God's Justice and Judge Kavanaugh

Well, I wanted to just make a few comments just sort of about today's big event, I guess. And I'll start off this whole thing by saying I'm not a Republican. I don't think that the judge, Judge Kavanaugh, would do much of anything for abortion.

I don't think that he's cut from that kind of a cloth. He strikes me more as a sort of kind of squishy on that topic, let's just say. So I don't think that this would be sort of a big win for criminalizing abortion or anything like that.

It certainly would be better than a crazy raging liberal, but you know, these are, this is not like, to me this is not really an issue of, wow, if we just get him in there we can do something about abortion.

I don't think that's the case at all. So as far as whether he gets confirmed or not, I mean, I guess I kind of hope he does, but you know, I don't really care either way. The point though, is this whole shenanigans about these accusations.

And you know, what I wanted to talk about was, you know, what would we do in the church? Like what is our marching orders in the church if an accusation is made against an elder? We all kind of, I think most of us have this verse memorized, you know what I mean?

What do you do if somebody makes an accusation against an elder in the church? So this is not someone in the civil government, this is actually someone in the church government, I guess you could say.

These are two different realms, the church is an ambassador of mercy, they provide the means of grace, they preach the word, things like that. And then the civil government is the avenger of God, it's for justice, things like that.

Jethro’s Qualifications for Judges and Leaders

So two different realms, but both under God. In fact, if you look at the qualifications that we have here, this is Jethro's advice to Moses when he says to Moses to set up judges, essentially rulers, within Israel.

The advice he gives him is interesting. He gives him a couple of, he gives him like three things that we should look for in a good judge or a good, you know, leader or government official. He says this, he says, they must be people, men who fear God, number one, so that's the first qualification, you fear God.

This doesn't mean you have to be perfectly understanding the law, perfectly applying the law, but it just means you have to fear God, have the standard of God's word as the law. He says, so fear God, trustworthy, okay, that makes a lot of sense, you should want to have a trustworthy judge, and then also men who hate a bribe.

So they won't be, you can't buy them. And I think that's a protection for the poor as well, because poor can't bribe a judge, but rich potentially could. So here we go, three qualifications. You fear God, you're trustworthy, and you hate a bribe.

Reality is for church elders, you know, we have more qualifications, they need to be more specific, but along the same, I mean, the elders have to fear God too. Elders should not be able to be bribed, and they must be trustworthy.

These are things that are common between the two. Now the standard for an elder is much higher, but the standard for a civil governing leader is also quite high according to the scripture. But in any case, if you were in a church and somebody made an accusation against an elder, and they said, you know what, this elder did something to me 30 years ago, and I want everyone to know it right now, what are you supposed to do with that?

Two or Three Witnesses and the Meaning of a Credible Charge

Well, number one, you're supposed to listen and hear that person out, take them seriously. You don't just say, well, whatever, you know, that's the pastor, he wouldn't do that. No, you don't do that. You hear the person out.

And what you're supposed to do at that point is very specific in the Bible. Here's what it says. This is an application of the law of God. It says this, do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

This is an obvious application of the law of God. Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. Now I've heard some people say, some Christians, I'm going to call them confessing Christians, because I don't really know where they stand, because they're just completely overtaken by partisan politics in this way.

They would say, look, this is not an issue of life and death, we're not talking about executing Judge Kavanaugh, this is just the job. We're saying he should not be qualified for a job if there's a credible accusation against him.

The scripture defines what a credible accusation is, not randos on the internet. What the scripture is saying here is that you can't accept, it's not a credible witness if just one person is saying something against somebody.

It's not a credible witness necessarily. There needs to be multiple streams of evidence. Now let's just say this, let's just say it was one person making an accusation, but they had a videotape of it.

Well, that would be credible because it's two streams of evidence. It's the person who's saying it, plus also the evidence of the videotape, or an audio tape, or something like that. That would be different.

But in the time of Paul, of course, here, they didn't have that kind of stuff, so it's primarily talking about people, two or three witnesses. That is how it works, that's what a credible witness is, someone who can demonstrate that something happened, someone who can prove that something happened.

That's what a credible witness is, according to the scripture, in the context of the church. Now we can easily say that this also applies to the context of the civil realm, because this is where Paul got this, this was talking about civil matters, and Paul's applying it to the church.

