For The Judgment Is God’s #2

So there are a number of us not here this morning due to sickness. My wife told me that everybody in the church was sick. And there's some truth of that in our house, as I imagine there is in many of your houses. And so I'm glad that you're here and look forward to spending this time with you. One thing I did want to do before I started my sermon was to thank those who were involved in the setting up of the chairs in here. We really like them. They look nice. So thank you, men. For that, the Lord's been very good to us. This last week, you probably noticed the windows are replaced around the building. We're going to be getting some film to put on those so they're not clear. In the weeks to come, we're working on that with a contractor. But we're thankful for his provision and being able to replace our windows and replace our chairs and to get some new nicer stuff. So all I'd ask of you is to do two things. One, praise God along with us. And two, seek to take good care of it like you would in your own house.

It's one of the privileges of having a space of your own is that you get to make it your own. You get to take care of it. And what we want is for this place to be a house of God, a place where the worship of God is sustained for decades and decades to come. We want our children and our grandchildren to be here and say, I remember when. And we used to do this and these sorts of things. And so as you enjoy the good things that God's given to us, be sure to take care of them as well. This week we're going to be coming back to the passage we read last week.

In Deuteronomy chapter 1, verses 13 to 18, it's basically broken up into two sections. The first section being Moses' commissioning of a civil government for Israel. He tells the Israelites to choose by their tribes wise, discerning, and experienced men to be their judges, to settle the disputes that would arise among them. The tribes agreed that Moses' counsel was a good thing, and then they chose their judges, and Moses appointed them. This week, we're going to be moving away from Moses' commissioning of the government. to his charge given to those judges? What did he tell them their job was? That's what we're going to be focusing on this morning. Now, you might think for a minute, well, I don't know how applicable this is to me. I'm not really a judge. Or you might think, as I said last week, that the things we're talking about or that God lays out for us here are so far from attainable in our society as it currently is that there's really no application. And what I want you to see by the end of this morning is that's actually not the case.

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching so that we can be equipped for good works. And so the Scripture does have instructions for us in our lives. One of the things that you'll find is that what the judges are charged with is not an exclusive charge to them. It's not something that only applies to them, but actually applies to all of us. And so my hope this morning is that God will do two things. First, that he'll help us to long for rulers who will do their duty in light of God's law. that we actually ought to long for that. And secondly, that it'll help each one of us to avoid showing partiality in our lives, and especially when we're in positions of making judgments ourselves. Our text this morning is Deuteronomy 1, verses 13 to 18. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Excuse me. Choose wise and discerning and experienced men from your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads. You answered me and said,

The thing which you have said to do is good. So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and appointed them as heads over you, leaders of thousands and of hundreds, of fifties and of tens, and officers for your tribes. Then I charged your judges at that time, saying, Hear the cases between your fellow countrymen, and judge righteously between a man and his fellow countrymen, or the alien who is with him. You shall not show partiality in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not fear man, for the judgment is God's. The case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it. I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I want to reiterate a point that I touched on last week that I want to tease out a little bit more this morning, and that is that the tribes were given the work of picking and choosing their judges.

And last week I mentioned that if we thought that those judgments or those choices would have been unanimous, that everyone would have looked and said, we all agree together. No disagreements. It's as if everyone ran for the position uncontested. If we were to think that that's what happened here, we would be wrong. Inevitably, there were divisions or disagreements or a process of selecting these judges. And that once they were selected, They were installed, and even though they had voted, some of them, against the appointment of a particular judge, it was now incumbent upon them to obey them, to submit to them, and to follow them. And so the first lesson here is for us. You will, in your life, often have people telling you to do things that you don't particularly agree with.

In fact, I think it's hard to say that we could find anybody who we would always agree with what they have to tell us to do. It's almost as if the problem is being told what to do is the real issue. And that if anyone would rise up to the level of telling us to do something, our natural response is to say, no, you can't tell me to do that. And we'll have our reasons. But God's not set the world up in such a way that every man ought to do what's right in his own eyes. He set the world up, and particularly his church and his people and government. He set it up in such a way that there would be a hierarchy and that we as his people ought to be conscientious in our observance of what God has made. We could look at a different area of life and we could say, oh, well, God's made these things and we ought to respect them and take care of them. We might do things that we're not personally...

