Justice and Integrity in Biblical Leadership

Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 16, Leviticus, Numbers in Deuteronomy. We don't want you to get started in the wrong book and think I'm off the page. What Moses has been telling the people is whenever they get in the land of promise, the festivals or worships that they would be responsible for doing to remind them of God's action and work in their lives. The Passover, Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Tabernacles, the offering of their first born animals. Now all of those are kind of related in the Ten Commandments to the fourth commandment. That is to keep the Sabbath day. They relate to the worship the people of Israel were supposed to do. And all the way through the book of Deuteronomy, you'll see that the instructions that Moses gives are related to those commandments. So much of the first fifteen chapters, really, were related to the very first three commandments. You'd have no other God before me. And if you remember over the time I've been talking about this, I've gone back and re-iterated that. What Moses is doing is explaining the dimensions of those commandments. What it is that it means to fulfill those commandments. They're simple, one-line commands, but they're complex in what God expects and how He wants them to do it. So He's explaining all that. Now He's moving here to the next commandment, the fifth commandment, where He's talking about honoring your parents, which is a commandment with regard to authority. The people of Israel are to live under authority. And they're to live under authority of parents in their homes. But now for the whole nation of Israel, there is a different kind of authority that is significant for them. Now, He starts on chapter 16, verse 18. Appoint judges and officials for each of your tribes in every town the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall judge the people fairly. Do not pervert judgment, justice, or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you. And what you find here is a description of how the legal system was to operate among the people of Israel when they settled. Each village or community were to select from their area, from their own community, people who were to serve as judges. They had a position of authority in the community. I ran across this in one of the materials that I was reading from Job 29. In this passage, Job, who was a prominent man in the community before all the disasters struck him, and he was one of the elders that would sit at the village gate and be a judge. So what Moses was talking about here was in practice in Job's life. Job writes here about what happened before all these disasters came to him, when he was an elder in the community and how people looked up to him. And I want to read a little bit of this, chapter 29 of the book of Job, beginning with verse 7. He said, when I went to the gate of the city, I took my seat in the public square. And at the gate, where you would go into the city, usually the elders gathered there. And if somebody had an issue that couldn't be settled between them and another person, they would come to the city gate, and there the issue would be presented to the elders in the community. And those who had positions of leadership as elders were respected in a special place that the public square was given to them. Young men saw me and stepped aside. The old men rose to their feet. The chief men refrained from speaking and covered their mouths with their hands. The voices of the nobles were hushed, and their tongues stuck to the roof of their mouth. Whoever heard me spoke well of me, and those who saw me commended me, because I rescued the poor who cried for help and the fatherless who had none to assist him. The man who was dying blessed me. I made the widow's heart sing. I put on righteousness as my clothing and justice as my robe and turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy. I took up the case of strangers. I broke the fangs of the wicked and snatched the victims from their teeth. I thought I will die in my own house. My days are numerous as the grains of the sand. My roots will reach deep to the water and dew will lie all night on my branches. My glory will remain fresh in me and the bow ever new in my hand. Men listened to me expectantly, waiting in silence for my counsel. After I had spoken, they spoke no more. My words fell gently on their ears. They waited for me as for showers and drank in my words and the spring rain. When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it. The light on my face was precious to them, and I chose the way for them and sat as their chief. I dwelt as a king among his troops. I was like one who comforts the mourners." What an elegant presentation of the place that these elders had in the city and at the gate when they were there to give justice. And this description that Moses lays out is sort of the background for what you see. The elders in each community who were selected as judges were given great honor and respect because of their position. You'll notice as Job talks about this, he talks about giving justice and helping the poor and the needy and the people who couldn't help themselves so that his reputation as a man of integrity and fairness brought the respect of all the community to him. Well, this is what Moses is setting up. When you go into your communities, select among you the people who are honorable, the elders that will sit at the temple at the gates of the city and give justice so when any issue arises, there is someone there to be able to give them justice. Now what Moses gives is a description as to the kind of person that they are to be and the kind of justice that they are to present. They're to appoint judges and officials. It's not really clear from the language whether those are two separate items or they're descriptions of one person, an official