Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Exodus 23:1-9. Our topic will be the heart of justice.

You shall not circulate a false report. Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. You shall not follow a crowd to do evil. nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice. You shall not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute. If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again.

If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden, and you would refrain from helping it, you shall surely help him with it. You shall not pervert the judgment of your poor in his dispute. Keep yourself far from a false matter. Do not kill the innocent and righteous. For I will not justify the wicked. And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the discerning and perverts the words of the righteous.

Also, you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Let’s pray. Father, we confess that we also were strangers in the land of Egypt. We thank you, Lord God, for the work of our Lord Jesus Christ and bringing us out of bondage to sin and delivering us, Lord God, into his blessed kingdom. We thank you for his word which rules in his kingdom. We thank you for your spirit who teaches us things from this word. We pray that your spirit would do his work now of writing this law upon our hearts. Help us, Lord God, to have fleshy hearts and not stony ones. Help us to have ears that are circumcised, open, so to speak, to hear your word that we may open our hands to do your word this week. We ask this in Christ’s name and for the sake of his kingdom.

Amen.

Please be seated. And the young ones and nursery workers may be dismissed.

There was a man born in 1888. His name was Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and he’s had quite an influence on some men who have had an influence on us, men such as R.J. Rushdoony and James B. Jordan. And Mr. Huessy was a German Christian who converted around the age of 16 or so. And I want to begin today’s talk by reading a quote that’s found on the masthead of the web page dedicated to him.

He died in 1972. He wrote this in a book on sociology. And this is a quote from Mr. Huessy. The history of the human race is written on a single theme. How does love become stronger than death? The composition is recomposed in each generation by those whose love overcomes murdering or dying. So history becomes a great song. Augustine’s Carmen Humanum. As often as the lines rhyme, love has once again become stronger than death. This rhyming, this connecting is man’s function on earth. But that this is our function, we have only known since the birth of Christ. This is our subject today. Love that is stronger than death.

I think we see this love that is stronger than death in the Old Testament prior to the coming of Christ. But of course, Mr. Huessy is completely correct in that we did not know fully what the implications of the texts of the Old Testament were until they were revealed to us in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.

So we’ll talk today about this love becoming stronger than death and the song that it is in our lives or should become in our lives in today’s sermon.

Now, before we get specifically into the sermon, I want to do a couple of things. First, I want to talk a little bit about Acts chapter 10. And then I want to talk more today, as I usually do, about the context of these particular verses we’re going to deal with in today’s sermon.

In Acts chapter 10, there’s a gentile God-fearer named Cornelius. Acts chapter 10 is a very important turning point in the spread of the gospel. You know the general story, I’m sure. Cornelius is a gentile God-fearer. He worships God. He loves God. And an angel comes to him while he’s praying and tells him to go and send for one named Peter. At the same time this is going on, Peter who is staying in another person’s house has this vision of the animals lowered down into a sheet, some clean and some unclean.

And God tells him to eat. And he says, “No, I can’t eat what’s unclean.” And God says, “Don’t call unclean what I have cleansed.” So what’s going on in Acts chapter 10 is a huge paradigm shift in the expansion of the gospel into the world. But not just that, it’s the bringing together of one church. No longer a priestly nation, Israel, separate from the nations. Now the true high priest has come. And now all the church represents the coming together of Israel—Jew or believing Jew and Gentile God-fearer—into one body of the church.

And this is accomplished in the transition in chapter 10 in the context of Cornelius on the one hand and Peter on the other. We’ll talk about this at communion, but Peter is told to eat as central to what happens in this chapter, to obey something that God tells him to do. Not to first come to an understanding of it, but to obey it.

On Cornelius’s side, the text tells us several things. It does tell us that he was a devout man, a holy man, in other words, one that feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the people and prayed to God always. And then when he’s in prayer, we’re told this later in the text, when he’s in prayer, he sees in a vision evidently about the 9th hour of the day, an angel of God coming into him and saying unto him, Cornelius. And when he looks on him, he was afraid and said, “What is it, Lord?” And the angel says unto him this, “Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God. Go and send for Peter.”

