Dennis Tuuri

Yet he had that sure confidence in the master’s hand, the master’s guidance and direction. And we’ve seen for the last couple of weeks how in the providence of God, part of the way that God would deliver Paul from the false and apostate church at Jerusalem and from the Roman governors as well is through the secondary means of an appeal. So today we’re going to consider more about how to make a biblical appeal.

For the direct text, the indirect text is the text from Acts that we’ve been talking about from Acts 25. But we’ll turn today for the sermon text to Numbers 22 beginning at verse 14 and following, picking up the account of Balaam and Balak in the middle of the account. So please stand for the reading of God’s word. Numbers 22 beginning at verse 14.

“And the princes of Moab rose up, and they went unto Balak, and said, Balaam refuseth to come with us. And Balak sent yet again princes more and more numerous than they. And they came to Balaam, and said unto him, Thus saith Balak, the son of Zippor, let nothing I pray thee, hinder thee from coming unto me. For I will promote thee unto very great honor, and I will do whatsoever thou sayest unto me. Come therefore, I pray thee, curse me this people, that is the people of Israel. And Balaam answered and said unto the servants of Balak.

If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord my God to do less or more. Now therefore, I pray you, tarry ye also here this night, that I may know what the Lord will say unto me more. And God came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him, If the men come to call thee, rise up, and go with him, but yet the word which I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou do.

And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass and went with the princes of Moab. And God’s anger was kindled because he went. And the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass, and his two servants were with him. And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand. And the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field.

And Balaam smote the ass to turn her into the way. But the angel of the Lord stood in a path of the vineyard, a wall being on this side, and a wall on that side. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she thrust herself unto the wall, and crushed Balaam’s foot against the wall, and he smote her again. And the angel of the Lord went further, and stood in a narrow place, where there was no way to turn, either to the right hand or to the left.

And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam. And Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff. The Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, ‘What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me these three times?’ And Balaam said unto the ass, ‘Because thou hast mocked me, I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee?’ The ass said unto Balaam, ‘Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to do so unto thee?’ and he said, ‘Nay.’

Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand, and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face. And the angel of the Lord said unto him, ‘Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? Behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me. And the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times, unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee and saved her alive.’

And Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, ‘I have sinned. For I knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me. Now therefore if that displeaseth thee, I will get me back again.’ And the angel of the Lord said unto Balaam, ‘Go with the men, but only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak.’ So Balaam went with the princes of Balak.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we pray, Lord God, you would help us to learn just some of the many truths that are contained in this text. Your word, Lord God, is so rich. Help us, Father, by the providence of your Holy Spirit’s action in our lives and in our hearts and minds now to mine this great treasure, that we might have your scriptures and apply things from it to our lives. And may the Lord God honor and glorify you and enjoy you all the days of our lives, Father.

We pray for your servant as well, that he would deliver your message today. And keep my tongue, Lord God, from foolishness, sin, or error. And keep the ears of the hearers attentive only unto what is in accord with your word. And we pray the same also for the Sabbath school instruction time. In Jesus name we ask it, and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

How to talk like a donkey. Yes, that’s the theme I’ve chosen for today—more directly, how to make a biblical appeal. And Balaam’s donkey gives us a model for an appeal to an authority. And so I want us to consider now and to be trained from the word of God in how to make a biblical appeal and how to talk like a creature who has been brought to an awareness of the presence of the angel of the Lord guiding and directing him and his master.

And oftentimes when we need to make an appeal, we are prior to that revelation rather brutish. So we want to be able to speak today with the wisdom of Balaam’s donkey and recognize that it takes the Spirit of God to accomplish that in our lives.

We have camped out in Acts 25. This will be the third week now, in essence, still talking about Paul’s appeal to Caesar. We gave an overview of that a couple of weeks ago, and then last week we considered and tried to direct our understanding of what justice is. Justice is at the heart of Paul’s ministry, the proclamation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We tried to look at many scriptures last week and give an overview of what the scriptures teach about justice and its centrality in the text of Acts 25 and indeed of all of scripture. We tried to correct the understanding we have of justice. I mentioned a quote last week from Justice William Douglas, at one time a justice on the United States Supreme Court and very influential by the way, of course, in the flow of judicial history for many a year.

