Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text today is found in 2 Samuel 23:1-7. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. These are the last words of David. Last words are important in the Bible. 2 Samuel 23:1-7. And indeed the text tells us. Now these are the last words of David. Thus says David, the son of Jesse. Thus says the man raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel. The spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and his word was on my tongue.

The God of Israel said, “The rock of Israel spoke to me. He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be like the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds, like the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. Although my house is not so with God, yet he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure.

For this is all my salvation and all my desire. Will he not make it increase? But the sons of rebellion shall all be as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands. But the man who touches them must be armed with iron and the shaft of a spear, and they shall be utterly burned with fire in their place. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text of scripture. We pray that your Holy Spirit would transform us.

Help us, Lord God, to see the new creation beaming forth from the coming of the greater David, the Lord Jesus Christ, in this place. And may we indeed be those beams of light as we go into this world. Prepare us, Father, for the liturgy, the work today, by helping us to understand this text and to bow before it and to obey it. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

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It’s an interesting thing. I’m teaching a New Testament survey in Kings Academy this year. And it’s an interesting thing doing a survey of the gospels that at their conclusion, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we don’t have any statements about how great it is that now we can go to heaven. What we have instead, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the great commission. And what we have instead, at the conclusion of the gospels in John’s gospel, is the breathing of the Lord Jesus Christ upon his disciples, telling them to receive the spirit of God.

The resurrection is not a means for getting out of this. The resurrection is a means for changing and transforming this. The new creation has come. The Old Testament is anticipatory, just as David’s last words were of the great son that would come—the great light of God, the word of God that began this creation, begins the new creation. The Old Testament is anticipatory, clearly so, and the gospels answer that anticipation with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is nothing short of a new creation, a new order. His kingdom has come, and he doesn’t tell his disciples upon his resurrection, “Isn’t that great? Now just kind of pass your time here and get ready for heaven there.” There’s precious little about heaven in the Bible. People all the time ask questions about it—about the intermediate state without bodies and the final state. Not a lot of information, quite frankly, because God says it’s very important what we do here.

Praise God that in our day and generation, a great heresy of the church of Jesus Christ is being reversed. That heresy is that God’s concerns are heavenly, that the earth is nothing but some sort of anticipatory state for that heaven and that it really has no significance. We’re coming to grips with the reality that the New Testament tells us that the new creation has come, and you’ve been saved not ultimately to get to heaven. You’ve been saved, in the immediate sense, to live out your lives on earth in a heavenly way.

Heaven and earth are not two separate places totally separated, but they’ve come together. Revelation makes that quite clear. They come together in the Lord Jesus Christ. They come together, particularly in the worship of the church as we go into that consecrated temple that Hebrews tells us is really modeled after the heavenly temple. So this is where heaven and earth meet, and this is where we receive the blueprint about how we’re to work to affect heavenly change on the earth and transform this world. That’s the work we’re called to. We’re gathered in so that we might be sent out as agents of transformation, agents of the new order, agents of the new creation, agents of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And there is, of course, a great evil going on in the context of our world in our particular time. Today is anti-abortion day of the Lord. At least that’s what we celebrate this day, as many churches celebrate as Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. It is the Sunday closest to the anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973, January 22nd, that made legal abortion on demand in this country. And every year since then, you’ll hear the numbers are dropping. Yes, they’re dropping somewhat. The rate has slowed somewhat, but the last statistics I have are for 2002, and still we have well over a million babies born. Still we have, I think, 20%—one out of five pregnancies that doesn’t result in miscarriage—results in abortion. And so this is the awful butchery that goes on in our day and age, this is what we become sort of numb to, sort of accustomed to. But we don’t ever want to do that.

So Sanctity of Human Life Sunday—we call it anti-abortion day of the Lord—because abortion is murder. The Bible does not tell us in the Ten Commandments, you know, “advance life.” It says “don’t murder.” Now, we are advancers of life, of course, but the rhetoric attempting to be politically correct and being positive, being “pro-life,” is being turned on its head. If you’re pro-life, they say, then why don’t you do all these kinds of welfare programs for life, and do this and that? And they draw out implications that we don’t want to really give way to, because they end up with unbiblical solutions to the difficulties of our time, which are no solutions at all. They’re old world. They’re old creation. They’re passing away.

We’re the ones to have a message of the new creation, the new world. We’re those agents of transformation. And we do it by speaking God’s word into our realm. Ultimately, the power of God is not nuclear missiles. The power of God is the word of God. The sword that comes out of our Savior’s mouth is the power. It’s the word of God that goes forth and affects change in the world. And we speak forth the truth today: abortion is murder and should not be admitted.

So anti-abortion day of the Lord Sunday is an okay term. I like the term Jesus is the Son coming forth, going over the whole circuit of the earth, bringing his life. It’s not a bad thing to remember on Sunday. But this is also the Lord’s day. And the Lord’s day in the New Testament is equivalent to “day of the Lord” grammatically in the Greek. There’s no difference. It’s good to call it the day of the Lord because we’re reminded then of all the “day of the Lord” passages from the Old Testament, the prophetic books in Joel and elsewhere, where the day of the Lord is not some nice little shiny walk with God in the park.

The day of the Lord is the Lord coming near to us. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it’s a little of both, isn’t it? It’s a horribly frightening thing if we understand it. And if we try to approach God apart from the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, or if we come to it with our hands bloody and having no intention to wash them in the blood of our Savior and to be cleansed of that, then it’s a horrible thing. To get near to God means getting close to the fire of all fires.

But it’s also a good thing, of course, because he brings blessing and gifts to us as we repent and as we trust his mercy alone. So this is the day of the Lord. God’s judgment begins at the church because the church is ultimately responsible for what’s happened in our day and age. The church really didn’t give out any kind of protests at all in the ’70s. Almost no churches did when abortion on demand became legal and as millions and millions and millions of babies became victims of slaughter.

Now on a certain day of the Lord, anti-abortion day of the Lord, we stressed Mercy Ministries. It’s of course the essence of the church to extend grace and life to people. The pregnancy resource centers are a tremendous work to support, as are many other works of that sort. But today I want to focus particularly on the need to bring the fear of God, the fear of the Lord, into the hearts of rulers. That’s what we just recited responsibly in Psalm 83, that the fear of God might strike these men. And today I want to focus particularly on the fear of God relative to rulers, civil rulers, and specifically to judges.

Now, I’m sorry if you weren’t here last week. I know a lot of people were sick. We demonstrated quite powerfully, I think—not my rhetoric, but the statements of the scriptures, the New Testament—that the fear of the Lord, the fear of God, is a New Testament truth. It’s characteristic of who we are. If you want to talk about Gentile converts, you talk about God-fearers. That’s what the Bible does. That’s who we’re to be. And I want to take this now, and next week we’ll come back to our own lives, emphasizing ways to learn the fear of the Lord and to develop it. But I want to talk today about bringing the fear of God to judges or to rulers.

And so the idea is that we pray impretically. It’s a service of malediction. I mean the emphasis is on malediction as opposed to benediction. Benedictions are the good words of God, benediction—good words at the end. Maledictions are words that are bad. Not bad ultimately. They’re good. When God brings his judgments into the earth, he frightens people. And that’s what we want. We want people to be frightened. We want the arrogancy and the pridefulness of the United States Supreme Court and of the Oregon Supreme Court to be shaken down to its roots. And we pray today, and we’re going to ask God for particular temporal judgments upon these judges who gave us this horrible thing and maintain it.

And they’re really at this point much of the key to reversing it. And so we’re going to ask God for his particular judgments on judges today. And this is an application of the fear of God. The picture on the front of our order of worship today is the slaughter of the innocents—Herod’s attempt to kill off Jesus, really part of an ongoing long war between two seeds. The devil strikes out against the seed of the woman, and we see that manifested in Herod. We see the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ at Christmas time being set in this context in the gospels. So it’s a context not just of sweetness and light and “oh, isn’t a cute little baby,” but this is a baby who will bring judgment to Herod. And indeed, that judgment is recorded in the words of scripture for us.

And so we’re to see that the Lord Jesus Christ coming means to shake ungodly empires down to their core and to transform them or to remove them completely out of the way. This is the day that we sort of think about the slaughter of the innocents here in America. Yes, I know it’s an analogy and it’s not perfect, but I know that women give up their own children to this horrible thing. But I believe that in many cases, maybe most cases, this is a matter of deception. This is a matter of satanic deception to the women who agree to give their children over to murderers, without even knowing their children or at least suppressing that truth in unrighteousness.

And this awful butchery has been brought upon us, as I said, primarily through the Supreme Court of the United States of America—a place where, if any place, justice is to be found, it is to be found there. And yet it is not. Not.

So it is analogous to this, and we do hope for the same sorts of judgments upon unrepentant Herods of our day and age as God brought upon the Herod who slaughtered the innocents. Of course, it’s a long story in the Bible—the two-seed warfare going back to the proto-evangelium in Genesis, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Pharaoh tried to kill off, of course, the children of God, ordering the midwives to drown them and to kill them. And so there was always this demonic attack upon children.

The picture of our worship is the Mount of Transfiguration, right? Three disciples go up with Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguration. They behold the glory of Christ. We see the glory of Christ in our worship at the mountaintop. Heaven and earth meet, and we want to stay there. But God says no. The whole point of this wonderful mountain experience, worship, is to take these truths down below, to the mountain below. And what do they have to go down and do? The immediate incident they have to attend to is a demon-possessed child—a child attacked by demons and its father wanting relief.

And so the Lord Jesus Christ in a summary sort of way, a symbolic way, says that our purpose is to go down into this world as we leave this place and to be agents of transformation of the new kingdom. And that means one of the primary things that we do is prevent the attack of demons upon children. And we can make application of that to the public school systems of our day and age, and we can make very direct application to abortion.

Now, if we can’t get churches to agree to services of malediction, to ask God’s judgment upon abortionists, and if we can’t get evangelical churches to agree that abortion is a great evil that should be fought, then there’s probably not a whole lot of hope for the next step, which is to talk about the attack on children in the public schools. And this is an area that will become more and more intense, by the way, over the next year or so.

I warned you that the Oregon legislature would probably attack the ability of parents to teach their children—Christian children. And I don’t know if bills have been introduced yet, but I heard on the radio that indeed this last week several media outlets are featuring stories on homeschoolers and why aren’t they held accountable, and they’re doing a lousy job. And so the proposal has been put forward—a serious proposal from one educator—that the state of Oregon pass a law requiring homeschoolers to present their curriculum to the local school district for approval before they can teach their children.

This is what it is. This is the heart of rebellion. This is the heart of demonically possessed rulers who strike out against Christian children specifically, just like Pharaoh did.

Additionally, in terms of abortion, the battle will get, I think, tougher this next year. Apparently—I didn’t read all the details—but Rick Scarborough, who will be one of the speakers at David Crow’s Restore America conference in February. By the way, my friend Steve Samson at Lynchburg at Jerry Falwell University, where he chairs the government department, sent me a notice about that conference. I told him I was already registered, but he’s actually may get permission from his boss to fly out here to cover the conference. I mean, it has national significance, this particular conference. So I’d urge you to register for it and try to make some parts of it.

But one of the speakers has apparently uncovered a story that Clinton and Carter will cooperate in this next year, trying to convince evangelicals of several issues—that it’s a Christian thing not to, or to give women the idea of choice in aborting their babies. So the attempt will be made on the part of the liberals in our culture to blur evangelical truth in the scriptures and to say that evangelicals don’t all oppose abortion. Well, the Bible’s quite clear that abortion is sin and murder. And it’s going to be more difficult to bring the churches together to combat it, I think, once this deception is promulgated in the next year or two leading up to the next election.

So it’s a very important task that we do today. We come together to work. And it’s the Sabbath known for rest. But we have a liturgy, right? Liturgy means service or work. The work of the church is special on the Lord’s day. It’s like commerce. We abstain from normal commerce to enter into this engagement where God gives us gifts based totally on his grace to us—things that we can buy but without price on our part. And in the same way, we have work on the Lord’s day. Our work today specifically is to pray that God bring his temporal judgments upon unjust judges specifically. And that’s what we’re going to attend to today.

I’ve got some very simple truths listed on your outline, taken primarily from this text about David’s last words. But one more motivation for you before we get into this particular outline. One of the texts that I came across in my original study on the fear of the Lord a couple of weeks ago is Exodus 1:17-22. This is where the Pharaoh is trying to kill off God’s children—that seed. And the midwives, you know, don’t cooperate with the plan. They disobey the Pharaoh’s orders, and they actually lie to him and deceive him about their disobedience. And the midwives are blessed for that.

Now, the motivation for the midwives in trying to save the generation of the godly Hebrew children is told to us in verse 17: “But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them.”

I’m going to talk about how it’s necessary for rulers to have the fear of God. But I want you to understand that if you properly fear God, then you will engage in regular prayers—whatever actions your time permits—to try to work against this horrible butchery. The midwives feared God, and they wouldn’t go along with the Pharaoh on his attack on the seed, and neither should we, either you know explicitly or have complicit motivations as well.

So may the fear of God motivate us today to understand the relationship of the fear of God for civil rulers and to seek such rulers in our day and age.

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## Point One: Fearing God is a Basic Requirement of Rulers

You heard it right there, didn’t you? In David’s last words. As I said, last words are quite important. And really, you know, if you look at the last words, verses 1 through 4—no, verses 1 through 3. The first part of verse 3 are just an introduction to what he’s going to say. These are the last words. He describes who he is: man raised up on high, anointed of the God of God, the sweet psalmist of Israel. By the way, notice the connection there again. The Holy Spirit singing sweet psalms. And yet he’s going to talk about how ungodly people will be burned to death at the end of these last words. So there’s no distinction in that.

We’re going to start singing a song this next month. It will be “Let My Name Engraved Stand,” which is by Isaac Watts and Joseph Foster. His work for the church has produced a handout, the first part of which I think is in the literature rack today. If not, it’ll be there next week. And he talks a little bit about Isaac Watts. Isaac Watts was sort of a modern Christian, and we appreciate Isaac Watts’ work greatly. You know, when we discover Isaac Watts, we feel like we’ve rediscovered something from the past. That’s good. And that’s half true.

But Isaac Watts also was the beginning of a whole series of declensions away from the Psalter and toward paraphrases and translations of it that left out all the imprecatory sections. For instance, in modern day times, the church that uses lectionary readings—many churches do—those lectionaries have been stripped of all the language of the Psalms that call for God’s particular judgment upon the ungodly, such as Psalm 83. These Psalms are just simply not dealt with anymore. Psalm 10 is either greatly reduced or not dealt with, etc. Watts was one of those kinds of guys. His paraphrase of the Old Testament Psalms left out all that judgment stuff. And then toward the end of his life, he apparently even became—maybe got very shaky, at least—on the notion of the Trinity. That’s what happens when you start messing with God’s word.

May it be a warning to us. May we fear God.

This sweet psalmist, David, had no problem. In that sweet Psalm, talking about the fear of God and the burning up of the unrighteous. So by way of introduction, the first two and a half verses—that’s all they are. He says that God’s word is on my tongue. The God of Israel said, the rock of Israel spoke to me. So what he’s going to tell us here is, in a way, the summation of everything that he’s written—right? Summation of the Psalter. We could say, at least of this last word.

This is what he says. This is the last word: “He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.” And then he describes what happens to a guy who’s like this. He’s great. He’s like “the light of the morning when the sun rises.” Verse 4. And then he talks about how bad it is when the sons of rebellion rule instead. Verses 6 and 7 are probably aimed not at the general population but at wicked kings. You know, he’s comparing himself to these unjust people, and they’re going to be burned up.

So in one sense, the last words of David is this qualification: to be a good ruler, to be a godly ruler, you must rule in the fear of God. And that’s what justice is all about. That’s the basic requirement.

We could say that the basic requirement is this: And yet, how often, when was the last time you heard judges or candidates for office being evaluated, being asked, “How’s your fear of God?” How often do you hear it about yourself? How often do you think of it yourself? How often do you think of it as others? And yet it’s the essential qualification. The essential qualification is to be a God-fearer, a fear of God.

Now this isn’t the only place where we’re told this. For instance, Nehemiah 5:14-16. Nehemiah is talking about himself as opposed to the false rulers, and he says: “The former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people, took from them bread and wine and every kind of profit. Yes, even their servants bore rule over the people. But I did not do so because of the fear of God.”

His motivation for being a godly governor is the single qualification that David gives us. A summation of David’s words of the sweet psalmist is: rulers should be those who rule in the fear of God. Nehemiah applied it to himself as a ruler. He also applied it to those he would appoint. Nehemiah 7:1-3:

“Then it was, when the wall was built and I had hung the doors, when the gatekeepers, the singers, and the Levites had been appointed, that I gave the charge of Jerusalem to my brother Hanani and Hananiah, the leader of the citadel. For he was a faithful man and feared God more than many. I said to them, ‘Don’t let the gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot.’”

So Nehemiah’s selection of officers—his declaration of him being a good governor—is because he feared God. And his declaration of who it was that he chose for this essential task of guarding the city, of being a good governor in that sense, as well as under-governor, is the one who feared God more than other men. That means Nehemiah could look out over the congregation of the righteous and he could say, “Well, this guy, you know, I know he fears God more than this guy. These guys are all fearing God to some degree, but this guy fears God more.”

How would he know that? How would you know it? If you had to pick the officers of our church, could you think through the congregation and say, “Who fears God?” Or are we more, you know, given over to considerations of excellence in speech, knowledge of the scriptures? Knowledge of the scriptures is very important and indicates a fear of God. Preaching on the word faithfully indicates a fear of God. But you see, the underlying characteristic for governors and rulers is the fear of God.

Quite simply put, David says it. Nehemiah says it of himself. Nehemiah says those are the people that he appointed. Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Now, Proverbs is given to raise up rulers. It’s from a king to a prince, to make a king out of him. At the end, he’s become a king. That’s right. A guy’s a king. He’s got married a great wife. He listens to his wife and tells you what his wife says. That’s a good ruler. Well, how did he get there? Well, Proverbs tells us that the fear of the Lord is the very first part of knowledge or wisdom.

Now this isn’t some kind of abstract truth. This is given to train rulers. We’re talking about training, having succession. How do we train the next group of men to be deacons and officers, elders at RCC? Well, it seems like part of that evaluation and training must be the fear of God, right? This is what is the beginning of the whole thing. And what is the fear of the Lord? Fools despise wisdom and instruction. The fear of God is not some kind of abstract thing. You can tell whose fear is God because they receive, you know, instruction and wisdom from God’s word. So that’s a characteristic.

It’s put in parallel. Proverbs 9:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

Fear of God is equated there with knowledge of the Holy One—to know Him, and to know that when we offend Him, He’ll bring temporal judgments upon us. A fear of God requires a hatred of evil. Proverbs 8:13: “The fear of the Lord, [He’s] going to tell us here what it is. What’s the definition? What’s the fear of the Lord? The fear of the Lord is, so we got an equal sign here, to hate evil.”

That’s the fear of the Lord according to this particular verse. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Civil rulers must hate evil in the context of their realm. They can’t be ambivalent to it. Can’t be neutral to it. They have to hate evil. And then it goes on to tell us what sort of evil particularly it means: “Pride, and arrogance, and the evil way, and the perverse mouth.”

I hate evil. And specifically here he says, “Pride, arrogance, and a froward mouth”—a mouth that doesn’t speak peaceable things, but you know, contentious things of people. Pride and arrogance. That’s the opposite of the fear of God. The fear of God is humility. And in that humility, it’s to hate evil, including the evil in ourselves, the pride in ourselves that wells up in our hearts. It’s seen in humility.

This is shown again in Proverbs 15:33: “The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom, and before honor is humility.”

You know, a ruler is one of the first sections in honor in life. Fear of the Lord is a basic requirement of rulers because in their exalted state—and yes, they are exalted. They should sit on thrones. They should—you should be fearful of being contemptuous toward authorities. I think that contumacy or contempt charges for judges is a proper penalty. That I think that to throw somebody in jail for a long time for being contemptuous of a judge is a good thing. This is an issue in the Christian subculture here in Oregon a few years ago. Some Christian man was thrown into jail for being contemptuous.

Well, you know what the Bible says? Even worse, if you’re contemptuous of the judge, in Deuteronomy 17, you’re supposed to be killed. You’re supposed to be executed. No, it doesn’t mean just snide look. It means hard-hearted rebellion against the judge. Why? Because judges and rulers represent God, even the fallen ones.

Now, because of that, they are tempted to pride in a special way that you and I aren’t. When they bear rule in the state, when they’re on the United States Supreme Court, they’re one of the most important and powerful judges in the whole world. They are tempted to pride, and it’s not too hard to see that temptation is given into by some. One of the justices that’s most prone to quote foreign law instead of our constitution in his decisions has every appearance to me of one of the most prideful men I’ve ever seen in my life. Opposite of what he is required to have before God. And this is a justice that maintains abortion on demand in this country. May God bring temporal curses. May he bring judgments. May he bring fear to the man’s mind and heart, to bring him humble again, and make him fit for the office that he’s been granted by God, or remove him out of that office.