Now, by the way, Peter is identified here as the one who lives by the sea. Another picture, a literary picture here, true as it was, he was at the sea, but it’s included, the detail is because the sea represents the gentile nations who are now to be brought into the full house of God.

And so this happens. But what I want to cause us to remember today—and children, if you fall asleep, remember this—that when the angel comes to Cornelius, the angel says, “Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God. Your prayers and your alms are come up before God as a memorial before God. If nothing else, the application of this sermon is we should be praying. We should be men of holiness and we should be men of justice in doing good deeds in giving alms.”

The context for this is the people of God were starving, beginning a great famine in Jerusalem. And Cornelius is pictured as one who is sensitive to the needs of the church and distributes alms to the people of God and as the preeminent God-fearing gentile that God decides to mark in this way in Acts chapter 10 with the expansion of the church that we now are in the context of as gentile God-fearers.

I think we want to think of Cornelius’s life as a model for ours and we have to ask ourselves at the end of the day do our prayers and our alms come up before God as a memorial as Christians and hopefully the end result of this sermon today is that your prayers and your alms and your good deeds done for others will be increased.

Now we have to look at the context of this text again today a little bit but one more diversion if you allow me.

You know that what we’ve been talking about last week and this week is justice and the way we’ve structured the outline of the law of the covenant here is that the second half of it pivots on two central themes, holiness and justice. Just the way that there are pivot points in Leviticus 19 at the center of the Pentateuch. So here in Exodus 23 in this central portion of the law of God that kind of correlates to Leviticus 19 with its statement of the Ten Commandments in expanded form there are these two pivot points of holiness and justice.

Now justice is what we’re talking about here and justice begins with the tongue. And this last week I kind of have been a political junkie ever since there was a governor when I was a young boy in Michigan who wore a polka dot bow tie. Soapie Williams, I think, or think that might have been his name. I don’t remember, but he was a governor of Michigan. And as a young boy of four or five, my parents tell me I read the political page about what he was doing. I think it was just the polka dot bow tie that kind of intrigued me. But I’ve been a political junkie.

And you know, if you think of the implication of last week’s text that we dealt with in the sermon where we extrapolated out on the need to have very careful tongues. Tongues that reflect justice in the context of our world. The tongue starts this whole section of Exodus 23:1-9. Don’t circulate a false report. Don’t raise it up.

To watch the candidates for president on the conservative side or those who are being supported by the Christian population for the most part is more than a little disappointing. The use of speech has been an amazing thing to watch. There was a debate Tuesday night in which there was a lot of bickering going on between the two main candidates. And a third candidate, Alan Keyes, who’s a Catholic, said, “We got millions of people tuning in from all over the world, and these two guys are acting like school boys out there bickering about you said this and you said that.” And that was really true.

The kind of speech or discourse that now marks our political arena has gone far afield from the kind of serious bearing of correct testimony or witness that the ninth commandment requires of us.

This happened again yesterday as the concession speech of one of these candidates. In his concession speech, he held himself up as not taking the low road to the highest office in the land. And he wasn’t going to enter into negative politics. And he then proceeded by way of implication to call his main opponent in the race a fear-monger, someone who never fought for their country because he was never in the military, an empty shell, so to speak, and deceptive. And this all with the promise that he was going to run a positive campaign. Words mean nothing in the context of our political life today.

I mean, a man can stand there straight-faced and say, “I’m going to run a positive campaign and my opponent is a dirty rotten skunk.” Now, what does that mean today? It means that speech has become perverted and twisted.

Now, just so you won’t think I’m biased here, the other candidate has been running ads about, you know, he’s a reformer with results. And one of the things he claims as a result that he as a reformer has affected is healthcare reform in the state of Texas which he originally apparently vetoed and then he let become law the second time it was passed without his signature and yet he now claims that as one of his great accomplishments in the political arena.

So I’m not just picking on one guy here. I’m saying that we have a serious problem in our country with a lack of justice as defined by honest forthright true testimony and bearing speech.

