Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

—

We have read scriptures and song of God being a king, God being the one who affects justice and mercy in the context of the land and demonstrates that to the widows and the fatherless and to the strangers. And we turn now to a scripture text that speaks of the kind of rulers that God would have sit on thrones of civil governance in a land properly ordered by his word. Please turn in your scriptures to 2 Samuel chapter 23.

I’ll begin reading at verse 1. 2 Samuel 23 beginning at verse 1. Please stand for the reading of God’s word as remember that it is a command word to us. Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, “And the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, ‘The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue.’ The God of Israel said, ‘The rock of Israel spake to me.

He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds, as the tender grass springeth out of the earth, by clear shining after rain. Although my house be not so with God, yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure. For this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.

But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands. But the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear, and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place. These be the names of the mighty men whom David had. The Tachmonite that sat in the seat, chief among the captains. The same was Adino the Eznite. He lifted up his spear against 800 whom he slew at one time.

And after him was Eleazar, the son of Dodo, the Ahohite, one of the three mighty men with David, when they defied the Philistines that were there gathered together to battle, and the men of Israel were gone away. He arose and smote the Philistines until his hand was weary and his hand clave unto the sword. And the Lord wrought a great victory that day. And the people returned after him only to spoil.

And after him was Shammah, the son of Agee the Hararite. And the Philistines were gathered together into a troop where was a piece of ground full of lentils. And the people fled from the Philistines. But he stood in the midst of the ground and defended it and slew the Philistines. And the Lord wrought a great victory. And three of the 30 chief went down and came to David in the harvest time under the cave of Adullam.

And the troop of the Philistines pitched in the valley of Rephaim. And David was then in a hold. And the garrison of the Philistines was then in Bethlehem.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for these last words of David, a man who loved you with all of his heart. And we pray, Lord God, that you would use your Holy Spirit to take this text and illumine it to our understanding as well as the rest of the scriptures we shall look at today that we might be lesser Davids as he was of the greater David the Lord Jesus Christ that we also might have hearts desirous of following you in all things and of loving you. Help us Lord God to glean from these principles and truths from these scriptures that would cause us to understand the importance of men in relation to civil government that we might one day see in the context of this land once more the Philistines not in Bethlehem and your people not consigned to a hole.

We pray this Lord God by the name and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we ask it. Amen.

—

The historical record of the last words of David tell us many things. Among other things, they tell us the proper state of leaders, what they are supposed to be like. We read in verse three that he that rules over man must be just, ruling in the fear of God.

We read the historical context as I pray that the Philistines are in Bethlehem and David is in a hold at the time of the historical occurrences that are being recorded in the middle of this particular chapter. Not when he wrote these words, but he’s recounting back to the history of his being brought to the kingdom in Israel and reigning over them as king. And there was a time at which he was in a hold and the Philistines occupied Bethlehem.

We find ourselves today in America in a similar situation, the Philistines holding the keys of the city, so to speak, and God’s people restricted to holds or small encampments, oftentimes mixed in with various types of men.

This scripture gives us lessons in civil polity, lessons in historical understanding of history based upon God’s word and the obedience or disobedience of God’s people. And this text calls us to a reconsideration of these things.

Now, I’m in the middle. It’s sermon number two of three election day sermons so-called that talk about the truths of civil government found in scripture. Now, I’m going to quote today from the marginal notes of the Genevan Bible.

This was a Bible produced at Geneva at the time of Calvin and the Reformation at that city. And the marginal notes were notes then that show us first of all, we have a good translation of the scriptures that predated the King James version. Secondly, in the marginal notes specifically, we have comments by men who were much further along the path than we were in terms of understanding the implications of the faith.

One of the reasons to quote men of older times is that they were in many ways much more astute to biblical truth than we are today. We recognize and should be humble recognizing our particular position in the context of church history.