That’s what we’re praying today because it’s horrible when a ruler’s heart is lifted up and prideful. He’s the opposite of the fear of the Lord, and he is then cursed to his people.

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## Point Two: The Presence of the Fear of God in Rulers Moves Their Subjects to a Proper Fear of God

So there’s a transmission factor going on here. If the ruler properly fears God, then what happens is his subjects fear God, among other reasons, because he brings God’s temporal judgments. In Romans 13, we’re supposed to fear the magistrate. He bears the sword. He can lop your head off. It’s supposed to be an indication of the fear of God. And if he’s fearing God, he’s going to lop your head off for the right reasons, okay? And so he transmits the fear of God to his subordinates.

It’s an interesting story, and we can’t get into the whole thing, but to read the life of Jehoshaphat, son of Asa, the king of the south in 2 Chronicles 19—right, just before this—Jehoshaphat is in an unholy alliance with Ahab, who is a complete apostate. He’s the king of the north. Jehoshaphat is king of the south. And Jehoshaphat, while you know, is a good guy in some ways—he’s a compromiser with evil. He doesn’t hate evil. And so he’s got some problems. And in chapter 18, Jehoshaphat correctly wants the prophet to come and tell him what’s going to happen. And the prophet predicts Ahab’s death. Ahab tries to disguise himself in battle, and you know the story. An arrow shot at random—the sovereignty of God directs that arrow right in there to where it has to go to kill Ahab.

And this is the chapter after that. Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, returned safely to his house in Jerusalem. And Jehu, the son of Hanani, the seer, went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Therefore, the wrath of the Lord is upon you. Nevertheless, good things are found in you, in that you have removed the wooden images from the land and have prepared your heart to seek God.”

So the prophet gives him the message that the wrath of God is on him. Well, what is he trying to do? He’s trying to move Jehoshaphat to the fear of God. What happens? Verse 4: “Jehoshaphat dwelt at Jerusalem. He went out again among the people from Beersheba to the mountain of Ephraim and brought them back to the Lord God of their fathers.”

So the first thing he does in relationship to this wrath of God being out and the renewed fear of God coming to him is he brings back Israel or Judah to the Lord God of their fathers. How does he do it? “He set judges in the land throughout all the fortified cities of Judah, city by city, and said to the judges, ‘Take heed to what you are doing, for you do not judge for man but for the Lord who is with you in the judgment. Now therefore, let the fear of the Lord be upon you.’”

Jehoshaphat was moved to the fear of the Lord by the words of the prophet and the wrath of God coming upon him for compromise. He then transmits that fear of the Lord down to his requirement for the under-judges that will judge under him. Indeed, he goes on in verse 8: “Moreover, in Jerusalem, for the judgment of the Lord and for controversies, Jehoshaphat appointed some of the Levites and priests and some of the chief fathers of Israel when they returned to Jerusalem. And he commanded them, saying, ‘Thus you shall act in the fear of the Lord, faithfully, and with a loyal heart.’”

So you see, Jehoshaphat heard the message. The fear of the Lord returned to him, and as a result his kingdom then had rulers set up—the church and the state, we would say—and both of those rulers were instructed by Jehoshaphat to rule in the fear of God.

So the fear of God in primary magistrates moves down to secondary magistrates and moves down to the people as well. You remember last week the spirit-filled Saul in 1 Samuel 11:5? You know, just an amazing account that I just hope we pass on to our children over and over again. Saul, a humble king at this point. He’s out plowing. He’s not lording it over people. The spirit of God rushes upon Saul when he heard that the Israelites wouldn’t go out to battle against the enemies of God. The spirit of God comes upon him, and he gets very mad. His anger was greatly kindled. All anger is not wrong. There’s a spirit-filled anger happening here.

He takes a yoke of oxen, cuts them in pieces, and sends them throughout the territory of Israel by the hands of messengers, saying, “Whoever does not go out with Saul and Samuel to battle, so it shall be done to his oxen.” And the fear of the Lord fell on the people. They came out with one consent.

So the governor here, the king, sends forth the fear of God is upon him. The spirit empowers him to then cause his people to fear God as well. If we don’t have fear of God, or if we do have the fear of God, in the rulers in the country, in the judges of the country, that’s transmitted down to the people.

As we said last week, Proverbs 16:6: “In mercy and truth atonement is provided for iniquity, and by the fear of the Lord one departs from evil.”

So to produce sanctification in the land requires the fear of the Lord, and the civil magistrate should bring an understanding of that fear and the judgments of God upon his subjects so that they might fear God and walk sanctified.

Proverbs 23:17: “Do not let your heart envy sinners, but be zealous for the fear of the Lord all the day.”

So sanctification—the key to is—a fear of God. And so if the ruler fears God, his under-officers will fear God, and then beyond that, the people will also learn to fear God. And the whole country will move in a positive direction.

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## Point Three: The Presence of the Fear of God in Rulers Yields Blessings from God

And this is what we have here in this Psalm, right? David says—or I’m sorry, in 2 Samuel, our verse. “He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And what’s the result? ‘He shall be like the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds, like the tender grass springing up out of the earth by clear shining after rain.’”