Now, there’s an old expression that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And these two candidates that I’m talking about look pretty good compared to the blind man we have in the White House. And I don’t mean to say that in a way that diminishes the office, but I mean, you cannot look at Exodus 23 and the requirements that are listed there without thinking about how the highest official in our land in terms of justice and judgment has seems to have very publicly broken many of these central requirements of truthtelling in the context of office.

Don’t raise a false report. Well, that’s you know that’s been the essence of what’s been happening out of Washington DC probably for a long time before this particular president but certainly this president has raised a lot of false reports about people leaking things to the press etc. Don’t put your hands with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Don’t condone perjury. Our president seems to specifically have advocated and condoned the suborning of perjury.

Don’t follow a multitude to do wrong. Multitude isn’t going to be able to lead you correctly. Made me think of that Elton John song as it relates to the current occupant of the White House. You know how it goes, that one he wrote about. I don’t know what or who he wrote about. Maybe Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana or whatever it was. It goes, “it seems to me you lived your life like a finger in the wind.” Well, that’s not it, is it? But that’s what this guy does. He lives his life with a finger in the wind, never taking an action till the polls come in. Following a mob has now become standard political fare in our country.

Don’t speak in a case to rest judgment. Our president was held in contempt of court by a judge because he spoke in a case to rest judgment away against a person who had relatively poor stature and power.

I could go on, but I think the point is kind of obvious. We need critically in our nation’s history a love that is stronger than death. I saw Os Guinness on C-SPAN yesterday, a new book he’s got out, Time for Truth. That’s right. It’s a time for Christians to stand up and tell the truth. It’s a time for people to take public actions and public statements of truthtelling and justice once more. It’s a time for the love that is stronger than death.

What’s the connection? The connection is at the center of this text on justice in verses 1-9 are actions of kindness toward your enemy or towards someone who actually hates you is what we’re commanded to do as central to the law of the covenant. We need that truth stronger than death. But of course, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy—of course was talking there about the Song of Solomon and we’ll get to that at the end of the sermon today talking about love that’s stronger than death.

Now, we need to look at the context for this. Context is very important. We’ve been reading through the fourth book of the Psalter or the fifth book of the Psalter rather in our responsive readings now for quite some time. You may not know why we’re reading this Psalm 137 with this captivity theme. Well, it’s very appropriate, isn’t it? That’s the kind of place we’re in today. The Lord God has scattered his people amongst the whole world.

Now, and in the context of the world, we live in the context of a land in which our song does not resonate with the culture. But our job is to keep singing it. This fifth book of the covenant moves through Psalms of Exodus and deliverance. And then they move through these songs of deliverance that coming out of Egypt. Then we get to the giving of the law in Psalm 119. And Psalm 119 then sets us up for the songs of ascent that led us up to Jerusalem.

So as we read through these things week by week, we’re tracking deliverance and then these great psalms of praise for deliverance, the giving of the law and then the psalms of ascent as we go up to worship God. And then after all these songs of ascent, we come to this Psalm 137 which has negative stuff in it. All of a sudden we have a psalm of crisis. How do we sing our song in a strange land? Our captors say, “Hey, why don’t you sing one of those songs you sing in Zion here, you know, here in Babylon? You sing it over here.” Well, you can’t do it. At least that’s what the psalmist says.

Now, the word of God doesn’t leave us with a problem that isn’t resolved. This psalm is resolved in the next two psalms, Psalm 138 and 139.

Why don’t you turn in your Bibles to Psalm 138 is an example of how important context is. Okay. Now remember context for Psalm 138 is the crisis psalm of 137. How do I sing my song in a new land?

I will praise you with my whole heart before the gods. I’ll sing praises to you in captivity before the rulers. I will praise you. I will worship toward your holy temple. Praise your name for your loving kindness and your truth. You have magnified your word above all your name. God’s name dwelt at the temple. But God has magnified his word above his name. And his word. Now, the temple doesn’t go with him into captivity.

His word is always with us as Christians. Whether we’re in the context of a nation that’s ordered and structured on God’s word or not, the word of God is with us. And so, the psalmist says, “How do I sing my song? How do I get motivation?” The motivation is the word of God is not void. It’s not been bound. You’ve not been alienated from the word of God. It goes with you, and that word of God will be effectual.