inclined toward for the good of someone else. Maybe we don't throw our trash out the windows of our cars. Maybe we pick up the trash that other people have thrown out and we think, this isn't my mess and I didn't do this and I really don't care that much. But we have this thing about people who would litter and we'd say, they're not good people. They ought to follow the rules. Well, why don't they follow the rules? Well, because they don't want to. It shouldn't be said of Christians that they don't follow the rules because they don't want to. It should be understood by Christians that they know they won't want to follow the rules and that their agreement with the rule, is not the foundation by which whether or not they obey or not. You're going to have many times in your life people tell you things that you don't like, that you don't agree with. You're going to not get your way. And it's important as a Christian that in those moments, you demonstrate your faith in Jesus Christ by following and by submitting and by obeying. Now, I can hear the rebuttal, the objection. Well, you're saying that we should always and in every situation without any...

Any cautions or any caveats. You're just going to tell us that we're supposed to... What I'm saying is, before we get to exceptions, I want the rule established. And I'm not willing to move on past the rule until we've established the rule. Okay? You would understand this in your homes with your children. The kids are like, well, but dad, no, see, dad, you don't understand. Mom doesn't know what she's talking about. Like, what's a parent to do when a child thinks that way? They're to say, well, Dan's sitting here going, the dad eyes. Like, eyebrows halfway up your forehead. big wide open eyes looking at him and saying, you're done. You're done. And that doesn't mean that the husband thinks his wife is always right or that she's even made the right decision in this moment. What he understands is that there is something more fundamental at being attacked right now and that needs to be protected because if he allows that to be eroded, all hell will break loose. Your kids understand that really well, don't they? Of course they don't. Of course they don't. You spend all of your raising of your children trying to teach them that they ought to honor.

Authorities and decisions that they don't agree with. And that it's not actually their place to be the world's critic. And so that's the first lesson here that we talked about a little bit last week that I wanted to key in on. And I want you to understand that this is very important because if you don't have a people who will go along with this, you will have anarchy. That is the only other option. Everyone doing what's right in their own eyes and living as a law unto themselves will cause chaos. We need structure put on us. Does the structure always do the right thing? No. To the extent that you're a leader, do you always do the right thing? Do you always make the right decisions? Do you ever screw up? No, I don't always make the right decisions. Yes, I'm screwing it up. Okay, does that mean that the role is bad to have, that we should do away with it? No.

we would end up with far more trouble without it. And so my point was simply to establish the goodness, the goodness of the structure. And whether we agree with it really doesn't matter. It doesn't rise to the level of being able to cast it off. Now, what is the one thing that Moses tells the people, or charges them with? There's really just one thing, and then there's a caveat. What he tells them is, you're not to show partiality. That's really it. He says, hear the cases between your fellow countrymen and judge righteously between the countrymen if there's two of them or even an alien who's with them. You shall not show partiality in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. That really is the main thrust of their work. You're not to show partiality. Justice can only prevail where there's no partiality. You can't have justice with partiality.

with favoritism. You can't have righteousness if you play favorites. You simply cannot have it. Moses explains to them that they're supposed to be equitable. They're to show no partiality, not just between countrymen, but also the alien who's with them. Now, a word about the alien who's with them. Does that mean that anyone who comes into the land, that if some invading force came in, committed a crime or was involved in a dispute that you ought to treat them as though they're the same. No, that's not actually what this word alien here means. It doesn't mean everybody, everywhere, all exactly the same. It means people who are not part of the nation but who've come into the nation and who are now a part of it. Coming in, receiving the sign of circumcision, agreeing and submitting themselves to the laws and the customs of the Israelites. These are the aliens. And they ought to be treated...

With respect. You can understand why Moses has to say this. Because we don't naturally look upon that type of thing with favor. We don't say, that's a good thing. This is just immigration and just sort of a drive-by or 30,000 foot view. The alien who comes in. The one who has legal standing. Not the oppressor. Not the troublemaker. Not the bad guy. But someone who's come in. We all do prefer, if we're honest, we'll all admit that we have preferences in who we'd like to be around and who we think should win. If we were to talk about this in terms of sports, is there any of us who actually would watch any sporting game with no preference as to who would win? The whole point of it is to have a preference. The whole point of it is to prefer a team and to want them to overcome. So what happens when the refs throw the flag or they blow their whistle?