So David says that the result of the fear of God and rulers is great blessing to the land. The fear of God is the basic requirement. It’s transmitted to the people, and the end result of the fear of God permeating a group of people, a country, a nation, a state, a city, is sanctification, and with that, great blessings—great blessings from God.

2 Chronicles 14:9-13. I won’t turn there. I won’t read that. But there are various texts—again in 2 Chronicles 17:10—that relate the fear of the Lord to victory in battle. 17:10: “The fear of the Lord fell on all the kingdoms of the lands that were around Judah. They did not make war against Jehoshaphat.”

So the fear of the Lord internal to Israel or Judah produces, or creates, blessings around it, because the fear of God actually then spreads out to people who see a country being blessed by God and being given victory in battle, and the fear of God moves out over the whole world. So the fear of God in judges and rulers is really the beginning, in a sense, of the fear of God moving out over the entire created order, and it’s a key to victory. And victory is one of the great blessings of God.

So the fear of God brings the presence of great blessings.

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## Point Four: Its Absence is Synonymous with Injustice

Its absence, David says, is synonymous with injustice. So the parallelism here in this verse that we just read—the whole message of David’s last words—is: “He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.”

And so he defines justice as ruling in the fear of God. There’s no justice really apart from the fear of God. And so the absence of the fear of God means unjust rulers in the context of a people.

Psalm 36, verse 1: “An oracle within my heart concerning the transgression of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes.”

So wickedness, the doing of injustice, is equated then with the absence of the fear of God. So when we pray that God brings fear upon the rulers of the country, if God doesn’t answer that prayer, if they remain without the fear of God upon them, then we have injustice reigning from the very heights of our country. And that’s what we have now.

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## Point Five: Its Absence Increases Evil in the Land

So you have the absence that increases evil. This presence drives sanctification and more fear of the Lord. Its absence increases evil in the context of the land.

Turn to Psalm 10, if you will. And I’ve got an outline here, but turn in your scriptures to Psalm 10. And before I read that, let me read this text from Genesis 20:11. This is Abraham, and he’s talking to Abimelech about why he deceived him about Sarah—or supposedly deceived him, saying Sarah’s his sister. But Sarah really is his sister. So in any event, Abimelech says, “Why’d you do this?” And Abraham says in verse 11: “As I thought, surely the fear of God is not in this place, and they will kill me on account of my wife.”

So Abraham knew that if there’s no fear of God in the rulers, injustice will reign in the context of the land. Why is that? Well, because they’re not going to punish evildoers. And when evildoers aren’t punished, that’s when they increase.

Psalm 10: “Why do you stand afar off, O Lord? Why do you hide in times of trouble? The wicked in his pride persecutes the poor. Let them be caught in the plots which they have devised. The wicked boasts of his heart’s desire. He blesses the greedy and renounces the Lord. The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God. God is in none of his thoughts.”

So the idea is that wickedness results from a mindset that isn’t thinking about God. If the civil ruler doesn’t bring thoughts of God, and specifically the fear of God, to subjects, then the subjects won’t have the fear of God in their thoughts. He’ll be irrelevant. And the end result of not having God in our thoughts is this sort of injustice that’s being talked about in Psalm 10.

“His ways are always prospering. Your judgments are far above out of his sight.” You know, if God’s judgments are not transmitted by the civil ruler to the subjects, God’s judgments are seen as way out of sight. And as a result, the population, the subjects of the king, abound in evil.

So its absence leads to lack of fear of God in the subjects, and a result of that is evil, wickedness, and injustice.

“As for all his enemies, he sneers at them. He has said in his heart, ‘I shall not be moved. I shall never be in adversity.’” You see, it’s his belief that temporal judgments won’t come upon him, that he won’t be caught. And if he is caught, he won’t be punished enough to make him fear God or the civil magistrate. That’s what drives him in his sin.

“As a result, his mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppression. Under his tongue is trouble and iniquity. He sits in the lurking places of the villages and in the secret places he murders the innocent.”

So that’s what we have going on today. We’ve got doctors murdering the innocent because there’s no fear of God put on them, because the civil governor won’t bring justice but lets injustice flourish. And as the result, doctors are more prone to do these kinds of sins against the innocent—not innocent in an ultimate sense, innocent judicially, having no capital punishment upon them.

By the way, one thing: if we understand the significance of the Christian faith to this world, if we get rid of this horrible heresy that says Christianity has significance for eternity but not now, what are we going to do to fight abortion? Not much. Particularly if we think that those children are all going to go to heaven because they’ve died in innocency. Now, they may all go to heaven, but the cure to that source of laziness on our part is to remember the emphasis that the scriptures place here and now. It is a horrible thing for a life to be cut off in its youth. Even if that child goes to heaven—yeah, it’s better for him to be with the presence of God—but this life has significance. Great significance.

We could talk a lot about that. But the point is this: life has significance. And when the innocent are cut off before they’re even born, that is a horrible injustice because God wants us to focus primarily on what’s going on on earth. He wants a heavenly perspective brought here, and He wants it—for us to think there’s great significance to people being murdered. It’s not a small thing. No, it’s not an easier way to get to heaven.

“This man sits in the lurking places of the villages and in the secret places. He murders the innocent. His eyes are secretly fixed on the helpless. They are helpless. He lies and waits secretly as a lion in his den. He lies in wait to catch the poor. He catches the poor when he draws them into his net. So he crouches. He lies low that the helpless may fall by his strength.”