Verse four, all the kings of the earth shall praise you, oh Lord, when they hear the words of your mouth. If we take that word and articulate it to the nation, then God says all the kings of the earth, God takes us into captivity, so to speak, and puts us in an unfamiliar, unacceptable in our way of thinking setting so that we would convert those nations that we have been placed in the context of.

How do we sing our song? We sing our song by knowing one that the word of God has been exalted over the name or the place of his name, the temple, his local manifestation, which while important is now superseded by his word that goes into all the created order. And two, we do it by knowing that God sends us into that created order to give praise to him by seeing the conversion of the kings of the earth.

And then verse seven, though I walk in the midst of trouble, you’ll revive me. You’ll stretch out your hand against the wrath of mine enemies. By your right hand, you’ll save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerns me. We recognize in captivity that God is perfecting that which concerns us and that which concerns the church. God has his purposes. So we remind ourselves of these great truths as the answer to the psalm of crisis.

Psalm 139 gives another perspective on the answer. Oh Lord, you have searched me and know me, you know, by sitting down by going up. There’s not a word in my tongue. Verse four, behold, oh Lord, you know it altogether. Verse seven, where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? See, if he goes into captivity, he’s not being alienated from God. The spirit of God is wherever we are the spirit of God fills the earth.

And then we go on to those beautiful lines that we like to think about in terms of babies. Verse 13, you have formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother’s womb. How do we sing our song in a strange land? Well, because we know that God is with us wherever we go. His spirit, you can’t get away from his spirit if you wanted to. So, the spirit and word penetrate the earth. And God’s people who are sent forth into that earth while in captivity at the time are there for the purpose of praising God and of converting the nations.

Now, these psalms—these psalms of crisis and deliverance that we’ve spoken about here—really track the Christian life as well. You know, we are been delivered from sin. We’ve been delivered from sin and we’ve been given the blessings of God in that deliverance and we sing great songs of praise the way that those in Egypt talk about where we come out of Exodus and we come out and God, you know, praises his name through us.

We’ve been given those songs. We’ve been given his word and we’ve been given a command to assemble before him on the Lord’s day to go up singing songs of praise to him. And then we confront the harsh cold reality of the psalm of crisis in Psalm 137. And sometimes our lives look very much like we’re in captivity. We can’t accomplish what we want to accomplish. We’re bewildered and befuddled. We don’t know what to do. We’re sort of like Peter when that cover comes down and says, “Take, eat. I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”

God assures us that his word is with us. And he assures us that his spirit is with us. And he assures us no matter what goes on in our lives, it’s all right. He is effecting his purposes. Our job is in the lines of the old song to trust and obey.

You see the importance of understanding Psalm 137 in its context that this psalm of crisis is answered in Psalms 138 and 139. And then the prayers for deliverance go forth. And the end of the fifth book is those high psalms of praise, the great Hallelujahs, the great praise God that the psalm ends its movement with.

Our lives are involved in that kind of a movement. And while we seem to be in the context of a land where political speech is so twisted and perverted in disobedience to these laws we’ve read, God set us here that we might call for a correction to that and say, as Os Guinness says in his new book, it’s a time for truth. It’s a time for witness bearing.

Now, I’ve talked about the context then for what we’re going to say here in the heart of justice before, but understand that this book of the law of the covenant, I want, you know, I really want you to have a handle on this. I want you to be able for the rest of your lives to think back on the law of the covenant, understand what it was all about. the details are important, but the broad brush strokes are very important as well.

And really, it’s quite simple. It’s not hard to know what this book of the law of the covenant’s about. And we’re theonomists, theonomists, whatever you want to call it. We love the law of God. We want to understand how it applies to us. Well, here’s how you do it. Then you look at the structure that God has given to us. He’s given us two halves of the law of the covenant.