Justice Douglas said this talking of justice: he said that this undefinable thing, justice, rather—is an undefinable thing which many people speak about but about which very little is known, about which very little is known. Well, that’s the state of our world because it’s rejected the measure of understanding of everything, which is the word of God.

Hopefully, Christian, you now know better what justice is—and the basis of the scriptures we looked at last week and meditation upon those scriptures in relationship to your life. You know that the kind of the theme I’ve talked about for the last couple of weeks is justice, appeal, and king. Justice at the heart of Paul’s appeal to Caesar. He appeals, he cries out. That is a necessary element driven by that Paul is driven to by his sense of justice. And also that appeal is to a king—unto the great King that God works through secondary means, secondary authorities.

We want to talk today about appealing to secondary authorities. Now justice, as I said in our correction of that, we know that justice is tied to an objective standard, which is the law of God. It doesn’t change. It’s not subjective. It’s objective. It’s not to use the word I just used, a sense of justice that we have. It’s an understanding of justice based upon an objective revelation of the character of God in the scriptures. Justice is conformity to God’s standard.

And beyond that, just the negative aspect—the positive aspect is the requirement, the summation of the law is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Justice is tied to law. Justice is tied to grace, mercy, and love as well. There’s no distinction there. They’re really elements of the one truth of God’s word.

Justice has an eschatology to it. Justice is related in Paul’s case to Rome. He wanted to get to Rome. That was his destination for his ministry, and justice drove him to Rome. Why did he want to go there? Just to preach the gospel and effectually, no—because he wanted to see the manifestation of justice in the earth. Justice is what was lost through man’s sin. And justice is about what God is in the process of doing now: bringing about his order, obedience to his laws, including the commandment to love him and love our neighbor as ourselves—by definition, that love being defined by God’s law.

So justice is tied to eschatology. We could say almost that it is the process of salvation. It’s the process of flowing out of justice that the church is involved with while she marches across this earth. We are, in the middle of the context of our lives, in the context of an increasing manifestation of justice in the world. That’s why Jesus came to affect salvation for his people, that justice might rain down on the earth, as men respond to God and as God’s positive and negative aspects to his judgments flow out in the context of our world.

So justice is what our lives are all about. Justice—very important to correct it. The world wants to make it fuzzy and obtuse, defined by men, and the world becomes increasingly tyrannical, not just. And we want to make it very clear in its definition and avoid tyranny and positively to see the manifestation of Christ’s kingdom.

You should have a role, you should have a sense of your mission and purpose in life in several spheres of activity, and you should see as very much related to that justice. Also related to our work is appeal. I was talking to my boys this week. We were doing some work around the house getting ready for the celebration of the children moving ahead a grade, and a lot graduating this Friday evening. I have various power tools, a lawn mower, and a chainsaw—this stuff. I was getting out and getting ready and stuff.

And I told my boys, I wanted to give them one of the great truths that would make them happy in life, make them less anxious, less prone to frustration as they grew to be adult men. And that great truth is to get a binder and to put the manuals for your power tools in the binder and know where the binder is. I don’t know about you in your household, but I’ve lost a lot of manuals in my life, and I’ve spent hours looking for them if I look back over the last 20 years of our household.

I don’t know, I’d probably be ashamed to admit how many hours I’ve sought after manuals that I didn’t have. So I said, “Boys, listen to this lesson. Get a manual. Keep your manuals rather in a binder.” Well, it’s kind of a joke. But if you are, it really isn’t so much a joke. There’s a lot of truth to that. What I’m going to talk about today is another one of those things, like keeping your manuals in terms of your household tasks. It’s of the essence of avoiding some real bad situations in your life.

And what I’m going to talk about is how to make a biblical appeal. It’s important for us to do. It’s important to do it. It’s also important to teach it to our children. A failure to make biblical appeals can be devastating. And a proper approach to making a correct appeal to an authority, a biblical approach to that, produces much blessing.

You know, in a sense, and know it’s a bit of a—it’s not quite what we’re really talking about. What we’re really talking about is an appeal to an authority that we think has done something that we’d like to see changed. But in a sense, that’s what prayer is to God, right? We’re making appeals to God. And so our lives are marked by a series of prayers, constant praying, ceaseless praying to God, and there’s a ceaseless sense of appeal we’re making to God. And so if we don’t know how to make appeals correctly, if we don’t learn some biblical truths about that, we’re not going to be praying right, because that’s the essence of prayer really—is appealing to God in various ways.