Well, really the function of how we respond is just a matter of whether they threw the flag or blew the whistle on our team or on the other team. And we think it's a good thing. And so partiality is something that we are surrounded by and are given to. If you're a parent, do you prefer one of your children over another? Are some of them easier to get along with, though? Probably the ones that are less like you. Ben's back there going, probably. He doesn't have kids yet. Yeah. Some of your kids are just going to drive you nuts more than other kids. And so as a parent, is there any application to you from this passage? Oh, yeah. Not to show partiality. What does Lady Justice wear on her eyes? A blindfold. Why? Why does Lady Justice have a blindfold on her eyes? Because she knows that if she looks, we know that if the judge looks, there will be an inclination.

You don't have to try to do it. You don't have to try to do it. Partiality is so ingrained into us that we have to work conscientiously against it. And so this is the one instruction that's given to the judges. You shall not show partiality. You shall hear the small and the great alike. Now, what is small and great? Well, which would generally be preferred if you were a judge? It's not hard for us to figure out, right? Like we could ask our kids these questions in devotions and they'd be like, the great one. You can see it with your kids. If your older kid gets in a fight with the younger kid, all the rest of the kids are going to take whose side? Is this a mystery to you guys? They take the older kid's side. Why do they take the older kid's side? Because they think the older kid's cool, because they want the older kid to be nice to them, because they want to be running with the cool kid. And so they just choose the big kid. And the little kid's left like, but that's not fair. That's not what happened. And so partiality is something that's all around us.

The fact that someone is poor or weak or young does not mean they should be at a disadvantage in the case. The wealthy or the influential or the loud should not be given preferential treatment. The great are to be subject to the same judgment as the small. We live in a time where this is a long way from what reality is. We can look at it and say, well, that's a nice idea. But it's not what goes on in our lives. And so instead of desiring what God has said, oftentimes what we do is we say, well, then if that's the way things work, that influence and preference flows toward the wealthy, the loud, the powerful, then I need to what? I need to become the wealthy, the loud, the influential. I need to gain preferential treatment. Does that further the cause of justice?

obstruct the cause of justice. It obstructs the cause of justice. Because you've agreed to a broken system and to play by the broken rules. All in the hope that you'll end up being the one who wins and comes out on top. And you know what's behind that thought? Is that you'll do better than somebody else. And so preferential treatment is one of the primary derailers of justice. It has to be met head on and it has to be resisted. or it will carry the day. Our first priority and most important thing should be when we have to involve ourselves in some sort of judgments. In whatever case, we find ourselves to be involved in it, we should say, listen, we're not going to show preferential treatment here. You do realize there's no safe place from this, even in the church, this type of stuff goes on. James warns in the church against showing preferential treatment to who? The wealthy.

Oh, you, you, you come sit over here. You sit in the seat of honor while the poor man's left with no seat, with no care, with no provision. And so we really do have to work against showing partiality, playing favorites, lobbying, appealing to the court of public opinion as opposed to the halls of justice. And so it really is a hard work that these men are having to do. And adding to it, Moses said to them, You shall not fear man, for the judgment is God's. And so he adds fear to the situation, like fear is going to play a part in this. Do you ever get scared? Does fear ever dictate your decisions? Do you ever get really nervous and really upset and really worried and really, oh no, what ifs? And all of a sudden you're like, well, we have to do this and this and this because if I don't, I'm afraid this other thing will happen. It's almost as common as showing partiality.

That fear of what will happen if we do what's right or say what's right. And so Moses tells him, you shall not fear man. You realize that the work of judging, the work of settling disputes and dealing with conflict is a nasty hard work. And that no one really enjoys it. No one really looks at this and says, this will be great. It'll be wonderful. I will do it. Such a good job. He warns him and says, you're going to be tempted to show partiality and you're going to get threatened or you're going to be afraid. Have you ever had someone really angry at you? Threaten you? Maybe not threaten your life, but threaten you? Catch your attention and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I didn't want that. I was just trying to do what was right. We should read this passage as being instructive to us that when we get in the midst of conflict, we're not going to be popular and it's not going to be easy. And that we're going to feel pressures that we ought not to succumb to.