And the first half of the law of the covenant, it’s real easy to remember because it’s like how our country was founded. God establishes liberty and life and he protects property. And then property is talked about in the context of community. And you remember that John Locke’s original phrase was the pursuit of life, liberty, and property rather—life, liberty, and the pursuit of property is the basis for our political freedom in America. And we would say now that was changed by Jefferson to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Well, happiness is seen in the pursuit of property in the context of community. And that’s what Jefferson meant by the phrase. He didn’t mean happiness the way we think of it today, some distraction or amusement. He meant using property in the context of community, which is exactly what the law of the covenant, this first half that we’ve talked about, the if-then section, that’s what it’s all about. It’s about advocating liberty. It’s about protecting and enhancing life. It’s about protecting and enhancing property and seeing that property has obligations relative to the community.

And the height of community are the laws relating to marriage and the bride that culminate the first half of the law of the covenant.

Now, in your outlines, they say it’s got grace before and after. What do I mean by that? Well, it begins by talking about your servants and how they’re supposed to be released in the seventh year. That’s Exodus 21 rather. So the grace is at the beginning of the first section and the grace is at the end because it talks about the stranger in your land and being gracious to him. So grace brackets the first half of this pursuit of life, liberty and property, community and marriage.

And this last half of the law of the covenant, I’ve given you this chiastic structure here. It’s about holiness and justice. Holiness and obedience. It has at outline point C, be holy men unto me. I preached on that. And then to be circumspect is in relationship to it down in verse 13. Exodus 23:13 says, “And all that I have said to you, be circumspect. Make no mention of the names of other gods. nor let them be heard in your mouth.”

Now this word circumspect means to be guarded. The basic idea is to exercise great care over something and specifically the usual use of the term to guard has relationship to the obligations of a covenant to laws or statutes etc. That’s the most frequent use of this verb to guard and to guard is frequently attached with the term to do them. To guard the statute and to do them is the parallel to that.

So for instance in Exodus 20:6, God shows mercy to thousands of those who love me and guard the same word—circumspect. Be circumspect relative to my commandments. Leviticus 19 at the beginning has the same two poles to it. The first half of Leviticus 19 is about holiness. It says be holy because I’m holy. And then at the middle of Leviticus 19 begins a section of statutes like these statutes we have here. And it says, “You shall guard. You shall keep my statutes. You shall be circumspect in reference to my statutes. You shall be just is another way to put it.”

And then verse 37 closes off Leviticus 19. You shall observe my statutes and my judgments and perform them. I am the Lord. Observe, guard them, keep them, be circumspect relative to them. Again, in Deuteronomy 11:32, you shall be careful to observe all the statutes and judgments which I set before you today.

Now, the point is this. Holiness has to do with being set apart to God and having personal integrity relative to God, a good conscience. Circumspectness, the second commandment in this second half of the law of the covenant that kind of sums up both these sections. This commandment to be circumspect has reference to justice and to doing, guarding, and keeping the commandments of God.

So, holiness and justice are the two spheres, so to speak, the two focal points that the law, the second portion of this law of the covenant circles around. And what we’ve said here is that the center of this, the center of the second half is the section on justice.

At the center of this section on justice is verses four and five that tell us to be positively motivated to help our enemy and to help the one who actually hates us. So that’s the big context for the heart of justice. The heart of justice is the heart of the second half of the law of the covenant. And the middle of this is being kind or gracious to enemies and those that hate us.

So in the first half of the law of the covenant, you got those grace things going on to servants or slaves and also to the stranger. In the second half of the law of the covenant, you got that grace thing going on in the context of your enemy or the one who hates you. So, permeating throughout the law of the covenant are these commands really to love your neighbor and as our Savior repeats it or sums it up in the gospels to love your enemy as well. That’s the heart of justice.

All right, let’s move then through some specific observations. That’s all by of context and introduction. Now let’s talk about a few observations on this text.

First of all, justice like holiness has a guarded tongue. Okay, so first half of the second half of the law of the covenant began with what? It began with the statements to be careful with our tongues toward God and toward rulers and then holiness kind of flows out of that. So holiness when God wants to talk about holiness in the law of the covenant. He began by telling us things about our speech.