So the reality is that however much you might believe the person who's making these accusations against your elder, the Bible says that it's not a credible accusation unless there's two or three witnesses.

In other words, unless they prove it. What's interesting about this is this actually doesn't even say don't do anything about it. It says don't even admit the charge. So it's not even like, it shouldn't even be on this person's record, in other words.

So you hear the accuser out, you find out what evidence they have, and if it's only one witness, you don't even admit the charge. You see what I'm saying? There's no court. You don't even hear it out.

You don't even take it seriously. And when I say take it seriously, I don't mean you don't take them seriously, I mean you don't take any further steps for discipline if they can't prove it. Do you see what I'm saying?

No Prejudging in Church or Civil Government

And so, yeah, I know it's not a matter of life and death with Kavanaugh. Yeah, if he doesn't get confirmed, he's not on the Supreme Court. Okay, well that's not the worst thing in the world. Of course it isn't.

But the Bible says that these things shouldn't even, they shouldn't affect this person, if it was an elder, if it's not on the evidence of one or two or three witnesses. You see what I'm saying? And by the way, I've seen some people say this too, that the fact that there's three accusers or however many accusers, that's two or three witnesses.

No, that's not how it is. Each person, each person's accusation is a separate accusation. And so each of them needs to be proven. You see what I'm saying? This is what's interesting about this passage as well.

Verse 21 says, in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. This is the key here, because this is a protection for both sides.

Just because it's your pastor doesn't mean he didn't do it. You see what I'm saying? Just because it's a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court doesn't mean he didn't do it. And likewise, just because it's a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court doesn't mean he did do it either.

You shouldn't prejudge. And I think that we are seeing a lot of people being open about their prejudging. In fact, there was a Senator from Hawaii, the Congressman from Hawaii, she said the reason she doesn't believe him is because of his politics.

And that's an example of partiality, that's an example of prejudging. So the reality is that Christians who are saying, look, these witnesses are credible, they're not defining credible according to how God defines credible.

If God says, an elder in the church, we shouldn't admit a charge unless it's proven, unless there's two or three witnesses, how much, I mean, if it applies in the church, then it clearly applies to the civil realm as well, especially when we understand that Paul's getting this from the civil realm.

And so the reality is this, do I care if Judge Kavanaugh gets confirmed or not? I only care in as much as I don't want this whole strategy to be successful if it's not true. You know what I mean? So in that way, I do want him to be confirmed because, look, if they can prove that he did these things, then confirm him and then impeach him, get him out of there.

You know what I mean? Put him in jail. Actually, I believe rapists deserve to be executed according to the law of God, whatever it is. But the reality is that this is very transparently a politically motivated thing.

There's no question about that. Do I think that these women are credible? I don't know. I don't know. And that's the point of God's law here, because it's not up to my opinion whether or not the woman is credible.

It's whether or not they can prove it, because some people think she's credible. Some people think she isn't. But God defines what's a credible accusation. Doesn't matter what I think about these women.

It doesn't matter what you think about these women. And really, it doesn't even matter what Jon Favreau thinks about these women. Imagine that. What matters is what they can prove. And that's God's standard.

And it's an important standard because, you know, in the Christian worldview, we can't just we can't just let this kind of chaos reign. I mean, that's what God said. He said, look, if you don't have the evidence, you can't convict.

That doesn't mean he's innocent. That doesn't mean he does. He gets away with it because God will judge Judge Kavanaugh if he did these things and he's lying about them. God will judge him and it will be an eternal judgment.

There's just no question about that. But here on Earth, we have a standard. We can make mistakes. And so we don't. And and there is such a thing as a malicious witness. I mean, if the Bible tells us anything, we see this constantly.

There are malicious witnesses. The Bible talks about them and it also talks about what to do in those cases. So for us to pretend like, well, you know, these women wouldn't put their lives on the line.

Yes, they would. Why wouldn't they? I mean, these women are completely depraved as well. We have stories of this where people put their lives on the line for a false witness. This is just the reality of what people are.

They're evil on the inside. And so we have to take into account that Judge Kavanaugh is could be a depraved sinner, but also these women could be depraved sinners. And so we need to take both of those into account.

And God's law does take both of those into account. It's not just victims are always right. We see many examples in the scripture where victims are not correct or the supposed victims are not correct.

God's law takes that into account. That's why we can't judge whether someone's credible for ourselves. We have to use God's standard. That's why God has a standard. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless.