individual people as such. They were representing the state, and they were a whole another branch of government.

If we had time, I could show you a lot more correlations between that delineation of powers to the Senate as opposed to the House of Representatives that also would image biblical government of the old covenant, but we don’t really have time to get into that this morning.

Now you might ask, well, how come we don’t do it that way now? How come today the senators are directly elected? Well, in 1913, of course, the Constitution was amended and there were two, in my mind, very poor amendments stopped in 1913. One was the income tax, federal income tax statute with no upper limit on that taxation. And the second was the direct election of the senators. And therefore, that was another stripping away of an intermediate level of government that the Senate represented at the federal level.

You may ask, why does each state still have two senators? If we have a direct election now, we don’t have them like the representatives. That’s a good question. I was watching McNeil-Lehrer about the Bork hearings and Bill Buckley was on there and he said just that. He said, “Well, you know, you guys, if you really believe in one man, one vote as the ultimate principle of political equity, then you better start rearranging the Senate because it doesn’t reflect one man, one vote, does it? We get two senators even though—and that’s the same number that California gets—even though they have far more people. So it’s not representative in that nature.”

And I have no doubt that if the present trend of government continues, we will end up with a change in the representation level of senators as well. But in any event, the Constitution then mirrored that same bicameral, two different types of legislative assemblies there constituting the federal Congress. And they were ruled by God’s law, of course, the same as the Hebrew republic was. They didn’t try to create new law. They simply understood God’s law and how it applied to the various situations they were to come across.

Three, the concurrence of both houses are necessary to pass laws. That’s found in Article 1, section 7, paragraph 2 of the Constitution. The concurrence of both bodies are necessary to pass laws.

Four, a declaration of war comes from both these assembled groups. Again, that’s found in Article 1, section 8. They have the power to declare war the same way that the bicameral legislation of the Hebrew republic could declare war.

And five, they have checks and balances against tyrannical chief magistrates. Impeachment proceedings of course are tried in the Senate over whenever any president or vice president becomes guilty of offenses that are so grievous as to demand intervention. So the bicameral legislature also serves as a check and balance against the tyrannical chief magistrate.

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**Well, the third portion of that verse 22 in Isaiah 33 says, “The Lord is our king.”**

And indeed also, the Hebrew republic had provision for a chief civil magistrate, a judge or a king. Either one, it was still a chief civil magistrate. That chief civil magistrate under the old covenant was ratified by the people, and that was through representative leaders of the congregation—the two houses of Congress, as it were, of the old covenant.

Numbers 27:19-22 and Judges 11:4-11 talk about the ratification of Joshua in the first case and the ratification of Jephthah in the second case as judge or chief civil magistrate over the people. The point is the chief civil magistrate wasn’t imposed upon the Hebrew people. They had to ratify that process.

God ordains people. He ordained David and he anointed David to be king. But David didn’t become fully functioning king until the people themselves ratified that choice. And until they do, he doesn’t reign as king. And so it is in our country today as well. We have leaders ordained by God and we simply want to find out who they are. The way we find out who God’s laws are and then ratify that process and say this is God’s man ratified by the people.

Three, the chief civil magistrate was to be ruled by God’s law. In Deuteronomy 17:18-20, there’s specific statements there that the chief civil magistrate when they appointed a king when they went into the land was to be ruled by God’s law. Deuteronomy 17:18-20:

“It shall be when he siteth upon the throne of the kingdom that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites and it shall be with him and he shall read therein all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God to keep all the words of his law and these statutes to do them that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren and that he not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel.”

And so the king was instructed to write out a copy of the law of God, to read that copy of the law of God throughout all the days of his life, apparently on a daily basis, and then to be governed by that law of God. First in terms of honoring God—the first tablet of the Ten Commandments—to obey that portion of the Ten Commandments, to honor God and to serve him. And secondly, not to have his heart lifted up against the other members of the Hebrew Republic—the second tablet of the law—to see himself as one among equals as it were in the Hebrew Republic, although functioning as the chief civil magistrate.

And so the chief civil magistrate in the Hebrew republic was a man who was governed by law. And the implications of that are tremendous as well. He was also then accountable to the people and he had certain prohibitions put upon him in this passage of scripture. He couldn’t multiply horses to himself. He couldn’t multiply wives. He couldn’t multiply gold.

And in 1 Samuel 12:1-3, when Samuel is done with his reign and ready to turn over the reigns of the kingdom to Saul—Samuel in 1 Samuel 12:1-3 he says:

“I judge me this day. Have I taken a goat from anybody? Have I done anything wrong? Have I defrauded anybody?”