I was thinking of an illustration that you know if either by some sort of collapse, warfare or simply atrophy the day might come—and come in one week, could come in 20 years—when the men that developed some of this great technology we have are gone, taken away in the providence of God. And then what do we do? We have our computers and they start to break down and we don’t know how to fix them because we don’t understand computer technology. We don’t understand integrated circuits or electronics. Well, what we’re going to do is we’re going to try to find some old manuals of men that understood these things better than we did. And we’re going to have to reconstruct how to build computers if we have some kind of economic collapse, war, devastation, or simply an atrophy as people get used to technology they don’t understand and they can’t possibly produce today.

Well, in a way, it’s kind of like that in terms of spiritual truth. We are not at a high point of an understanding of God’s word as a culture and as a civilization across America and across the world. Much of what has been gleaned by the church historically over the last two or three hundred years has been now lost or discarded.

Now, you know, I understand that the spirit of God is the same one that brought those men to those truths and he’s doing the same thing to us today. And I’m not denying any of that. But I’m saying that we would be foolish not to turn to the understanding of men whose training was far more disciplined, ordered and based upon biblical truth than we are today as we look at some of these texts.

So it is useful to quote from historic men of the past and I will quote from those marginal notes. Let me just read three sets of analyses of these. Now these summations that I’m going to read to you here but what these marginal notes taught are taken from one of the journals of Christian Reconstruction produced by R.J. Rushdoony’s study tank at Chalcedon, or think tank, and now I’m going to read three different things here.

First I’m going to read to you what this particular article said was the summation of these marginal notes relative to politics or to the civil state and there were five truths of a correct civil order that these marginal notes point out.

First of all, without right religion a stable social order cannot exist. So first, right religion is necessary.

Two, the godly magistrate is a key figure whose presence is essential for social order. Okay, so the godly magistrate is essential for social order.

Three, the legitimacy of oaths was likewise conducive to social order. Now we kind of understand the first two. The third one’s a little bit more abstract except when we recognize what I’ve been talking about for the last three or four weeks. The importance of covenantal theology as it works its way out in covenants that we form with one another individually, corporately, church covenants, business covenants, civil covenants, etc. The legitimacy of oath and legitimate covenant taking was essential to correct social order or so the Puritans at Geneva taught in the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible.

Fourth, the concept of order was further fortified with the idea of vocation. I’ll talk about this more next week, but they said that you need good religion, you need godly civil magistrates, you need the assertion once more, the validity of covenants and oaths, and you need proper sense of vocation on the part of the ordinary husband or householder. Why? We’ll talk about it more next week. But the idea is that if you have proper self-government going on, that is a tremendous restraint to improper civil governance of matters. And we’ll talk about that more next week. That was our fourth point.

And fifth, there was a practical duty to provide sound religious instruction. The backbone of everything is the revealed word of God. And so sound religious instruction is required for a social order.

These marginal notes taught us that at Calvin’s Geneva they believed that there were six tasks of civil government and I’ll enumerate these now.

Six tasks of civil government. One, to establish true religion. The assertion that the civil government was there to provide for punishment of blasphemous religions and to provide a sound base of support for true religion.

Secondly, to manifest divine justice. We would understand that.

Third, to provide elective procedures. This was somewhat of a newer development but they thought that civil governance was best performed. It wasn’t required. Best performed when you had a representative form of government. And so one of the duties of civil government is to provide elective procedures that the will of the people can be made known in terms of electing their own representatives. And we’ll talk about that next week too because that is another truth that is undergoing massive hits in our day and age, elective procedures.

Fourth, to punish evil.

Fifth, to uphold the supremacy of law. I’ll talk about that next week. I had an interesting email dialogue with a fellow over the last couple of days about our voters guide and talked about the constitution and so what if it’s in the constitution or isn’t in the constitution we can do these things anyway but the fact is we’re a country that has asserted as these men did the supremacy of law in the land when we have a constitution. If you want to do something other than the constitution provides then you should change the constitution. You shouldn’t just break the law of the land in terms of the constitution. We have a necessity to see the supremacy of law that was their fifth point.

And then six, to maintain good counsel. That’s an interesting point that I hadn’t really thought of much and I’ll talk about that more today. That one of the jobs of good civil governors is to maintain good counselors around them, a relationship of them to their counselors.