And again, motivation: “Why? Verse 11: ‘He has said in his heart, God has forgotten. He hides his face. He will never see.’”

So when rulers don’t bring temporal judgments upon the ungodly, the fear of God diminishes in a people. And as the fear of God diminishes, crime increases. Crime increases. So the absence of the fear of God is brought—is equated to injustice. It creates more absence of the fear of God because the ruler won’t judge for Him, bring temporal judgments. And the result is growing injustice in the land.

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## Point Six: Its Absence Also Brings Judgment Upon the Rulers

In Psalm 10, we then have the prayer of the psalmist:

“Arise, O Lord. O God, lift up your hand. Do not forget the humble. Why do the wicked renounce God? He has said in his heart, ‘You will not require an account.’ But You have seen, for You observe trouble and grief to repay it by Your hand. The helpless commits himself to You. You are the helper of the fatherless. Break the arm of the wicked and the evil man. Seek out his wickedness until you find none.”

So God says that He will bring judgments against evil rulers. If He’s going to bring it against those that do injustice, He’s going to take it back home, so to speak, by the absence of the fear of God in civil rulers that created the situation, or at least created the temptation to the man.

Turn now to Psalm 82. And again, I’ve got some notes there from your outline.

Psalm 82 says: “God stands in the congregation of the mighty. He judges among the gods.”

Well, what does that mean? Well, “gods” are powerful ones. God is Elohim, the powerful God. And so a “god” is a strong one, yet refers to rulers or judges. And we know this from the next verse: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?”

But this is a Psalm specifically designed for the justices of the United States Supreme Court, Oregon Supreme Court, that will not bring justice for the murder of the unborn children.

“How long will you judge unjustly, you gods, you rulers? Show partiality to the wicked? Defend the poor and fatherless. Do justice to the afflicted and needy.”

This is the requirement of our judges. If they rule in the fear of God, they will defend the fatherless, the ones who have been given up, so to speak, to the abortionist by mother and father. “Do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy. Free them from the hand of the wicked.

“They do not know, nor do they understand. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are unstable.

“See, when judges don’t do what they’re supposed to do, the whole earth becomes unstable in its foundations. I said, ‘You are gods. All of you are children of the most high, but you shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.’”

So he says his judgment is going to come upon those godless judges who don’t rule for fear of Him and rule then to rescue the pre-born infants who are being murdered to the tune of over a million a year. So God’s judgments will come upon those who have the absence of this, and yet are in civil rule.

And the end result of these truths is that we are to pray then confidently and consistently for God’s temporal judgments. That’s what the psalmist does in Psalm 10, right? Well, first of all, in Psalm 82, what does it end with? It ends with a prayer. He describes the situation of unjust judges who are not ruling for the fear of God, or in the fear of God, creating, letting injustice and death go on in the context of his culture. He says judgments will come against those ungodly judges. And then he actually prays here in verse 8 that God would arise and kill these judges or transform them and convert them:

“Arise, O God, judge the earth, for You shall inherit all nations.”

This is our call. We’re change agents of the new order, the kingdom of God, the new creation. That’s our job: to bring light into the world. And the light says that such horrible sins should not go on in the new creation. It’s coming to an end. God is inheriting all the lands of the earth. He has inherited them. And the manifestation of his kingdom is what history is all about.

So we should pray as Psalm 82 says: “Arise, O God, judge the earth.” And specifically in context, judge those ungodly gods—judge those unjust judges who do not rule in the fear of God.

Psalm 10 said the same thing. Going back to Psalm 10, the psalmist says, “You have seen”—in verse 14—”You observe trouble and grief to repay it by Your hand.” They may not know it, but the fact is we know confidently that God sees it to repay it by His hand. So God will judge unjust judges and those who commit crimes.

And then verse 15: “On the basis of the sure knowledge that God will bring those judgments, we have the prayer: ‘Break the arm of the wicked and the evil man. Seek out his wickedness until you find none.’”

So the prayer is bring Your judgments upon rulers who won’t rule in the fear of God, and as a result we have great wickedness in the world and the foundations tremble. “Seek out his wickedness until you find none. Kill him or transform him. Get rid of the wickedness. This doesn’t belong in the new creation.

“The Lord is King forever and ever. The nations have perished out of His land.”

So he prays confidently. “Lord, You have heard the desire of the humble. You will prepare their heart. You will cause Your ear to hear, to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may oppress no more.”

So in Psalm 10 and in Psalm 82, it’s a confident prayer that God is indeed of a mind to judge unjust judges, to bring the fear of God to them, to change them, transform them like He did with Jehoshaphat, or to remove them out of the way so we can pray confidently.

We’re to take up the prayers of the psalmist that God brings his temporal judgments upon unjust judges in our day and age. We are to pray confidently, and we’re to pray consistently.

Consistently. There’s a movie coming out. I’ve seen the trailer. “Amazing Grace”—the story of Wilberforce. Wilberforce became a very committed Christian, I think, after he was elected, became a member of parliament. He began then to introduce, every time parliament met, a bill to eliminate slave trading in England. He did this for 18 years before they finally passed a bill. And it took another—I don’t know—10 or 15 years before they got rid of slavery in England.