And the people say no, you haven’t. The chief civil magistrate at that time, Samuel, was accountable to the people for his actions and he could not, as it were, violate the law of God and not have the people intervene against him.

Well, the American republic is the same way. In article two of the Constitution establishes the chief executive officer of the land, the presidency. And in Article 2, section 1, paragraph 2 of the Constitution, that president is ratified by the people, and that ratification process would also serve—we could spend a lot of time talking about that—but suffice it to say that the Electoral College images the ratification process of the chief civil magistrate in the old covenant when the assembly and the princes would come together to ratify the chief civil officer of the old covenant.

So in the biblical form of government, the various representatives and senators all reflected one electoral vote in the Electoral College. Now they couldn’t hold that electoral office, but there were electors elected in a proportion to the number of representatives and senators. And those electors then served as the ratifying process for the president of the United States. Whoever got the chief—you know, whoever got the popular vote was not how the president was decided, and it’s still not to this day.

Now, some people say the Electoral College is antiquated. It’s only antiquated because we’ve moved away from a representative system of government to a direct election. The fact that if a person wins 51% of the popular vote in Oregon, he ends up with the whole electoral slate of the state of Oregon when he gets to the Electoral College is wrong. The constitutional system, rather, images the biblical system. And that each of these electors would be voted for by the people. And if people—if 41% of the people wanted one guy for president and 51% or 49%—the electors themselves would be split that way.

Do you understand what I’m saying? If a state had 21 votes, the man who got the most votes but was just by a small percentage, he would get 11 of those votes and the other guy would get 10 of those votes in the Electoral College. And that was based upon this whole system that the assembly itself—the representative representatives of the people—would be the ones actually ratifying the president, not the people directly. It images that system. It’s important, but of course, it’s not really—I would imagine that within our lifetime, we’ll see the abolishment of the Electoral College as well, the way we’ve seen the move toward a directly elected Senate.

Third, the president was ruled by the Constitution. In Article 2, section 1, the last paragraph, there is an oath of office that the president has to take. And that oath affirms his being ruled by the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. He’s a man under law.

Fourth, he is accountable to the people. And in Article 2, section 4 of the Constitution, the president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. The president was a man under the law accountable to the people. And if he steals goats or horses the way that Saul said he did—or Samuel said he didn’t do—in the old covenant, if the president steals goats from people or multiplies to himself goods and riches apart from his salaries and office, he then will be impeached. He is accountable to the people. He is a man under law.

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Now, we don’t have time really to go into details on most of these things I’ve been talking about this morning, but suffice it to say that Isaiah 33:22 gave the form for the three separate branches of the Hebrew republic and it gives the form for the three separate branches of the constitutional republic of America as well. The first three articles of the Constitution establish a legislative body, a judicial body and an executive body. And there’s reasons for that.

The framers of the Constitution understood that their government was to be one based upon the scriptures. Now that’s indirect evidence there. Now let’s look at some direct evidence of this same thing.

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In May 1643, the New England colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Plymouth and New Haven adopted the Articles of Confederation. This is the preamble to that:

“Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the chief end and aim, namely to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the gospel in purity with peace.”

And so these New England colonies then adopted the Articles of Confederation because we all came into this land with the express purpose of proclaiming the gospel of King Jesus, of living our lives in obedience to that gospel. Therefore, we enter into the Articles of Confederation and uniting ourselves together. We’re united in theological purpose, they were saying. And so we’re being united now in a governmental form as well.

And of course, the Articles of Confederation became improved upon and a more perfect union was brought about with the establishment of the Constitution in August of 1787.

The Liberty Bell has inscribed upon it the following verse from Leviticus 25:10:

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.”

The Liberty Bell—the inscription on the Liberty Bell itself is from Leviticus and it talks about the year of Jubilee, the year of the declaration of liberty to the people based upon the coming of Jesus Christ.

In May 17th, 1776, Congress appointed a day of fasting and prayer for the colonies so that they might, and I quote, “by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease God’s righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness.”

Congress did that in 1776.

Samuel Adams, as the Declaration of Independence was being signed, said the following:

“We have this day restored the sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun let his kingdom come.”

An effort was started at that in the early 1800s, after the signing, around this period of time. An effort was started to have Hebrew made the official language of the new nation. Quote: “since it was the mother of languages, the key to the scriptures and the cornerstone of education.” End quote. That’s from a commencement address at Yale. Commencement addresses at Yale and Harvard were delivered in Hebrew as late as 1817. All commencement addresses were delivered in Hebrew.

On July 4th, Congress established a three-man committee to design a great seal for the United States. Committee members were Jefferson, John Adams, and Franklin. Jefferson proposed pictures of Israelites in the wilderness guided by a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day. Benjamin Franklin suggested the…