And then finally, the last little list I want to read here is three major hindrances to limiting government or correct biblical government. First, poor counsel. Second, the arrogance of authority. And third, good intentions on the part of civil magistrate. I’ll reference all of those as we go through our talk today.

—

I want to begin however with an introductory quote from James Thornwell. Thornwell was a contemporary of Dabney who ended my his quote I used at the conclusion of my sermon last week. This week I want to use Thornwell as another Southern Presbyterian around the time of the Civil War in America last century.

Thornwell said this:

“While we admit that questions of government are subordinate in importance to questions of faith mere trifles compared with the great truth of the gospel. It does not follow that they are of no value because government is not the great thing. It does not follow that it is nothing. We wish to study the whole will of God and we wish to give everything precisely that prominence which he designs that it should occupy in his own divine economy to the extent that one is committed to know that the whole counsel of God civil government will be a part of the Christian mind.”

And I want to say that because I’m really encouraging you to take what we’re talking about last week, this week, next week, the voters guides to enter into discussion with people as I did on an email this week with a man. But it’s very important that we don’t think that in that discussion that we’re talking about the most important thing. It’s useless to talk to someone who is not regenerate, who doesn’t assert the infallibility and inerrancy of holy scripture, who doesn’t believe what the scriptures teach, for instance, about the doctrines of hell or the trinity. It’s useless to debate political theory. Well, not totally useless, but it is far more important to use that conversation with your friends and relatives who may not be regenerate as a way to challenge their autonomy raised against God.

So Thornwell says it’s of relative unimportance but it’s not unimportance, but a relatively less important but still God’s word addresses civil governance and so should we. I’m trying to do that in this series of three election day sermons.

—

Let me read another quote here about the concept of election sermons. In the founding of this country, the colonial period, it was the tradition to preach election day sermons in the context of civil elections and civil matters going on. Very common and this really provided an understanding for governance of the state was the governance of the church and the family properly articulated through biblical sermons.

Let me read this quote about the effect of the preaching of the preachers in the colonial period of our country:

“Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting 1 to 1 and a half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive 10 separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university without ever repeating the same course. Events were perceived not from the mundane human vantage point but from God’s. Thus, colonial audiences listened to learn to perceive themselves not as a raging settlement of religious exiles and eccentrics but as God’s special people.”

The point is that such sermons, election sermons and then the regular sermons throughout the year provided the undergirding of what proper governance is on the personal level, the family level, the church level, and the state level that built this country. And so we today are trying to get back to that. We have to have a sound preaching of the word of God as it pertains to the issues around us to help us see that we’re to see everything that goes on outside of the church with the same eyes of faith, interpreting them through the scriptural grid that we do things that pertain to the interior of the church as well.

Okay. So governance is important.

—

And what I want to say today, if you’re keeping notes then, is I want to make four basic points.

First I want to talk about the importance of civil magistrates to godly reformation.

Secondly I’ll talk about the chief characteristics required of civil magistrates according to the scriptures.

Third, the importance of the church to civil magistrates.

And fourth, the importance of the lay person to civil magistrates.

So first, they’re important men are important. Last week we talked about obligations to enter into political action. Today we’re going to talk about entering in terms of what kind of men we want to pray for and see elevated to office of civil office in our land and in our day and age. And next week I’m going to talk about the truths of God’s word as they relate to what men do.

If you understand from last week you have an obligation to be involved in Christian political action. There’s two things really that comprise that. One are men and then two are the truths that those men use to govern. Okay.

And in our particular state, we have in a week and a half an election which we got to vote for men and then we got to express what we believe about certain truths of the scriptures as they relate to ballot measures or ideas being promoted to us on the part of our government.

So today men next week ideas and the first point about men is that they’re important in terms of civil in terms of the word of God and godly reformation. If we want to work for a reformation in our day and age which we celebrate this coming week then we also want to see the importance of civil government to godly reformation and then secondly as I said I want to talk about the requirements listed in scripture third the importance of the church to civil magistrates and fourth the importance of the lay person to civil magistrates as well.

Okay so first of all the importance of civil magistrates to godly reformation.