The Lord’s Prayer gives a model, I think, in some ways of some of the biblical truths about how to make a biblical appeal. So we’re going to be looking at that.

I also wanted to mention before we get into the particular way I’m going to structure this: Let me just mention that one of the things that was very helpful to me to prepare this message was a booklet put out by Bill Gothard’s Basic Youth Conflicts or whatever it is called these days on how to make a biblical appeal. It’s excellent. I recommend it. I don’t recommend everything that Mr. Gothard writes, but I do recommend that particular booklet with some caveats.

I was talking to a married woman this week, and I mentioned, you know, as you think about Gothard’s truths that he tries to deduce from scripture, one thing that I think he errs on is he seems to err on the side of submission. And this particular married woman shop—well, all men do, don’t they?—and it’s probably true. There’s probably some truth to that. And I do think that if we look at the language of Balaam’s donkey and we look at the language of Paul’s appeal, for instance, to Caesar, and how he spoke with both Felix and Festus, there is a correction to some of the undue emphasis, I think, in some of Mr. Gothard’s teaching on quietness and supposedly submission.

Biblical submission, as most biblical truths are—it’s true of—don’t exactly look like we would want them to look necessarily. We’ll talk more about that. But before we get to what I did was I took the seven points that Mr. Gothard presents in his booklet, and I think it is a little long to try to get yourself to memorize or think in terms of. So I kind of put it down to three elements.

So we’ll talk in a couple of minutes about the purpose of a biblical appeal, the preparation to make a biblical appeal, and then the presentation of the biblical appeal. Now, that’s three P’s. It’s pretty easy to teach our kids those three things, to teach them when they’re going to make an appeal. Think of what’s the purpose of your appeal. What preparation have you made? And then how do you present that appeal to your parents in the case of the household?

And so it’s three pretty easy steps to memorize. I want to just remind those of you who, however, took the Growing Kids God’s Way course of what he says about biblical appeal. And you know, I think the structure is a little bit awkward, but just very quickly to remind you of these things. So I’m going to give you his seven points from Growing Kids God’s Way regarding biblical appeal.

One: he said biblical appeal is only to be used by those whose lives are characterized by first-time obedience. So in other words, it’s significant in the case of Balaam’s donkey that this donkey could look, he could point his master to his life of submission in service to the master. So if you got a child who has not learned how to become obedient the first time, then these people in this book say they shouldn’t really have the right to make appeals. And I don’t know if you’d want to make that as an absolute, but it’s certainly true that you got to get them to work on first-time obedience for make appeals.

By the way, again, just as a reminder, I know some of you use that material and some of the application points you like quite well, and I’m just trying to encourage you not to forget about them if they were useful in your household, but to continue and go back to them. Remember his definition of first-time obedience involves four aspects: One, their obedience should be immediate. Okay? No hesitation. Secondly, it should be without murmuring. Third, it should be without a challenge to the parent’s authority. And four, the obedience should be complete.

So if you take your child, tell your child to take the garbage out, you want them doing it. Number one, you don’t want them complaining as they’re taking it out. Otherwise, it’s not really first-time obedience. You don’t want them saying, “I’ll take it out, but I’m sure not happy with you.” That’s a challenge to your authority. And you don’t want them leaving it in the living room instead of taking it all the way outside. So, first-time obedience.

And if your children have learned that lesson, not perfectly—as we all fall short in many ways—but if their lives are essentially characterized by that, you want to instruct them on how to make an appeal to you when you give them a task to complete. So, one: they got to be characterized by first-time obedience. Secondly, the appeal is to be made to the parent directly who gave them the command. They’re appealing not to the other parent. No runaround, in other words. Third, humility is a precondition of making a biblical appeal. Not, you know, again, complaining or murmuring, but humility should characterize the appeal.

Fourth, the appeal can only be made once according to that particular course. Now, you know, I think that we want to look at the important importunate widow who made appeal after appeal to the judge. And sometimes parents, if they’re not going to listen and attend to things the first time, we can’t very well expect our kids to make appeal once and that’s it. But in any event, you want to not let kids nag you—that’s the point of that in terms of their appeal.