who's a judge. Each tribe at every town is to have their own set of judges so that all of the justice was dispensed locally and the people who had come to them, they would know personally and all the people involved in the arguments, they would know them personally. So they would have as these small towns, and you remember the way the towns were established is a small community would build houses together for protection and then they would go out to their fields to do the work. And whenever they were in these places in the small communities, everyone would know everyone. So it wasn't like people would come before you that you had no idea who they were and had to rely on somebody else's testimony. You had some knowledge of that person and their integrity or lack of it. So the judges were making decisions based on knowledge of the circumstances and the people that they saw. Every town was to have people from their own tribe who were their kinsmen who would have set in judgment. Now his description as to what's to happen, they shall judge the people fairly. They are to make sure that the justice that they give is correct and right. He gives these examples of what they're supposed to do. They're not to pervert justice, that is to twist it in some way so that it has an advantage for one person over the other. They're to listen to the cases and make the decision based on what they see as the right thing. Now the word justice in the Bible, in the Old Testament especially, carries the meaning of proper treatment for people. It means having a proper relationship with people and a proper treatment of people. So whenever people come for justice, the judge or the elders were to look at this situation and determine what was the right thing for both of these people involved in this conflict or this issue that they couldn't settle. And if they did what was fair to both sides, then they would have given justice. So what he's saying is, whenever people come to present to you their case, you're to not let anything at all twist your decision so that it's not exactly the right thing for both of these people. And what could twist it? My own opinion of somebody that I don't like. If I've had a conflict with someone in the past, there are a lot of things that could cause you in hearing a case to be influenced one way or the other, but you're not to let anything twist or turn your decision from making the right kind of choice. Then he says, you're not to show any partiality. The word that's translated partiality here means you're not to recognize any face. Now that's translated in our language as partiality. But it means if you're looking around the room whenever people bring their case and you look at the people involved in it and you see all the relatives of one of the guys that's there and you know some of them, recognizing who they are, their position as a friend or as a debtor or someone who owes you money, you owe them money, none of that is to be considered. No one is to sway you from making a decision about what you think is the right thing to do. So you show no partiality and do not accept any bribes. You can see that what God is interested in is the integrity of the justice system so that everyone in the community would be fair, would be treated fairly when they came with an issue and the judges were required to hold these issues as a part of their process in making decisions about what is right and what is wrong. Follow justice and justice alone so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God has given you. Now in a lot of places in the world justice is dispensed based on how much you can pay. So if you have a bribe, you can get by with a lot of things. It's amazing how many places in the world justice is done that way. We had a friend, we went to Brazil and this fellow, a friend of ours, was telling us about one day he was going down the highway and on the interstate and what they used for their interstate there and policemen pulled him over and said he was speeding. And he knew he wasn't, he said, because I wasn't speeding at all. I was watching. He's a very careful, slow driver. And so he said, no, I wasn't speeding. And the guy said, well, you know, we could work this out here if you'd just be willing to do that. And he said, I knew what he wanted. He wanted a bribe. And I said, no, I'm not going to give you anything. I wasn't speeding and I don't want a ticket. And so he, the guy said, I'll tell you what, I'm going over across the street and there's a little bar over there and I'm going to come back in a little while and then we'll settle this. The guy went over there and drank a beer and he came back over and he said, I told him, I want my ticket. He said, well, we can settle this right here. You know, all you have to do is this. We can make this square between us. And he said, no, I want a ticket. I'm going to take it to the court and I'm going to tell them what the situation is and I'm going to demand justice. The policeman just walked away and got in his car and left. And he said to me, this is very common in our country and everywhere you go around the world, you find that this is a very common process, that justice is secured in terms of what you can pay the policeman. A man from Mexico was a missionary that's talking to me this last year. I was talking to him and he said the same thing. You go out and you get a ticket and they expect you to pay them. They don't pay their policemen very much and it's sort of like, you know, you go to a restaurant where there's a waiter and a waitress, they get by on their tips, not their salary. And he said it's the same way in Mexico. They don't pay them very much, but they make a living by you pay me a little bit for this ticket and I'll just throw it away. In God's plan for people who have a nation that's controlled by Christian people, these are issues of integrity. What God demands is a reflection of his character. See, that's what's so important about this. God said to the people of Israel, you are to be holy as I am holy, so that the laws of the nation of Israel were to reflect the very character of God himself. Can you see how that's true? So that God will never twist justice. You never have to wonder if you're going to get a square deal from God. He always gives you the square deal. It doesn't make any difference who you are. If you're Billy Graham or if you're worse sinner in the world, God will give you justice without any regard to who you are. And if you violate his commandments and what he's asked you to do, you get that too. Whatever the judgment is, you get that too. And God is not tempted by anything that you offer him. If you think that you can do something and then say to God, now, God, if you won't punish me, I'll give you an extra offering in the plate Sunday, you're just fooling yourself. It won't have any impact on him. When you stand before God in judgment, it will be fair and just and right. And it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter how many things you've done good for God, you get justice. It's what he demands in our relationships with each other is the same thing. Now, we don't have a country in which we as a church elect people who are locally the judges and people who take care of the legal issues for us. Our country has a judicial system based on law. But what he asks of us are these same things. And we deal with each other. Notice what they are again. Do not pervert justice when you deal with people around you. Be fair to them. It doesn't make any difference who you are. Be fair to them. I saw on the Internet today some some I don't even know who it was, but they had a guy had gone out with a group of people, 40 people. Do you see that? And they gave him his ticket for his meal for thirty five dollars for him. And he wrote on there, I give God 10 percent. What makes you think you deserve 18 percent? He signed it and put pastor on there as if he could get away with not tipping. What do you think the people around him thought about that? I read this, the remarks that people had written about him, and none of them extolled his Christian character. Now, he has a proper right, I suppose, to pay whatever he wants to. But what he did was he used his position as a man of God to justify behavior that would not look necessarily nice. God doesn't allow us to shade what he says about us or does to us based on our position. He expects us to treat people with integrity and fairness because we reflect his character and nature. And whenever you do something in business or in your relationship with people that reflect some element of lack of integrity, then you reflect the character of God if you claim his name. So if you have a sticker on your car that says you're a Christian, you have an obligation as to how you're to act and how you drive and what you do because you reflect the integrity of God. And God said to the people who were leaders and judges, your character reflects me too. So if you have a position of leadership, whether it's in your job where you are supervising people or you're working with people or in your neighborhood, your reputation and the way you treat people reflects the nature and character of God. And if you tell people God is in charge of my life and you act in a way that's different than that, it causes people to look at you and say, if that's the way God does things, I want nothing to do with it. Then you can expect the judgment of God on you. What God wants us to do is to reflect who he is. We are to be holy as he is holy. That's what Jesus told us. So that our lives would reflect the nature and character of God. So as we treat people, we're not to pervert justice or to treat them unfairly. We're not to show partiality between people based on their income or based on their popularity or their fame. And I had a pastor one time I was working with, and I asked him how he did his visitation. He was in a really big church in Dallas, and he said, well, I go through all the cards of people that visit on Sunday, and I know where the rich people live. And I only take the cards for the rich people, and that's who I go see. Whenever you do that, you have twisted God's way of thinking of people. That is not the way he thinks of this. What does God want? You look at those cards and say, God, where is it you want me to go? And trust him to guide you. It may be a shack. It may be a mansion. But you see, you treat people as God treats them. For all of them are the same in his eyes. So what God is establishing here for us is the method by which we relate to other people and the way we deal with them. Now, the next section may seem like it's a little out of line, but I don't think it's out of place. Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole beside the altar you build to the Lord your God. And do not erect a sacred stone for these the Lord your God hates. Let me start with this word, hate. The Old Testament and the New Testament, too, also use this word often about God's relationship to people. There's a passage in the Old Testament where it says, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. And oftentimes we use in our own mind we have in our mind what we use the word hate for. It's an emotional reaction to people or to things or circumstances. If you say, I hate broccoli, it means you don't want to even ever have it around you or eat it. If you say you hate someone, it means that you have an emotional reaction to that person that causes you to want to get away from them or hurt them. And the word hate is used in the Hebrew language, it means to separate yourself from that person or that thing, like there's a division between you and that thing. It means to reject something. You could use it of broccoli to say, I hate broccoli, I reject it, I don't want to eat it. You