In John 19:1 we read then saith Pilate unto him speechest thou not unto me knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee and have power to release thee. Jesus answered, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above. Therefore, he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.”

Our savior asserts in this gospel account that all civil authority, including Pilate, in his very act of making a decision whether Christ should be crucified or not, acts under the authority of God. See, Pilate has no authority apart from the authority given unto him sovereignly by the Father. Civil magistrates are ordained of God and as a result are important in the context of our land. They’re not neutral. They’re there at the behest of God and they have power given to them from God above.

The Queen of Sheba. I now have FA’s attention hopefully. The Queen of Sheba, FA is from Ethiopia as you probably know and this is where she was from as well. The Queen of Sheba said this her confession of the God Yahweh of the scriptures in relationship to the wisdom of Solomon.

In 2 Chronicles 9:8, the Queen of Sheba said this: “Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighted in thee, that is in Solomon, to set thee on his throne, to be king for the Lord thy God, because thy God loved Israel, to establish them forever. Therefore made he thee king over them to do judgment and justice.”

Queen Sheba asserted correctly and scripture records it for us that civil governance is given to men who sit on the throne as it were of God himself. They are to—quote the marginal notes now of the Geneva Bible—Kings are the lieutenants of God. The civil magistrate’s power comes not of his own innate ability but rather from God alone. And therefore he is obliged to minister justice to all because it is God’s throne that he occupies.

So said the Queen of Sheba. So say scripture. David from our text in 2 Samuel 23 said that he that ruleth over man must be just ruling in the fear of God because it is God’s throne that he occupies.

Now David said that and we’ll talk about this more in a minute. But then the two requirements of men, civil magistrates, are to do justice and to be humble before God.

From one end of the scripture to the other we see that civil authority comes from the sovereign actions of God Almighty. And as a result, the civil magistrate is an important figure in the context of any godly reformation. The Queen of Sheba and her confession of the wisdom of God in placing Solomon to be king over his people said that God loved Israel to establish them forever. Therefore, made he thee king over them to do judgment and justice.

When God has concern for his people in the context of the church, he moves in the context of civil magistrates to affect more reformation going on in the context of an age of reformation. And so we see the importance of the civil magistrate relative to reformation in the context of the land. Men received their form of governments from God and not on their own innate ability.

But the other thing we want to say about this is that it is important what men do. You know there’s this we had David Barton here several years ago and he spoke to us about what would you rather have good laws and bad men or bad laws and good men. And this is to assert as we talk today about the way we choose civil magistrates of the importance of men in the governance of God’s government.

Now, so we said first of all that civil magistrates are important for reformation because the scriptures say they occupy the throne of God. Secondly, they’re important because they’re men. They’re image-bearers of God and by themselves can affect great good or great harm.

Here too, I want to quote a man of the last century and another Presbyterian this time from the north, Samuel Miller, relative to the importance of men in governance.

Miller said that the general prevalence of real Christianity in any government has a direct and immediate tendency to promote and to confirm therein political liberty.

“The truth is that political liberty does not rest solely on the form of government under which a nation may happen to live. It does not consist altogether in the arrangement or in the balance of power, nor even in the rights and privileges which the Constitution offers to every citizen. Forms of government, in other words, these indeed must be acknowledged to have a considerable effect in its promotion of doctrine.

“But we shall find on a close inspection that something else is of equal, if not of greater importance. Cases may easily be conceived of without a single material or glaring deficiency in any of these—any of the forms. In other words, true and desirable liberty may be almost unknown. And on the other hand, where under the most wretched organization of government, the substance of freedom may exist and flourish.

“Human laws are too imperfect in themselves to secure completely this inestimable blessing. It must have its seat in the hearts and dispositions of those individuals which compose the body politic. And it is with the hearts and dispositions of men that Christianity is concerned.”

Now, these are important truths. I’m going to talk next week about the truth of representative government. I mentioned it already here today once and we believe Calvin believed I believe that representative government is a great blessing from God. But God also had monarchy in the Old Testament and inherited monarchy. And when you have good men like David ruling in the context of the seed of a king, not a representative king, but now the king chosen sovereignly by God, affirmed by the people, yes, but nonetheless monarchy, an inherited monarchy, we see blessings redound as well because of the men that occupy those seats.