Fifth, he encouraged you, and if you’re using his guidelines, to make your children say, “May I appeal?” Easy for them to memorize. Nothing biblical about that except it is important in terms of our communication. The words we use are important, which I’ll talk about in just a minute. Sixth, he said that the appeal is a privilege and not to be used as a dodge from responsibility. And then seven, you should be fair and flexible in your response to the appeal. Just to remind those of you who took that course.

Now, what Mr. Gothard uses is he uses a series of seven rights, and you might want to write these down, and I’ll correlate these to my particular outline. His seven rights: The first is right standing. You have right standing to make an appeal to somebody. You got to have jurisdiction. You got to have some relationship. There’s right standing to the person you’re going to appeal to.

Secondly, you’ve got to have right motives for the appeal. Third, you have to choose right timing in terms of when you’re going to make the appeal. Fourth, you must have accurate or right information about yourself, about the person you’re appealing to, and about the facts of the case. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Fifth, right attitude, somewhat tied to motivation, but there must be a correct attitude. Your motivation may be good—kingdom of God—but your attitude toward the authority may be wrong. So you want to have the right attitude when you make an appeal to authority.

Now, see, this is one of the areas where I think you’ve got to be kind of careful in following Mr. Gothard too far. If you look at the donkey speaking to Balaam, he didn’t go out of his way to let Balaam know what a great guy he thought Balaam was. Neither did Paul. Paul told Festus very clearly that Festus was being unjust. Now, I said it in words that were factual, that you know the situation, but Paul made that point clear to the authority he was appealing to. Men can do that. Children—not a good idea. They haven’t learned so much what that is. But anyway, right attitude is very important in making an appeal to authority.

Right words: you know, you might have good standing and you might have the good motives and correct timing, accurate information, a good attitude, and then if you’re sloppy in your communication, you’re not going to have really an effective appeal. And if your appeal is to further the kingdom of God, which Paul’s was, you want to choose the right words. Paul thought about it probably for two years. Two years. Remember, that’s how long he was there before he got the audience with Festus. And then finally, you have to be prepared yourself for the correct response if your appeal is rejected. Okay?

So if you’re writing them down, those were all rights: Right standing, right motives, right timing, right information, right attitude, right words, and a right response to rejection. And I was going to try to take those and spell “appeals,” you know, changing the words, which might take, I don’t know, maybe you could do it. But I thought instead, well, seven letters still be a hard thing to remember what those are. I want my children to be able to memorize something easy for them. And I think if we categorize these truths under the headings of purpose, preparation, and presentation, then that helps our children to think through a correct way to make an appeal.

Now, let’s think about some of these. I’m going to go through those three points—purpose, preparation, and presentation—in a couple of minutes. But first, I want to talk in general about how to talk like a donkey. How to talk like Balaam’s donkey. What did Balaam’s donkey do in the context of the narrative from Numbers 22?

And as we look at this a little bit, I think we’ll see some things that correlate very well to these truths we’ve talked about in terms of purpose, preparation, and presentation.

Now, Balaam’s donkey in verse 28 says to Balaam, “What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me these three times?” Balaam says, “Well, you’ve been mocking me, and if I had a sword, I’d kill you right now.” And the donkey then says, “Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden, ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to do so unto thee?” Balaam says, “No.” And it’s at that point that God brings instruction to Balaam.

Now, we may not think so much of a donkey having purpose, but in the context of the message here, in the context of this particular scripture account, we know the donkey did have a purpose. We know that he didn’t want to do what God didn’t want him to do. The angel of the Lord was stopping his way. The purpose of the donkey was to obey God, the angel of the Lord, and as a result, not obey his master, Balaam.

Here we have a clear picture, which is a model for us: that when we’re called to do something by an authority, whether it’s parent, employer, civil magistrate, church magistrate, or someone we’ve entered into a covenant with, and in that covenant have made them a superior to us functionally—when we have one of those authorities in our lives command us to do something that God says we cannot do, then we’ve got to obey God.