could use it in that way. But usually when you say that, people think you have some kind of an emotional reaction to it. And what God is talking about is not that he has an emotional reaction to these Asherah poles or the stones, but he means I want nothing to do with them and I want no part of them and I want you to have no part of them. These are two symbols of the Canaanite religion. The Asherah poles were sometimes just a regular tall pole that would be beside the altar. Sometimes it would be carved and it was a representation of the female goddess of fertility that was part of the Canaanite religion. So it was an advertisement or a symbol for the fact that the fertility cult that was worshiping there and the woman who was the goddess of fertility for the Canaanites was being celebrated as this location. And usually it meant that there was a temple prostitution available at that location. Now the sacred stone was the phallic symbol, usually also at the place of fertility worship, the Canaanite worship. And it stood for the reality that there were male prostitutes available at this location. So what the worshipers of Baal believed was that the sexual relationship that you had a man between a man and a woman would ensure fertility for the crops and the animals. And it was a part of their normal worship. The people of Israel were tempted not to leave Yahweh and to forsake him, but to include the gods and goddesses of fertility in the land in which they went to. Because these people lived there, this was their god and goddess. And when they talked about the fruits of their crops or their animals, they gave credit to these gods who were local gods. The people of Israel moving into this territory, they're farmers, never farmed before, they've been wandering in the wilderness and they come and their neighbors are telling them the secrets to farming. And one of them would be the god who gives them rain, that's Baal, the god of rain. And the god of rain was worshiped by the worship of these fertility gods and goddesses. So the people of Israel were constantly tempted financially to include these gods and goddesses as a part of their worship. They never rejected Yahweh God. Instead they would often build an altar to God and right beside it they would identify this place also as a place of worship of Baal. What God was saying is, I cannot tolerate being connected to another god or goddess. I alone must stand as the ultimate authority. Now you see, it ties into what he's talking about with the judges. You have the authority to make judgment, but I have authority over you and all else that happens in the nation of Israel. I'm the supreme and ultimate authority. There's to be no other source for this. So when you look for the authority that you have to be a judge, there is to be nothing but me. My character is to be reflected in everything that you do. What God is identifying is the basic nature of the people of Israel's religion. God is the ultimate authority. You're to have no other gods before me. Now in chapter 17 he says, Do not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or sheep that has any defect or flaw in it, for that would be detestable to him, meaning God. Now he moves to the other thing. Not only am I to have ultimate authority, but I'm to have respect from you. You may say, okay, I'll give you the sacrifices that you demand. The first fruit, I'll give you that. When the tithe comes, I'll give you the 10% that you request. But you're tempted to say, the best animals are the first ones born. That's the one I've waited for. The first crop that I get will be the best that I have, and it'll be a long time between the last one and now, and I'll have fresh grain for the first time, and you'll be tempted if you have five bushels of old grain that's a little moldy, and you harvest your crop and you get 50 bushels, and you owe me five, or you tithe us five to bring me the old moldy grain. But let me tell you, I won't tolerate that. What I ask is you to give me the first fruits, and I expect you to do what I ask you to do. I expect you to have reverence and respect for who I am. I am the one that gave you everything that you have. And when I ask you to give me the tithe or the first fruits, I ask you to respect my authority even over the things that you own. It shows that you respect who I am. The creator of everything, and the one who gives you all the assets that you have. And if you come to me and say, I know what you said I should do, but I've decided that there's another way to do this, and I'm going to do it my way instead of your way. If that happens, then God will find that detestable. You see, what God wants is the respect that the creator of heaven and earth deserves. What he wants is the authority to be able to direct our lives. I don't know if you've, how many of you have been in the service? Been in the service? Okay. You were in the service? One of the things that they tell us, I've never been there, one of the things they tell us is that whenever you get in the service, the first thing they do is they make you do a lot of marching around. Did that happen to you guys? And if there was something went wrong, they make you pay for it by digging a ditch or a hole or whatever it is. And they expect absolute obedience even if the command is stupid. Is that what you experienced? Why do they do that? They put you in the habit of not questioning authority. Yeah. See, and that's what God wants. If he tells you that this is the right thing to do, not to steal, he doesn't ever want you to walk into a Walmart and say, hmm, I wonder if I should steal something today. Never enters your mind. Why? Because he said don't do that. If you learn the things that God says are right and wrong, it stops a lot of questions in your mind and in your life because you know what he says to do and you know what he says not to do. And I want you to be