Wilberforce was patient. He wasn’t a revolutionary. There was no civil war fought. He petitioned the government. He petitioned God to end the awfulness of slave trading, slave owning in England. And he did it confidently. He knew that’s what the—how the new creation works. He was part of a group of Christians who were applying, as we do, the word of God to the social structures of the country. They also had doing good on Sunday—a particular subset of their work dealing with the Lord’s Day. But Wilberforce, so long, consistently asked God and the Parliament to get rid of the evil of slave trading in England, and finally it happens.

John Newton, who wrote the song “Amazing Grace,” dies as an old man. He’s still preaching shortly before his death. He’s blind, so he’s kind of a favorite of mine—blind and still preaching. God postponed his death long enough. He died in December of the very year that all slavery—or that this bill was passed rather—getting rid of slave trading in England. Newton was of course a converted slave trader, became a Christian, was a profligate. He once was blind, now he sees. Was fear that taught my heart or grace that taught my heart to fear, and fear that grace that fear relieves. So he wrote that song, and God let him live long enough to see Wilberforce’s patient, consistent prayers to Him, and petitioning the government to be heard.

This is not unlike the story our Savior tells—the parable in Luke 18. He speaks a parable to them that men might always ought to pray and not lose heart. We’ve been doing this at RCC since 1983, or whenever it was we started. Pray and don’t lose heart.

He says: “There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God.” Well, again there are the Savior tells us: the basic qualification is unmet by this judge. He doesn’t fear God. As a result, nor does he regard man. That’s what happens. People that don’t fear God have no real concern or respect for His image bearer.

So Jesus says: “There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city. She came to him saying, ‘Get justice for me from my adversary.’ And he would not for a while. But afterward he said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.’”

And the Lord said: “Hear what the unjust judge—” you see, he does the same thing as David. He doesn’t fear God. He’s an unjust judge. Those are the two things that David pairs up in his last words.

“What does the unjust judge say? Hear what he said. And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night unto Him, though He bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? Will He find people praying consistently and confidently, for it has not yet been accomplished?”

He did in Wilberforce. Consistent, confident prayer and work toward the end that the evil of slave trading would be done away with. God says we’re that widow. And even the unjust judge who has no fear of God will eventually relent. And so much more God in heaven. He has His purposes for allowing these things to go on. We don’t know what they are. But God says we are to pray.

The whole point of the parable is to pray and don’t grow weary in that praying. Don’t get discouraged in that praying. Continue to petition God. He is just, and His judgments will fill the earth. That’s the confident prayer we can have as we come before the throne of God once more, asking Him to bring His particular judgments upon the judges in the United States Supreme Court and the Oregon Supreme Court, to the end that they might fear Him and change their judgments relative to abortion, or that they might be killed and removed out of the way, that just judges might replace them.

This isn’t just something we, you know, have an option of doing. This is what we’re required to do. I believe the scriptures tell us that this is what Lord’s day worship is about. We sang Psalm 149 at the beginning of the service. You know, it describes the worship of God and those who are honoring Him and praising Him in dance. But in that same section where it talks about the worship of God’s people, what did they have in their hands? A sharp two-edged sword to smite the ungodly nations of the earth, to bind their noblemen with bands of iron, to bring God’s judgment to bear in the context of worship.

This is our work today. This is the work we’re required to do. We pray and you will say Amen at a place in the liturgy.

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In my Deuteronomy class, it’s interesting that when God gives His law to Moses and the people hear it, they cry out to Moses: “Oh, please don’t make us go up. The voice is too terrifying. They’re filled with the fear of God.” And God then says that He heard the voice of the people and He said, “That’s okay. I understand it. That’s what I’m going to do.” It seems like a small thing. Did God know what they were saying before they said it? Can God read minds? Yeah, of course, God. He’s omniscient. He knows everything. But over and over again—there’s one small example—over and over again, it is the vocalization of our prayers, the vocalization of our concerns, our fears, our desires that God hears and responds to.

How important is it to you? Do you just think about the unfearing judges of our day and the awful sins that are promulgated in the context of our country? Or do you speak forth words to God on a regular basis? “Please, Lord God, bring judgment upon these unjust rulers. Replace them. Lord God, bring judgment against the pastors who will not speak out against abortion.” And there will be more of those in the days to come. I’m sure of it, because of the movement of this country. And particularly, bring, Lord God, Your temporal judgments upon the Supreme Courts in our state and upon our nation.

It ultimately—the blood of what now 40 million or more slaughtered innocents. Their blood is at the feet of the United States Supreme Court and the Oregon Supreme Court that affirms this same truth. Let us ask God to bring His judgments upon them.

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Lord God, we thank you for bringing us together in this place. We thank you, Father, for showing us that the new creation has nothing in it of this sort of thing. We pray, Lord God, that you would send us forth as agents of that kingdom into this world. Bring your temporal judgments, Father, upon the empires, the rulers, and the kings who do not rule for you. Bring your fear upon them, Father, that they might increase the fear of you properly in the land and bring justice once more to our land.

Lord God, we do mourn with this land over the awful slaughter of the innocents, the babies that have been killed in the womb. And we ask, Father, particularly now, for your temporal judgments to strike out against the members of the Supreme Court in our state and nation, who do not fear you, who will not protect the unborn, and who allow this horrible injustice to continue. You bring your judgment against them, Lord God. Cause them to fear you. Cause them to repent and change their ways, or remove them off the face of the earth, that injustice may be starched. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.