And when God wants us to talk about justice, he begins by telling us something about our tongues again or our speech. He says, “Don’t raise or circulate a false report. Don’t be a rumor monger. Don’t be a scandal raiser.” Now, I said this last week, but it deserves repetition. Justice, like holiness, has a guarded tongue. Guarded.

In Numbers 23 verses 11 and 12, we’ve got Balak and Balaam. You know the story. Balak’s hired Balaam to curse Israel. Well, if you don’t know the story, you should know the story. Balak has hired Balaam to curse Israel in Numbers chapter 23. And he wants Balaam a prophet to speak against God’s people. And Balaam says to Balak, “Must I not take heed to speak what the Lord has put in my mouth?” Now that’s the same word for be circumspect. That’s the same word for guard.

Even Balaam who eventually will give Balak information on how to defeat the people of God. It’s not through divination. It’s through causing them to go into moral sin or rebellion against God. Balaam will eventually do that. So here’s a bad guy, but even the bad guy knows that he has to guard his speech, to speak that which God has put into his mouth.

What a commentary to us on the need to guard our speech and speak what God has put into our mouth instead of using the serpent speech of the one who kept us in bondage until Christ’s deliverance of us.

I want to read a long quote here from Ecclesiasticus. You probably never read it. It’s one of those apocryphal books. It’s not inspired, but there’s excellent wisdom in some of those old writings of men, many of them who were very devout followers of God. Ben Sira writes in Ecclesiasticus chapter 28 these things about the tongue.

Abstain from strife, and thou shalt diminish thy sins. For a furious man will kindle strife. A sinful man disquieteth friends, and maketh debate among them that be at peace. As the matter of the fire is, so it burneth. And as a man’s strength is, so is his wrath. And according to his riches, his anger riseth, and the stronger they are which contend, the more they will be inflamed. A hasty contention kindleth a fire, and in hasty fighting sheds blood. If you blow the spark, it shall burn. If you spit upon it, it shall be quenched. And both these come out of thy mouth.

You see, he’s drawing the connection to contention and the speech. You blow on the fire by saying bad speech. You spit on the fire by using good speech and gracious speech.

Cursed the whisperer and double-tongued, for such have destroyed many that were at peace. Of backbiting tongue hath disquieted many, and driven them from nation to nation. Strong cities hath it pulled down, and overthrown the houses of great men. A backbiting tongue hath cast out virtuous women, and deprived them of their labors. Who so hearkeneth unto it shall never find rest, and never dwell quietly. The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh, but the stroke of the tongue breaks the bones. Breaks the bones. It ruins a person’s ability to proceed.

Gossip, innuendo, slander.

Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not so many as have fallen by the tongue. Well is he that is defended from it, and hath not passed through the venom thereof, who hath not drawn the yoke thereof, nor hath been bound in her bands. For the yoke thereof is a yoke of iron, and the bands thereof are bands of brass. The death thereof is an evil death. The grave were better than it. It shall not have rule over them that fear God, neither shall they be burned with the flame thereof.

Such as forsake the Lord shall fall into it, and it shall burn in them, and not be quenched. It shall be sent upon them as a lion, and devour them as a leopard. Look that thou hedge thy possession about with horns, and bind up thy silver and gold, and weigh thy words in a balance, and make a door, and bar for thy mouth. Beware thou slide not by it, lest thou fall before him that lieth and wait.

If we want to be holy men, and if we want to be just men, we will follow this good advice from Ben Sira in Ecclesiasticus rather, chapter 28. Weigh thy words in a balance. Make a door and bar for thy mouth. Beware thou slide not by it.

Justice and holiness begins with a guarded tongue.

Zechariah 8 deals with the restoration of God’s people to blessing instead of to cursing from him. And he says in verse 16, these are the things that you shall do. This is the essence of the restoration of man according to Zechariah 8.

Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor. Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates. And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor, and love no false oath. For all these are things that I hate, saith the Lord.

Zechariah knew his law of the covenant. He knew that second half of the law of the covenant focused around holiness and justice. And if God has separated out a people for himself, there are people who must be just. And justice begins with how we use our speech relative to our neighbor. And what it shows about the attitude in our heart to our neighbor as well.