able to live in such a way so that everything I tell you, you accept that without question. So God is meticulous in his basic training with us, trying to make sure that we understand that the things he tells us to do are essential for us to do. Even though they may not be, in our own mind, very important and they may be a little picky, what he's trying to do is to build people who, when they hear what God says, they don't question it, they don't wonder about it, they just do it. Because there's a lot of times in your life when things pop up and you have to make a decision right away. If you know what God's told you to do about that, you don't have to worry about it. This was brought to my mind one time when a lady was telling me she went to Walmart. She was used to shoplifting and she said, you know, I go to Walmart and I walk around and I think, you know, should I steal something today or not? And I was so taken aback by that because I don't know how many times I've been in that place, but that never once occurred to me. But she had to fight a battle every time she went. And you know why she had to fight a battle. She had been doing it. And she got free stuff. And now she had to say, do I want the free stuff or not? I know I shouldn't do it, but I sure want the free stuff. And so she had to weigh all these things in her mind. If you know what God says is right and wrong, you don't have confusion and you don't have questions or uncertainty. What does God say I should do in this situation? Okay, I'm going to do it. It doesn't matter what I want. It doesn't matter if it makes me feel good. It doesn't matter if it's more convenient. I do what God tells me. And when you go through the instructions that God gives, His reason for it is the very same reason that you talk about the military does. We want you in every situation you're in. If we tell you to charge the enemy, we want you to run to that goal because we've decided that's the best thing for you to do and we're the experts at this. If we tell you to lay flat on your stomach and cover your head, that's what we want you to do. You'll get killed if you don't. What God wants from us is a very simple thing. If you're going to be my follower, I want you to learn what I tell you not to do and learn what I tell you to do. And then when you get in that situation, I'll bring that to your head and you just do it no matter what. If you respect me like that, then you will. Now if I find that I tell you what to do in terms of your offering and you bring me something else other than that, then it means that I can't rely on you. And you're not willing to do the things I tell you. And if you're not willing to do those things, your life is going to end up disastrously because you are not accepting my guidance. The discipline that we give to children oftentimes is not nearly as important as the pattern of obedience. You know, it's really not that important whether they, you know, lay their fork down correctly or eat with their fingers or whatever else it might be at the table, but it is important that they learn how to live within the structure of their parents and their family. Because learning to live within the structure of obedience is critical. And not only is it critical for a family, but it's also critical of your relationship with God. And so he says, when I tell you this is the way I want you to judge people, do it that way. When I tell you this is the way I want you to bring the offerings, you do it exactly as I tell you. For the most important thing in the world you'll ever learn is to be submissive and obedient to me. And if you do that, then you will find life in all of its fullness. And we look at these Old Testament things and we see that the demands are a little bit different than what we want and what we're used to, I mean. But when you open the New Testament and see what Jesus said to people about how we're to live, you'll find that his demands are just as demanding in our relationships with people. And so if someone insults you, don't strike back at them. Just passively turn your face the other way. Don't defend yourself. Don't protect yourself. See, those are hard things. We justify sometimes the things Jesus said, saying, well, I don't think that's the right thing to do, or I just have a temper, or I just lost my temper. When you read the stories in the New Testament about Jesus' teachings, the same principle is true of what he said here. If I ask you to be passive in the middle of someone trying to pick a fight with you, I expect you to do it. When you read those stories, you know that he asks a lot of us. The demands are heavy. But to do them means that we really do trust him. And you'll never make life in all of its fullness without complete submission and trust to Christ. And that's the point God wants to make. Let's pray. Let me ask you to simply ask God now, is there something in my life that I know you want me to do, and I've just refused to do it? Is there something in my behavior that I've been doing that I know you don't want me to do it, but I just keep on doing it? That here could be the seed of problems in your life. Because if you're rebellious against God, you move yourself outside of his promise of protection and provision and wise choices. If you want those things, you have to stop and say, my intent is to be obedient to you in every way. I don't mean you have to be perfect to have that, but you have to intend to want to obey instead of being rebellious. And so, Father, we ask you to search our own hearts to help us understand if we respect you as the Lord, if we revere you as the one in charge, if we live our lives in a way to reflect your character and not the character of our culture or the people around us or our families even, that we might know what it's like to gain your favor. Guide our lives so we might be honest and filled with integrity with regard to you. Amen.