Being faithful as a judge here, or really being faithful in adjudicating any sort of conflict, means not fearing man. This is very important for us to internalize. Do you remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? There was this instance of fear being used toward them. They're supposed to worship the Nebuchadnezzar, and they're supposed to say, bow down and do the stuff. And they say, we're not going to do it. He says, you're going to do it. We're going to blow the horn again. We're going to light that fire. We're going to bring you right up to it. Then when you hear the horn, you're just going to worship. And they say, no, we're not. Excuse me. In Daniel 3, toward the end of that interaction, this is what they say. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego reply to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire. And he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. Which sounds sort of fantastic to us.

that they would go into a fire and be delivered from it, that they would have any hope of that. But then they deal with reality and they say, but even if he does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. So this is an example given to us in Scripture of men who are not afraid of the consequences of faithfulness. One of the things I can tell you and that I'm sure of is that those who don't fear men sleep better at night. And their life's a lot simpler. Because they're not trying to play politically and relationally all of these different angles and all of these burdens and trying to manage all of the lies and all of the back and forth. They just say, okay, this is what needs to be done, so this is what we're going to do. And the consequences, not that they want bad consequences to be the outcome of it or broken relationships or hardship or anger or any of that, but they say, this is what God would require of me, so this is what I'm going to do, and I'm going to trust God to sort out.

The details of the matter. Instead of trying to do that myself. Wouldn't life be simpler if when you had a conflict with a family member or with a sibling, you could just say honestly and clearly the thoughts on your mind and the feelings in your heart and then let God deal with the consequence of it all. You think, no, it wouldn't be easier. It'd be so much more messy. Everyone would get angry. There'd be a big old fight. My question is, how good are you at avoiding those fights the way you're doing it? It turns out we're not all that good at avoiding. We might be good at avoiding the people or the situations altogether. The conflict remains. And so we ought not to show partiality. We ought not to fear man. And then Moses says this thing, for the judgment is God's. The judgment belongs to God. I think there's a misconception about authority. And it's that when someone gets into authority, that because they've risen to the position of being in authority, that they're free now to do whatever they want because they're the authority.

So they no longer are under any constraints or expectations or requirements. They have the run of the place. And what Moses says is that's not the case, that the judgment that they're supposed to execute, the things that they're supposed to say belongs to God. The judges were not supposed to judge according to their own whims or impulses, but rather according to God's law. Their job was to do what God said, not what they personally thought. Have you ever had this conflict? Where you think God says I should fill in the blank. And you find in yourself the honesty to say, but I don't want to. These are the conflicts that we live in. This is what the judges are going to have to deal with. Their job in that moment is not to do what they think is right. Their job is not to get in and play God. And I think a lot of the deterioration of our society has simply been...

The pride of men rising up and us thinking, we know better than God how to govern a society. We can make better laws. We can make better consequences. We can make better priorities. That's what we're about. We have more wisdom than God does. And on its head, that's patently wrong. We don't know more than God does. We're not smarter than he is. We don't know what's good for one another better than he does. He told us that we ought to love our neighbors, and one of the most basic ways we can love our neighbors is by obeying his law. But we spend our lives saying, but if I did that, that would cause all kinds of problems. They would never speak to me again. They'd storm out of the room, and it would ruin the holiday. The judge's job was to do what God said, not what they personally thought, meaning they were not supposed to.

succumb to the pressures that they felt. We've all felt pressures to be quiet, to speak, to affirm, to do whatever it is going on. And as Christians, we're like, oh, this is that time where I'm supposed to be quiet. This is that place where I'm not supposed to have an opinion. Before the holiday, they say, now make sure when you come, you don't talk about. Now maybe those pressures come from outside, but many times those pressures come from the inside. We really do think that we know better. I think a lot of times we just look at God's ways and we say, you know what, that doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And what I want to say to you is, if you think it doesn't work, whatever you've come up to replace it with will work less good. It will be more ineffective, and it will have a greater negative consequence. And so we ought to desire for things to work the way that God's told us they should work. That little statement right at the end of this.

where he says, I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do. That is his one little sentence that deals with the whole giving of the law. Because what's coming right after this is the story of them leaving the mountain. And so he says, I've told you everything that you're supposed to do. Their job was not to question it or to sit in judgment of it or to rebel against it, but to obey it. For that to happen, we have to leave aside this idea that we know better than God. In fact, we would do better. I think you'd be in a better place.

And a more honest and more consistent place. If you were able to point to the places in God's law or in Scripture that you struggle to agree with. This is not me saying, I think it's good for you to disagree or you should cultivate disagreement. This is me just trying to get you to be honest that you do disagree pretty regularly with what God has to say. And if we were to lay open our lives and say, what have you spent your time doing? And what have you spent your money on? And what have you spent your energies doing? All of the sins that are in there are a testimony that say, you know better than God because that's what you've been doing instead. So I'm just trying to get us to be honest and to say this conflict exists within us and what should we do about it? Should we just continue to suppress it, to lie about it, to act like it doesn't exist? No. I think we're better off to say, you know what? I think that that is a hard thing and I'm not sure that I like it.