The purpose, the motivation for the donkey was to obey God’s angel rather than Balaam, to obey God rather than men. And while it is important, as Mr. Gothard says in his booklet, that our purpose should be to help our master—that’s certainly true—but the primary purpose is to obey God and to glorify him. And that usually occurs through trying to keep our master from doing what’s wrong.

The donkey can also be seen as preventing Balaam from being killed, because the angel reveals that he wasn’t going to kill the donkey. He was going to let the donkey go free, but he was going to kill Balaam. And so the donkey’s secondary effect of what he did—at least I don’t know the purpose of this, but by way of the narrative that God gives us—the second thing he accomplished was the survival of his master.

And so it is with us. We know that the Psalms that we just read responsively say, we know that all of scripture tells us that God will work all things to well-being for those who are called in Christ, who are his servants. Ultimately, we’re not worried about God’s kingdom in a sense. Now, we want to apply ourselves to the task, and that’s one of the motivations, but we are worried about the pastor himself. Wives should be worried about their husbands who are sinning. Husbands should be worried about their employers, their civil magistrates, or their church rulers who are in rebellion to God.

And children should be worried about their parents who are sinning. And they should desire their recovery. Okay? And so they should want as Balaam’s donkey affected the deliverance of Balaam—in our appeal, we should also want to affect the deliverance of those who are functional superiors. Okay?

So, this appeal process, you know, applies: you can think of it directly in the context of the family. It’s probably you’ll make first application this week—is to teach your children, if you haven’t, about biblical appeals, or to remind them and reinforce what you previously taught. But it also has relevance to your role as a churchman and as a citizen of the political order, as an employer and employee. All these relationships we have are constantly involved in appeals, formal and informal.

And the purpose of the donkey is laid out for us here at least by way of implication. There is even some idea here of preparation on the part of the donkey. After all, the donkey says, “Am I not thine ass? Haven’t I done things good for you? Haven’t I always carried you wherever you wanted me to go?” In a sense, the preparation for the donkey’s appeal to Balaam is his record of service or submission to Balaam.

And so his attitude is one of submissiveness, and his work record, so to speak, is called to account when he finally makes his presentation to Balaam for his appeal. And so the donkey is submissive. He obeys the master’s voice, and he says, “I’m yours. I’m in a position of functional inferiority or submission to your authority. I’m not kicking against that.” See?

So his submission attitude, his record of service is pointed out, and there is a sense in which his preparation has been years of faithfulness to Balaam. And as we consider making an appeal to our husband or husbands—make an appeal to wives and areas of jurisdiction that we’ve placed them in—in the context of children to parents, us to civil magistrates, etc., we should essentially have a record that indicates our submission and our service to the functional superior. Okay?

And that is one of the biggest ways we make preparation for an appeal. Because when we make an appeal, we want to remind the person we’re appealing to that we’ve been submissive. We’ve desired their best. We have been their ass, so to speak. We’ve been their servant. We’ve done it faithfully. And the only reason we’re not doing it faithfully now—in the case of Balaam’s donkey—is there’s a larger voice that comes from heaven. And I can’t disobey that voice.

Balaam’s donkey also was prepared with patience. You know, the first time Balaam hit the donkey, God in his providence decided not yet to open the donkey’s voice. Paul waited two years there before he had his next opportunity that God gave him in his providence to make appeal to Festus. Patience is required. God will normally have us have to endure suffering rather than jump right to an appeal.

And why? Because, as we just sang about, he desires to consume our dross. He desires to drive out our sinfulness. And so, usually we don’t want to think we’re going to make an appeal right away when we hit an unjust situation. There’s some suffering that God will normally have us go through first. So you got to be patient in suffering.

And you want to choose good timing in terms of making your appeal. And part of the analysis of your timing has to be your own attitude, your own sin that God is working on through the tribulation. So kids, if the parents tell you something you don’t like, the first thing you should try to do is suffer obediently and patiently. Well, not if it’s a direct violation of God’s word, but you suffer what’s right for a period of time before you make your appeal.

The donkey was patient and submissive. He obeyed the master’s voice. And then with his purpose and preparation, then the presentation itself: the words of the donkey themselves are quite important. The donkey brings attention to what the erring master is doing. He says, “Why have you done this to me? Why are you hitting me?” He helps the master to think about what he’s doing. He brings the master to more self-consciousness of his actions toward the donkey, and he shows the master from his perspective what’s going on.