Proverbs 6:16-19 almost read like a commentary on Exodus 23:1-9. These six things the Lord hates, seven are abomination to him, a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and he that sows discord among the brethren—a caper is the one who carries a false report and hurts the reputation of the brother.

That’s the list. That’s the top of the list. That’s number seven in the things that the Lord hates. It’s a denial of justice. And we cannot rail against the current injustice in the high offices of this land if we do not commit ourselves to have guarded tongues in our speech, both in terms of holiness and justice.

I know I handed it out last week. I know probably a lot of you didn’t read it, so I’m gonna read it now. It’s the other half of the Westminster Larger Catechism commentary on the ninth commandment. Not just what the ninth commandment forbids, bearing a false witness, but what does it command? What are the positive duties required? And you ask yourself, have your prayers and alms gone up before God as a memorial in terms of your speech? I mean, it’s one thing to give alms to people in terms of money. It’s another to use our speech to build up our neighbor.

Does your prayer, your speech to God in terms of holiness and do your alms, your kindness reflected in your words toward your neighbor, do they go up as a memorial to God?

The duties required of the ninth commandment are the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man and the good name of our neighbor as well as our own appearing and standing for the truth and from the heart sincerely freely clearly and fully speaking the truth and only the truth in matters of judgment and justice and in all other things whatsoever. A charitable esteem of our neighbors, loving, desiring and rejoicing in their good name, sorrowing for and covering of their infirmities, freely acknowledging of their gifts and graces, defending their innocency, a ready receiving of a good report, an unwillingness to admit of an evil report concerning them, discouraging talebearers, flatterers, and slanderers, love and care of our own good name, and defending it when need requires, keeping of lawful promises, studying and practicing of whatsoever things are true, honest, lovely, and of good report.

Like holiness, justice begins with a guarded tongue, with a tongue positively given over to true witness and the building up of our neighbor.

Second, justice is blind to societal classes. We mentioned this last week. Mentioned again here. You shall not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute. You shall not pervert the judgment of your poor in his dispute as well. Either way, to favor the rich or favor the poor is a class distinction that God says should have no part of who we are as believers in him.

Proverbs 19 says that wealth makes many friends, but the poor is separated from his friend. A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who speaks lies will not escape. Many entreat the favor of the nobility, and every man is a friend to one who gives gifts. All the brothers of the poor hate him. How much more do his friends go far from him? He may pursue them with words, yet they abandon him.

You see, the brackets to the statement in Proverbs 19:5 about false witness is bracketed by these societal class distinctions that so easily beset us as a sin in our own times. To favor the rich, to favor the mighty, or in the case of some to favor the poor. Both causes must be eschewed by the Christian. Justice shows no partiality in these matters.

In Deuteronomy 1, God sets up judges to administer justice. And he says to judge righteously between every man and his brother and the stranger that’s within your gates. You 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 case or the matter that is too hard for you, bring it unto me and I will hear it.

He tells us there that this distinction, this class consciousness may not be based on wealth. Yet, the small and the great may represent the opinion people have of some man or mighty showy things that he does or his nobility in terms of a class culture where people are born as lords or ladies. This kind of class distinction has no place in the court of justice.

Justice is to be blind, as it were, to these kind of matters. It tells us that the basis why people show partiality to classes is because they don’t fear God. They fear the face of man. If you have a culture in which men no longer fear God, and I’d say that’s a fairly accurate depiction of our culture, then men are going to move away from justice and they’re going to pervert things by means of social warfare because they’re going to end up fearing somebody. You know, old Bob Dylan song, you got to serve somebody. You got to fear somebody. And if you don’t fear God, you’re going to fear your fellow man. And if you fear your fellow man, you’re going to end up showing distinction between classes and entering into a class warfare that the scriptures say should not take place.

James 3 tells us that the demonic wisdom from below, the wisdom from below is contrasted with the angelic wisdom from above. And this wisdom from above in James 3:17, among other things, is described as being without partiality, without partiality, without respect of persons.