Isn't that what the disciples said to Jesus when he was talking about divorce and remarriage? That's what he said to them. Well, who can bear such a thing? That doesn't make them right, but it makes them honest. And you're a lot closer to repentance if you're being honest than if you're committed to burying the honesty. I'd much rather sit in a counseling session or in a conversation with someone and have them just snarl at something I have to say, because at least then you know what they think. But if they just smile and go, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. I'm like, we haven't gotten down to the bottom yet. We haven't got any traction in this conversation or in this meeting. So the judgments belong to God, which means that in our lives, as with the judges here that are being charged, we're supposed to carry out the things that God says and to trust him with the consequences of it.

And just because we've risen to the point of being a husband or a father or a mother or a boss or an older sibling, we are not free of the obligations that God has placed on us. We have to put away our trust of ourselves where we should be trusting God. Many of you are young, and you kind of see problems, and they're in their infancy. They haven't really borne a lot of their fruit yet, good or bad. It's kind of a confusing time because you're not quite sure if what you're doing is right, wrong, or how right or how wrong. You haven't really seen the fruit of it yet. And you're not quite sure if it's all, you know, what you need to change, what you need to hold on to. I've heard a lot of parents say over the years something simple. This is just an example. Spanking doesn't work. Every parent who's had a kid feels like it. The more honest ones say it. They say it doesn't work. I've been trying and it doesn't work.

Okay, well, is what you're doing instead working? No, it's not working. So why is it that we can sit here and hear that and go, yeah, it's true. My approach to parenting is not bearing better fruit, but for some reason we're committed to it. We don't look at it and say, this doesn't work either. I think we should just do what God says. And by spanking, I don't simply mean corporal punishment. paddling a kid's bottom. I mean disciplining them, being involved with them, engaging with their hearts, having expectations, training them. It's way more than simply spanking their bottoms. In fact, many of the times it doesn't work is because it's only just spanking their bottom. But it's as though Christians have this thing dug in inside of them that says, I'm not going to do, if God's way doesn't work like that, if it doesn't produce what I want immediately, then I'm not going to do it.

I'm going to figure out a better way to do it. I'm a better thing to do. I've got another idea. Lots of people have ideas about how to raise kids, how to take care of them, how to train them up, what the priorities should be. I think life is a lot simpler as a father not done raising any kids. But having had more years of it than many of you, life's a lot simpler when you simply do what God says. You at least make that your aim. No parent here is going to say, yeah, I do it all right. Is that your aim, or do you actually just want to fight against what God says and say, no, no, no, we've got a better way to do it? If we're always interested in immediate results, we will subvert the rule of justice. It will not take place. It takes time. And so if we grow impatient with the judge, we will cause more harm than good. One of the things that's common to say among those who are in favor of God's law,

and would listen to this sermon and say, yeah, I think that God's law should be what we should be about in our society. There are common things that they will say. Things like, well, you need to do your duty. They just need to do their duty. They just need to do what they're told. They just need to do what God says, and they need to not worry about the consequences. It's an easy thing to say. It's a very hard thing to do. I'm not trying to make an excuse for the fear that judges face or for the partiality that they're inclined to show. I'm not trying to make an excuse for them succumbing to those pressures. But I am trying to argue and say, we should have some understanding for the difficulties that they face. And that that is quite important. It's as though we look at other authorities or people in these kinds of positions and we say, well, if you're not going to do what's right, then you just need to get out of the way and let somebody else get in there who will. And I'm left looking around like, show me the one who will. Like, don't put me in that position. I will not do much better. In fact, I may do worse.

Where is the one who will just do their duty? If their duty is a kamikaze mission, which is to get in there, do their work, and then die. That's what a kamikaze mission is. It's like, we know you're not coming home. If that's their work, then perhaps they can be faithful, but they will have a very short effectiveness. Am I saying that no one should ever do that? No, I'm not actually talking practically about political theory and how this all should be worked out. All I'm saying is, The work is hard. And the men are weak. And if you think that you or someone you know would just do so much better, I would like to buy you a mirror for Christmas. And I would like to stand you up in front of it, and I would like to show you, or have your spouse show you, all of the things in the mirror that resemble the judge that you despise.