So in his presentation, he chooses words that bring self-consciousness to the master’s actions. You are hitting me. Why are you doing this? Think about this a bit. He brings attention to his own, as I said before, record of submissive service. He reminds his master of that. I’m a good servant of yours. Paul reminds Festus, as he reminded Felix, “I haven’t done anything wrong.” He reminds him of that. “You should have released me.” He reminds him of that, just as Balaam’s donkey did.

So his words, his presentation, chooses words that indicate a submissive spirit: I am your ass, after all. And Paul says, I’m a citizen here. I recognize you as governor. But also brings attention to the problems in such a way as to make the authority think over what they have done.

Now the donkey’s words here are neither obsequious nor rude. He isn’t overly complimentary on one side, and he isn’t rude on the other side. You know, sometimes you read some of this material on appeals, and you think that the donkey should go on and on about what a great guy Balaam is. But the donkey doesn’t do that. He’s not obsequious in his lips. You know, in fact, the Proverbs give a lot of warnings to people about people that use flattering tongues and vain speech—speech that’s really empty but flattering to you. So we don’t want to do that.

The donkey’s words are neither obsequious nor are they rude. He is neither a doormat to Balaam nor is he a usurper of Balaam’s authority. He is neither ungrateful for his own position nor for his master. He is the master’s ass. His words are rather direct. His words are to the point, and his words aim to the glory of God and also the recovery of his master as effected by those words.

Balaam’s donkey then indicates submission in his appeal. Gratitude, the master’s reputation, the master’s well-being as a result of the proper appeal. God’s will is the ultimate goal or motive for what the donkey is seen to be doing here. The donkey uses fit words, and he uses proper timing in the providence of God. He waits for the third occasion.

Now, it’s not our intent—my intent today—to really stress how to hear an appeal. It’s all right. I want to talk about how we make appeals. But notice that the story of Balaam’s donkey could also be used to show very clearly that we all are Balaams in a sense. I mean, all men and women who have children or who have other people work in the context of them. Usually at some time in our—this next week, you’ll be in a functionally superior position to someone else.

And you should want to hear appeals by recognizing that frequently the person that’s making the appeal has information from God that we don’t know. Balaam couldn’t see the angel of the Lord. Now, the text indicates, I think, pretty clearly, Balaam was sinning, was going off with the intention to curse Israel, and that’s why God’s anger is kindled against him. But nonetheless, the point is that our inferiors—one of the purposes of appeal, to the providence of God, is to correct rulers and husbands—very clearly as direct application. Must be anxious to hear the appeal of their functional subordinate—the wife—because the wife is going to see things and perceive things you don’t, and the wife may perceive great danger in your path the way that Balaam’s donkey did.

And so we want to—I don’t want that’s not my thrust this morning. But I do want to touch on that. This tells us as well, all this does, that we must be very careful to hear an appeal. Appeals are quite important in the word of God.

As I said, Nehemiah makes an appeal to the governor, and as a result, the city of God, under a period of reconstruction, a return from exile, is accomplished. Ruth makes an appeal to her mother-in-law to follow her and let her stay with her. And the end result of that is blessing for the people of God through the offspring of Ruth and her husband, eventually in the line of our Savior. Queen Esther makes an appeal to a king and rescues the entire nation of Israel at that time from its enemies. They were being warred against. Genocide was in place, and through a proper appeal on her part to the authority, the king, taken with right timing, she rescues the nation.

Moses himself, of course, was another example of this same truth when he appealed to God for the people of Israel in the wilderness. Appeals are very important. Appeals are very dominant throughout scripture, and they are in our lives.

So let’s consider again under these three particular ways I’ve looked at doing it. You can do it other ways in your own household, of course. Take some of these truths home, think them through. But I want to talk then in terms of this outline of purpose, preparation, and presentation.

First of all, then: purpose. As I said, the donkey’s purpose was obedience to the angel of the Lord. Paul’s purpose was to go to Rome to witness for the Savior. The purpose of an appeal. And children, understand that when you make these appeals, I’m encouraging your parents to think through what your purpose is in making the appeal. So kids, the purpose of the appeal is not to get off from doing work. It’s not because you don’t like what you have to do. It’s not that you don’t find it convenient or somehow it’s not what you’re very good at doing. Those are not proper bases of appeal.