James 2 tells us that if we have respect to persons, you commit sin and are convinced of the law, convicted of the law as transgressors. James tells us in another place, you’re not to favor the rich man in terms of seating at church. You’re not to end the society of the church. You’re not to esteem one man because of wealth and position. And you’re not to look down on the poor man because of his lack of wealth or lack of position. And if you do that, the law sees you as a transgressor.

So, justice is properly blind to social class distinctions.

Now again here we live in a culture where this was once the case and a culture that now has moved in the same direction as Rome—class conflicts. There was an orator in Rome during the time of the Punic Wars against Carthage which went on for over a hundred years. And this particular orator every time he’d give a speech in the Senate the concluding remark would be Carthage must be destroyed. Destroyed.

Now eventually Carthage was destroyed, salted, burned, cursed. But Carthage must be destroyed. With the destruction of Carthage, Rome really moved into a period of time when there were no external enemies anymore. And that period of time then became marked by the perversion of justice with class warfare increasingly marking what goes on in terms of the political arena with the provision of class benefits or privileges to the poor or to the rich depending on which party you were in favor of.

We live in a context here in America where the evil empire had to be destroyed and it has been. We’re now in a period of great prosperity and global peace for the most part. And the question is, will we go the way of Rome? Will we also disintegrate internally through a moving away from justice among other things by the rise of class consciousness and class distinctions?

There are, if you read the bills that are passed in the federal and state legislatures, a great deal of them, a high percentage are class legislation. Legislation intended to help one class as opposed to another class of people. It’s the perversion and twisting of justice. God says that this will bring about the destruction of a nation because one reason it removes the predictability of justice in the courtroom. You cannot begin a business today with any sense of certainty that you won’t be the subject of a lawsuit for doing your business well twenty years from now.

So, we have the tobacco industry, the gun industry, some of them going out of business because of the class legislation that’s come in for particular people and holding those rich, powerful people that have done so well in business accountable supposedly for the evils they’ve wreaked upon the culture.

Envy drives class consciousness. Envy is a desire to destroy the riches of one that you can’t attain to. And that’s what we see in our culture.

Justice has a guarded tongue. Justice is blind to classes.

Third, justice is blind to personal grievances. And as we read in verses four and five, if you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him again. Your enemy’s ox. And if you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden, and you would refrain from helping it, you shall surely help him with it. So your donkey of your enemy is wandering around. You have to return it to him.

And then the donkey of your enemy is falling under his burden. They’d be loaded up so high that they couldn’t take the weight and they’d fall in a ravine or a ditch or stumble and they’d fall down. And it’s the guy who actually hates you now. His donkey has fallen down because of his burden. And the scriptures say, you got to go help that enemy of yours, the one who hates you by helping his donkey up.

Parallel text here is in Deuteronomy 22:1-4. You shall not see your brother’s ox or his sheep go astray and hide yourself from them. You shall certainly bring them back to your brother. And if your brother is not near you, or if you do not know him, then you shall bring it to your own house, and it shall remain with you until your brother seeks it. Then you shall restore it to him. You shall do the same with his donkey, and so shall you do with his garment, with any lost thing of your brother. So it’s a universal truth to anything which he has lost, and you have found, you shall do likewise. You must not hide yourself.

You shall not see your brother’s donkey or his ox fall down along the road, and hide yourself from them, and you shall surely help him lift it up again.

So we have this commandment here to be just—justice is blind in terms of personal grievances. Personal grievances.

Matthew Henry commenting on this says that if we must do this kindness for an enemy much more for a friend though an enemy only is mentioned because it is supposed that a man would not be unable to any unless such has had a particular spleen against him. If it be wrong not to prevent our enemy’s loss and damage how much worse is it to occasion harm and loss to him or anything he has? So if we have to prevent loss, how much worse is it to go out and cause loss or damage to our enemy or to an enemy or one who hates us?

Third, Matthew Henry says, “If we must bring back our neighbors cattle when they go astray, much more must we endeavor by prudent admonitions and instructions to bring back our neighbors themselves when they go astray on any sinful path. And we must endeavor to help” [Transcript ends]