We ought to be sure to remove the log from our own eyes before we pass judgment on others. In John chapter 8, Jesus walks into a situation where this woman who is caught in the act of adultery, and everybody wants to stone her. And they're about to do it, so Jesus is there, and they're testing him. They're bringing the case to him and saying, well, what do you think we should happen? And there's this back and forth, and it's very intense. And this woman's life hangs in the balance of it. This is what it says in John 8. It says, now in the law of Moses, this is them asking Jesus a question, now in the law of Moses, Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. What then do you say? They're saying this to testing him so that they might have grounds for accusing him. They're trying to get him to say, no, no, the law is wrong. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger he wrote on the ground. But when they persisted in asking him, he straightened up and said to them, he who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. Again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it,

They began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones. Now, why did Jesus, he didn't say much, but you understand he was not paying attention. Then he stood up and he said to them, let the one of you who would not also be guilty of death based on your behavior, let you be the one who throws the first stone because what you're doing is wrong. And it's showing an incredible amount of partiality toward this particular woman. And if we were to put you on the other end of this and prosecute you the way you're prosecuting her, you would be next in line to be stoned. And that is why no one threw a stone, because they all knew that they had done things worthy of death. That text is not our main text, and there's more to be said about that woman and whether she even was guilty of the thing that they were accusing her of. But Jesus' words there are instructive to us. He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. Be careful when it comes to politics about throwing stones.

Because in throwing the stone, you admit that you're not guilty of the stuff that the guy you're throwing the stone at. It would not be so careless in your treatment of other people. Again, my point is not to lower the standard and to say, well, since we all sin, there's really no standard and it doesn't matter anyway. Really, we're just left with the art of the possible. That's what politics is. It's just a means to getting as much of what we want as we can, so that's really all we should do. I'm not actually arguing pragmatically and in that direction. I'm just trying to get us to be humble enough to say that, you know what, we're not so different than the people we don't like in terms of our own sins and our own behaviors. And if they were laid open, if we had a public office where we had to stand up and we had to make decisions and we had to operate, we would come under the same scrutiny.

There's this article that came out this last week. It was finally published. It was a critique of postmillennialism. And probably only a handful of you even know what postmillennialism is. It's an end times view about how life on earth is going to proceed until Jesus comes back. Some people are postmillennial. Some people are amillennial. Those tend to be the two more common camps in our world. Anyway, this pastor, wrote this thing, and it's long, and it's thorough. And I read it probably six months ago, long before it was published. And it was helpful to me. And I thought, people will be persuaded. Like, this will be helpful. And what I found time and time again is that whenever somebody, like, the guy put in good hard work. It wasn't a drive-by article.

It takes a while to read. And you better read slowly because he uses big words. And he uses words from other languages in making his case biblically. And I just thought, well, this will be good. And what's been most discouraging to me is the response that's come to it where everyone's like, well, he just doesn't know what he's talking about. He's just wrong. He just doesn't understand. Because in my heart, I think that if we could just do it well enough, that somehow we could just hit a grand slam and it would just be unanswerable. that all of the objectors, all of the people who disagree would just be like, well, I guess he's right. And that never happens. It never happens. It's unreasonable to even desire it, but we do. Now, why do I bring that up? Well, it's just an example of what it's like to live in this world. You'll put a lot of time and energy into something. You'll make your case. You'll try to consider the...

Your opponent's views or what have you. And you'll think, oh, it'll all work out fine. And I just want to tell you, no, it won't. There will still be arguments. There will still be disagreements. There will still be pushback. And that's okay. And there's a temptation to want to check out of all of that and to just think, well, if I can just go into my own little world and get away from all of it, then everything will be better. And I'd say, that's not going to work either. One, you're not going to be very good at it. And two, no one else is going to leave you alone. So.