Your motivation for appeal should be the glory of God and the service of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the purpose for making an appeal. The motive should be God’s glory in the first instance. The most important point—I mentioned the Lord’s Prayer. Mr. Gothard uses that in his booklet on the appeal process, I think very correctly, in Matthew 6:9. We read the Lord’s Prayer, and it begins with “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

The preparation for the rest of the prayer, where he seeks daily bread on the behalf of his life, his living from God—it begins with “hallowed be thy name.” His purpose in the prayer is set forth as the hallowedness of God’s name. And the prayer ends “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Or rather, in the middle of the prayer there, “Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever,” at the end of the prayer. See, throughout the prayer we have the emphasis upon the purpose for the prayer being God’s holiness, his—to use Gothard’s term—God’s reputation, so to speak, the purposes of God’s kingdom. That’s the primary purpose for making an appeal.

Secondarily, Mr. Gothard stresses this a bit more than this side of it, but again, it is a good truth. Secondarily, the purpose as well is for the well-being, the reputation of our master. We want—we desire to see good relationships between masters and servants. We want well-functioning households. We want well-functioning churches, well-functioning civil governments, and well-functioning businesses.

We don’t want to get rid of all distinction of office, so to speak, or calling to particular places. Those are good things in the providence of God. The spirit of the French Revolution—Otto Scott has written about the preparation for the French Revolution was a constant flow of information from tabloid journalism. Yes, it was around then, with rumors and innuendos and vague—well, actually not so vague—pretty scandalous reporting of all authorities, whether they’re in the church or the state.

And the press in America is primarily characterized as being people who want to dig up dirt on rulers. And I know that we probably think that they do that more often to the conservatives than they do liberals, but they do it all the way around. And it’s a very dangerous thing to have happen in the context of a culture—the authorities figures always to be torn down and spoken against—because what that is, that seed for rebellion and revolt, and revolt is the very picture of sin itself. And man’s revolt against God is played out throughout the ages, and man’s revolt against the means that God has set up to be used.

Apostle Paul said it’s real important that you’re submissive to the governing authorities in Romans 13. Why? Because they’re ordained of God. If you resist the government, you resist the ordinance of God. Now, I want to add here a caveat, and I think it’s important. When the government is in clear rebellion against God, when they command you to do what God says don’t do, then you must obey God rather than men. But absent that scenario, absent an explicit command from government authority to do what God forbids, your default position should be to be submissive to governing authorities.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t think they’re wrong. It doesn’t mean you can’t try to persuade them they’re wrong. And it certainly means when you believe they’re wrong, you can and should make appropriate appeal. But the spirit of constant criticism of authorities is not biblical. The spirit of trying to tear them down, trying to undermine their authority, is not biblical. You might be correct in a particular assessment of their wrongdoing.

But the way you pursue it should be by appeal, should be by working toward the kingdom of God, and not by the spirit of tearing down those whom God has set in authority. That’s a very important correction. Wives, when you make an appeal to your husband, your motivation and your purpose should not be to undermine his authority. It should be to help him be a wise leader. Employees, when you make an appeal to your boss, it should not be to tear him down, but to help him succeed. Children, when you appeal to parents, it should not be to undermine their authority, but to help them be good parents.

So the purpose in making an appeal is not to tear down authority but to support it, to help those in authority make wise decisions. Now, that has a particular nuance when they’re doing something wrong. When wives fail to love their husbands and when they both fail in their duties and responsibilities to each other, it’s not a matter of trying to get the husband’s reputation alone worked out. It’s to the end that God’s word not be blasphemed and that there be no occasion given to God’s enemies. Purpose and motivation is quite important.

Purpose in making an appeal to another Christian brother—vertically so to speak, horizontally rather than vertically. In Hebrews 10:24, we read that we are to consider one another to provoke unto love and good works. When we make an appeal to a brother relative to an area that we think that he’s done wrong in, the motivation should be correction, that we might provoke him unto love and to good works.