It is difficult to say that the scriptures teach one particular form of civil governance when God made provision in Deuteronomy 17 for the day that would come when Israel would seek a king. Israel seeking a king wasn’t wrong. It was their rejection of the greater king Yahweh and their desire to have a king like the nations round about them is what Samuel said they wanted. A gentile king who would rule over them that way. And that’s what they got.

The point here is simply that forms of government are important. We’ll talk about those next week. But of equal, if not greater importance are the men that occupy those particular seats of government.

Remember I said last week, I think it was in the questions and answers that John Winthrop, one of the early colonial governors. They moved eventually to form constitutions for the colonies, but they began with godly men and a very small degree of any kind of social compact or covenant or charter. Those were held by the churches. Those were not developed civilly until later. because men occupied the preeminence there in the founding of the country and those men then eventually produce documents.

We do have men acting under the context of law. But the point here is that men are vitally important in the reassertion of a godly reformation in our day and age. Civil magistrates are important.

—

Secondly, then we want to look at this then that what the scriptures teach in terms of the chief characteristics required of civil magistrates. And you’ve heard this before, I’m sure. This is something that you should hear, you should commit to memory and you should speak then in the context of our day and age and the conversations we have and that is the requirements from the book of Micah.

So first under this subheading two, the chief characteristics required of civil magistrates is we’ll look at the requirements of the book of Micah and specifically as it relates to the democratic and republican parties making comments on that.

In the book of Micah we read that there are three requirements placed upon all men in general. So this isn’t specific simply to the civil magistrate but it refers to the magistrate as well. Those three requirements are to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.

So the first of these three requirements the book of Micah portrays for all men, including for kings, is to do justice. And this corresponds directly or identically rather with our text from 2 Chronicles where we read from David that the man that rules in the seat of God, the man that rules over God’s people must do so to affect justice in the context of his civil rule. Justice. So first of all, those men that seek civil office are to be men who are committed to performing justice in the context of the land. They are chosen to manifest divine justice in the context of God’s providence.

And so we see that the requirement is for justice. Now justice is conformity to a standard. Justice has at its core a belief that there is something that is right and something that is wrong. And when we say justice, true justice, biblical righteousness is that founded upon the word of God, not the mind of men.

And so the supreme responsibility of government, the administration of justice presumes then that they’ll have an understanding of justice as defined by God’s word.

—

Now, the Geneva Bible in the marginal notes spoke of the implications of people that did not act in terms of divine justice and commenting on the text from 2 Samuel 21:14.

2 Samuel 21:14. That verse reads the we read the following in 2 Samuel 21:14. The bones of Saul and Jonathan his son buried they in the country of Benjamin in Zelah in the sepulcher of Kish his father. And they performed all that the king commanded and after that God was entreated for the land. They had recovered the bodies of Saul and Jonathan, the mighty men who were put to death with them from being hung. They were being hung up in the open in the open public square as it were.

And the Puritan forefathers of American freedom recognized in this a probation, a judgment on Saul’s reigning that was demonstrated that God’s curse was upon the land in which a king ruled who did not exert justice in the context of the land.

The marginal note reads this: “For where the magistrates suffer faults unpunished, there the plague of God lieth upon the land.”

The plague of God was symbolically represented in the hanging up of the mighty warriors of God’s kingdom by his enemies. To be hung up was a curse according to God’s word. And the curse on the land represented by that was due to the fact that Saul reigned not according to and did not work in the context of God’s justice, but rather what he saw fit to do. The magistrates suffer faults unpunished. There the curse of God is upon the land.

So they have a positive obligation to punish sin and so exert justice in the context of the land.

In 1 Kings 10:9 on the positive side, we read, “Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighted in thee to set thee on the throne of Israel, because the Lord loved Israel forever. Therefore made he thee king to do judgment and justice.”

Returning to the quote from the Queen of Sheba.

He set him on the throne to do judgment and justice. And the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible said this about that: “It is a chief sign of God’s favor when godly and wise rulers sit on the throne of justice.”