The work of being governed and governing is a hard work. And it's an ongoing work. It never stops. Bosses never stop having to deal with their employees. You would think, you get up on Monday morning, you go to work and you think, it's all going to be like this. And like on the way to work in the morning or maybe before you even leave the house, it's like the phone starts ringing or the email comes in and you're like, oh, this thing happened. That thing went wrong. This other thing's broken. This people are fighting. There's a disagreement. It's very difficult. to be involved with other people and to deal with each other's sins. And so we need the people appointed, sinners appointed, to adjudicate our messes. And we need to submit to them. If you were asked to be a judge in this case, I told you guys last week when our elders came forward for nomination originally, that all of them were just like, uh-uh, I don't want to do that. That's going to be really hard and painful. And I don't quite know what it will be, but the men I know who are already doing it seem to...

have some scars on their backs from it. So Moses says something very kind to these judges. He says, the case that's too hard for you, you shall bring to me and I'll hear it. Now, what is it that could make it too hard? Well, I'll tell you, if you think disagreements are just one side is all the way right and the other side is all the way wrong, that is never the case. Now, one side may be much more clearly trying to do the right thing than the other. But even the side that's making all the poor decisions, they still have a case to be made, and there are still offenses that they've absorbed that have been committed against them. And so trying to adjudicate all of that is actually quite difficult. What would you have done if two women had come in fighting over a baby and said, that's my baby, that's my baby? Would you have known what to do? I mean, we read it in Scripture, so if you're familiar with the story, you know how it ends, and you think, yeah, that's a smart guy right there.

Solomon knew what to do. Now, would you have known to do that? I don't know that I would have known to do that. I think I would have looked at it and been like, we're going to put the kid in foster care. We're just going to take the baby away from both of you because we can't figure out who's right and who's wrong, and we don't want the baby being harmed as a result. It seems reasonable. It's the best you could have come up with. And here comes Solomon. He says, okay, we'll just cut the baby in two. I wouldn't have thought of it. That's the kind of case.

that might be too hard for us. Now, Moses is willing to step in and to say, I'll help. Bring those cases to me. He's more experienced. He's older, more discerning, very wise, having spent time with the Lord himself up on the mountain. Bring those cases to me. Excuse me. And so this is a kindness that Moses gives to these judges, that while they stand in the seat of God are supposed to make judgments according to God's will, when it's too hard for them, when they're not sure what to do, when the pressures are too great, they can appeal to a higher court and say, we need help. We need help. I'll tell you, being the ones who are often watching those sorts of things happen and not being involved in those sorts of things, the public presentation of a conflict or a decision never tells the whole story. And most of the time, the most important or pressing issues in the decision are left out. Ones that would completely change the way you would see it if you only knew. Why don't you get told? Well, because you're not the judge and it's not your place to be told. The people you realize in this situation are not actually the judge. They're supposed to pick men to be the judge, which means the judges are going to deal with stuff that they don't deal with.

that they don't know about, that they don't understand. And so one of the things that's very important in difficult cases, or in cases simply where you may disagree with the judgment being made, you should always remember that there is more to the case than you are privy to. This is often what we say in church discipline cases, when people get upset and they say, why did you do that? Because they've talked to the person being disciplined. Why did you do that? You don't understand. That's not what they said. And they say, okay, do you trust us? And it seems like a weird question to ask.

In the midst of this, like, is what you did right? The question, do you trust us? Yeah, I trust you. Okay, then right now, you have to trust us. You don't have all the information. You don't know all the details. They're not yours to know. You need to trust us. There are cases that are too hard for some of the judges. Most cases are too hard for the people. And that actually, if they had all of the knowledge, it would be detrimental to them. To know all of the details. And so when someone says to you, there's more going on than you know, and you don't need to know more of what's going on, that is a kindness to you. And you ought to be thankful for that because that's a kindness that came straight from God to you. To give you judges, to give you people to walk in the muck and to bear the burdens so that you don't have to. And so having people put in those positions is a mercy to us.

Them having support and a means of a chain of commands to appeal up is a kindness. What I found is that when I have difficult work to do, when the elders have hard things to adjudicate and sort out, having protection and other men around is an incredible help. To know that you're not all alone and you're not out by yourself on an island. It's a help and a comfort to us. And so the final thing I'll say to you is... God didn't leave those judges by themselves to do this hard, nasty work, but he left Moses as a figurehead for himself of help in carrying out the work. In the same way, God doesn't leave us to obey his commands and to bear the burdens alone. He promises never to leave us or to forsake us, no matter how difficult or hard the burdens become. So don't give up on trusting the Lord.

Don't decide that you know a better way or that your justice is more just than God's justice. Seek to be faithful and trust that the things God has put in place are for your benefit and that when they aren't working the way they should, which will be all the time, it will be, it will be all the time, things won't be working the way they're supposed to, that God is aware of that and that he will deal with it. And your job is to be faithful in the midst of it in the work that he's called you to do. Not to sit in judgment of all the work that other people aren't doing right. Let's pray.