Specifically, in Hebrews 13:17, we find that those that are placed over men in the context of rule and authority in the church, we read that you’re to obey them because they must give an account. That they may give that account with joy and not with grief. We should desire for our leaders joy in service, and the purpose of any appeal to them should be to the end that they would be established.

We have an example of this in 2 Samuel 20:16 and following. Joab is after a guy who is a rebel against David’s reign. The guy flees into a city. Joab encamps around the city, and he’s going to tear the whole city down to get this guy. Well, this woman comes to the wall, and she says, “Joab, I want to know what’s going on here.” But listen to what she says to Joab in verse 17. She says unto him, “Hear the words of thine handmaid.” She made an appeal on the basis of the city by stating first her submission to Joab as the head of David’s army.

And on the basis of that, then he says, “Yeah, I’ll hear you out.” And then she tells him—well, he then tells her that, “Well, the problem is we’ve got this guy up there.” And she says, “Well, we’ll deliver you that guy, but you should spare the city because we don’t want the name of David blasphemed. We don’t want the name of David done dishonor by this whole city dying for the sake of this one guy who’s done sin.”

And Joab says, “Okay.” And she sends out the head of the guy. She talks to the people, and the scripture says specifically that in her wisdom, then they decide to hand that guy’s head over to Joab. They throw it over the walls of the city. Head of the man comes, roll it out, and the city’s saved. See, the widow—or the woman rather, there in the context of that—had a correct motivation, and she had a correct submissive attitude, and as a result, her appeal saved the city of God.

Mr. Gothard, in his checklist for the motivation part of this, asks: “Is your real concern to protect your reputation or the reputations of God and your authorities?” What’s your concern? What’s your motivation in appeal? The primary motivation should be for God’s glory, God’s reputation, and the reputation of those you’re serving. He asked this question as well: “Can you base your appeal on helping your authorities become successful in God’s eyes by being wise leaders, protectors, and providers? And are you doing it so that your authorities may give a good account to God?”

Children, when you’re going to make an appeal, your parents want to know your purpose. Wives, when you make an appeal to your husbands, your husband should desire to know your purpose. Man, when you make appeal to your civil magistrates, your church authorities, or your economic authorities, your purpose should be the glory of God as well as the establishment and further blessing of those you’re appealing to.

Preparation. Your motivation is squared away. Hopefully, I spent more time on it because it is frequently our worst area. And if you get off on the wrong foot there, the whole process becomes unbiblical. We want to make a biblical appeal with correct motivation. But having done that, we also want to make preparation. We want to make preparation through our attitude. Not just our motivation, but our attitude toward our authorities.

It may take some time to make the appeal because we want to confess sin with improper attitudes toward our authorities. We should have reverence. We talked about that before—how to reverence God, how to reverence those who are in authority positions in the context of the household, the household of God at the church, etc. We should put a proper estimation or value on them and correct bad attitudes. At the heart of proper attitude, of course, in everything is giving thanks in all things to God.

And so thankfulness is part of a correct correction of our attitudes. Attitudes are to be put off and put on. You know, that’s the dynamic that Mr. Scipione, Christian Counseling and Education Foundation teaches from Ephesians and other places of scripture. We’re to put off sinful attitudes and actions, the scriptures say, and we’re to put on good attitudes and actions. You know, it’s not like you just sit around and wait for your attitude to get better. You actively confess bad attitudes and you put them off by an act of your will. You can change your mind under the power of the Holy Spirit.

And God tells us to put off bad attitudes of ingratitude, rebellion, and failure of submission, and to put on proper attitudes of reverence and loyalty and gratefulness and submission to the authorities that we’re going to appeal to. So preparation involves a correct attitude.

As I said, Paul’s words and Balaam’s donkey’s words were to the point, but they weren’t disrespectful. Paul acknowledged the authority of the Romans that he appealed to, and Balaam’s donkey acknowledged that he was indeed Balaam’s donkey. Has your attitude been corrected? Before you make an appeal, get your attitude correct.

Secondly, in terms of preparation is right standing. By right standing, in other words, you mean may be appealing to the wrong person. You may not have relationship with the person that gives you the ability to make an appeal to them. Paul acknowledged his jurisdiction as being under the jurisdiction of Rome by claiming his Roman citizenship. If he was not a Roman citizen, he couldn’t have made a formal appeal to Caesar. He had right standing.