So when we have bad rulers who don’t punish evildoers like Saul and in fact use them to go after David, God’s curses upon the land pictured by the body of Saul hanging as a curse after his death. When we have good rulers as Solomon was at the time of his interaction with the Queen of Sheba, then the blessing of God is pictured by even foreign dignitaries coming to hear wisdom from Yahweh and then exalting the God of Solomon because Solomon did justice and judgment on the throne of Israel.

And so we have those two positive and negative examples that the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible point out and which are good for us to meditate upon.

—

Now I mentioned that one of the great hindrances as the Puritans saw it against good government was good intentions. Good intentions. Let me uh they cite a couple of examples in the scriptures. The marginal notes do we read of Saul of his good intentions misplaced in 1 Samuel 15 verses 4–23.

And I’ll read verse 4 first. And some of you who have been here a long time are familiar with this text. The text here is that Saul and Samuel are supposed to meet. Saul is supposed to wait for Samuel to come to offer up offerings to God on the basis of the victory God had given to him. And Saul proceeds without Samuel waiting for Samuel the priest to come to offer the sacrifices. And he prepares to offer these sacrifices himself.

And what we read in verse four is Samuel said, “What meanest then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? Behold,” and then as verse 22. “It is better to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he also hath rejected thee from being king.”

And the Geneva marginal notes say this about that incident: “God hateth nothing more than the disobedience of his commandment, though the intent seemed never so good to man.”

Saul had good intentions and as a result disobeyed the word of God relative to making these sacrifices and as a result of that he was removed the kingdom was removed from Saul. The good intentions of the civil magistrate were not bound by the revealed word of God bring God brings God’s condemnation and rejection of those men and the curse upon the land which is later pictured by Saul’s body hanging in the open arena after his death.

Again here, this is how the Puritans interpreted the death of Uzzah recorded in 2 Samuel 6 and following. This is when they’re bringing the ark up. Nobody’s supposed to touch the ark. We read in verse 6, “And when they came to Nachon’s threshing floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it. For the oxen shook it, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him there for his error. And there he died by the ark of God.”

Here again, the marginal note reads this: “There here we see what danger it is to follow good intentions or to do anything in God’s service without his express word.”

Now many people are confused by that text of Uzzah. He just wanted to steady the ark. But see, he had a good intention, but the law said nobody can touch the ark of the covenant. Nobody can do it. I don’t care how good your intentions are. God says to obey is better than sacrifice. You may have all the hard intentions so-called to follow me, but if you don’t obey my word, then really you’re asserting your own ability to know what’s best over what my word claims to say.

And civil magistrates have a particular tendency to assert their own view of good intentions over the written word of God. Now, this will be important next week for consideration of some of the truths that we can see and discern from the ballot measures in this state.

Good intentions proliferate, but when those good intentions are not bound by God’s word, then God’s judgment comes upon the land. Good ideas, feelings, emotions were all to be checked by God’s word, and man was not to be trusted.

And so, godly civil magistrates, according to the book of Micah, had to exercise justice. That justice had to be bounded by the word of God. It wasn’t their idea of what would be good or profitable or just in the context of their rule, but rather it is God’s declared word.

—

Secondly, Micah says that the godly men that God what God requires of us is to love mercy. The marginal notes of the Geneva Bible, the margin notes say that the matter of operation of the civil magistrate was to reflect the theological origins of his power and thus manifest itself in humble esteem.

Deuteronomy 17:20 or 18 and following. We read this of the king and the commandments of him in Deuteronomy 17. “It shall be when he siteth upon the throne of his 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 statutes to do them, that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not 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 the marginal notes on these particular verses reads the following: “that kings ought to so love their subjects as nature bindeth one brother to love another.”

The king’s heart is not to be lifted up. He is to love the subjects over which he reigns. He is to have a proper concept of mercy and compassion and covenantal faithfulness to those whom he rules over.

I’ve mentioned this before, but part of the popularity of the current president of the United States is because people falsely probably but assume that he believes in this. He has mercy for people. He has compassion for people. The scriptures over and over again refer to the king of Israel as a shepherd as well as a king. David is the pre-eminent model for that who was taken as a shepherd. And because of his concern and care for the flocks represented by the animals, he would have that same concern and care for the people of God.

As much as he was there to affect justice, he was to do so with an attitude of mercy and compassion upon his subjects.

And so the civil magistrate today has this dual responsibility to do justice but also to love mercy and the exertion of mercy in the context of the land.

And we can compare that, as I’ve said before, and hopefully you’ve heard me say this before. If not, it’s a real simple equation. And that is that we have today two political parties. The Republicans who tend to stress more the doing of justice, the idea of punishing evildoers in the context of the land. We have a Democratic party that tends to emphasize more the idea of compassion or mercy in the context of land. Now, you wouldn’t know it by the flyers you get mailed this time of year on the part of the Democrats. They’re all tough on crime for two weeks at least leading up to the election. But in essence, these are people who are primarily motivated by perhaps good intentions to help people and to be merciful and compassionate to them.

The problem with both parties is that neither of them meet the third requirement of Micah, and that is that we’re supposed to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly before God. The definition of justice is not to be based upon the good intentions of the king to wipe out crime in the land. It’s rather to be bounded by what crime is defined by the word of God and then the means to take care of the crime is defined by that word as well.

And so the Republicans in desiring just to do justice reject the standard of God’s word and as a result are ineffectual in producing justice. The Democrats who want to exert compassion do so again with perhaps good intentions but not bounded by the standard of God’s word and as a result demonstrate their lack of humility before God and their rejection by God. They’ll produce curse on the land and not reformation in the context of the land.

—

The third requirement of the book of Micah is humility. Deuteronomy uh well the passage we just read asserts the need for the king to write out a copy of the law, whatever portion of God’s word that was. There may be differences of opinion, but one of the reasons for this was not just that he’d have compassion for his subjects and his heart wouldn’t be lifted up, but more that he might fear God as David said in 2 Chronicles that you have to do justice and that the one who rules over men must do so in the fear of the Lord.

So the third requirement of humility is demonstrated in all these texts and maybe most preeminently in Daniel 7:25 where we read of one that would come who should speak great words against the most high.

This is Daniel 7:25. “And he shall wear out the saints of the most high and think to change times and laws and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.”

These were kings who willfully rejected the separation or the limitations on their power asserted to themselves or would assert to themselves power to change laws and seasons. And these kings are equated then with really the spirit of antichrist.

Again to quote the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible on this text Daniel 7:25: “these emperors shall not consider that they have their power of God but think it is their own power to change God’s laws and mans and as it were the very order of nature”—demonstrating by that phrase the intensity of their rejection of the revealed truth of God as seen by the Puritans.

So to walk humbly before God is the great requirement of civil rulers. Now this is a need for all men but particularly for godly rulers as rulers deal with particular temptations relative to the need for humility. They deal with particular temptations to arrogance.

You know I’ve seen this over and over. I’ve said this before that in the halls of Salem or Washington DC as men get taken up into public office they have a tremendous temptation to become arrogant and so exert undue authority and get involved in doing all kinds of things the scriptures don’t call for even good Christian men.

Abraham Kuyper was another man who led what was called the anti-revolutionary party in the Netherlands in the late end of the last century and he said this of Calvin’s conception of the need to limit civil governors:

“Calvin’s profound conception of sin is likewise the outcome of the recognition of the sovereignty of God. He was Republican because Calvin knew that even kings are sinners who yield to temptation perhaps more readily than their subjects in as much as their temptations are greater. He knows equally well that the self-same sin moves the masses and that hence resistance, insurrection and mutinies will not end unless a righteous constitution bridles the abuse of authority, marks off its boundaries and offers the people a natural protection against despotism and ambitious schemes.”

So Abraham Kuyper about John Calvin.

Let me read now again from Samuel Miller who I quoted earlier, the Northern Presbyterian of the last century, an very orthodox man on this subject.

He says: “Be more particular. Christianity on the one hand teaches those who are raised to places of authority that they are not intrinsically greater than those whom they govern and that all the rational and justifiable power with which they are invested flows from the people and is dependent on their sovereign pleasure. There is a love of dominion natural to every human creature. And in those who are destitute of religion, this temper is apt to reign uncontrolled. But in people who are not regenerate, the temptation to exercise domination as opposed to proper dominion will reign uncontrolled in such men. Hence, experience has always testified that rulers left to themselves are prone to imagine that they are a superior order of beings to obey whom the ignoble multitude was made, and that where aggrandizement is the principal design of the social compact. But the religion of the gospel rightly understood and cordially embraced utterly disclaims such unworthy sentiments and banishes them with abhorrence from the mind.”

Now you might have not noticed but what Miller said here was is that they don’t recognize that power flows from the people and is dependent on their sovereign pleasure. Miller is wrong in that statement and we’ll talk more about that next week. But the whole idea that power flows from the people as a mass is just as bad as thinking that power flows from the people somehow on the part of the rulers. What we’ve said from the beginning of this talk on every verse we’ve almost every verse we’ve quoted has talked about the need for the civil magistrate to act not in fear of the people but to act in fear of God.

Nonetheless, Miller’s point is well taken and that is that civil rulers have incredible temptations to exert authority that is not rightly theirs when they forget and are no longer humbled before Almighty God. The scriptures with its doctrine of God’s sovereignty and God’s sovereign placement of men in civil office is the antidote to such pride and to such assertion of one’s own ability or powers to rule.

The scriptures and their assertion that God has sovereignly placed civil rulers in power is given to humble them to their position and cause them dependent upon Almighty God. As the Puritans were on to quote the ground was level at the foot of the cross. All men must come to the foot of the cross in acknowledgement of their sins and there the ground is level.

This is then related to this third need of the book of Micah for humility on the part of the civil magistrates.

—

Groen van Prinsterer. I’m going to quote from Groen van Prinsterer next week a little bit more this week. Next week more Groen van Prinsterer was a man who lived around the turn of the century going into the 19th century early 1800s he saw that what we have going on in the world are two great theologies at work that combat each other the antithesis maybe we could talk about it as but at his particular point in time the French Revolution was a current event and he saw in the reformation principles of God’s truth that assert the sovereignty of God and he saw in the French Revolution principles of man’s truth that assert the sovereignty of man and van Prinsterer saw the beginnings of the development of the modern world as we have them today.

He was prophetic in a very real sense in predicting what would come to pass as this battle was played out on the history on the pages of history.

And van Prinsterer said this about the antidote to the king’s arrogance and the antidote to the people’s arrogance as well.

van Prinsterer said the word of God is what is the axe that cuts off every root of revolutionary misgrowth. van Prinsterer said the assertion of the sovereignty of the magistrate or the assertion of the sovereignty of the civil of the people themselves. Either one is ultimately at its core and root revolution against God Almighty and as such it will work out principles of revolution in the context of the land.

He wrote a series of essays called Unbelief and Revolution that unbelief leads inevitably as people become more self-conscious to revolution against God and then revolution in the context of land and the root is cut off by nothing but the word of God which asserts the sovereignty of God and hence the requirements of the book of Micah relative to civil magistrate.

—

We have another set of requirements listed for us in qualifications of officers in various texts. Exodus 18, Deuteronomy 1 and Acts 6.

Exodus 18 was the account of Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, to him to institute godly government. And Jethro told Moses of what you want to do is have a series of civil magistrates to hear these cases that are lesser cases. And Jethro in the inspired word of God reveals that these are men who are to have ability, men who fear God, men who love truth and who hate covetousness.

Okay, ability, the fear of God, loving of truth and hating of covetousness.

In Deuteronomy 1, as Moses retold of his selecting officers to serve both in the administrative and judicial functions of the magistrate. He said that he took wise men full of understanding known to the people that is and chiefs of the people.

In Acts chapter 6, we read that the deacons selected would be men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost, full of wisdom and men of faith.

Now, as you consider these particular lists of qualifications from the scriptures, recognize that nearly all of these have very direct relationship to character. Not to positions that people took on polity, not to particular positions people took relative to social issues, but rather the criteria for men established…