Atonement for the Land

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Please turn your Bible to Numbers chapter 35. Numbers chapter 35.

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There's a misprint in your bulletin. The verse that we will be looking at is particularly verse 33, not verse 22.

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Numbers 35, 33. I will read beginning in verse 30 for context.

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Please stand when you have that for the reading of God's word. If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the evidence of witnesses.

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But no person shall be put to death on the testimony of one witness. Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death.

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And you shall accept no ransom for him who has fled to his city of refuge, that he may return to dwell in the land before the death of the high priest.

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You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it.

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You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I, the

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Lord, dwell in the midst of the people of Israel. Amen. You may be seated.

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Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, which gives so much clarity. We ask that you would open our eyes to see it, that you would help us to recognize the ways that we have been taught by the world, and to unlearn those things, and that we would learn from your word, truly, and that you would lead us in the ways of justice, and that you would help us to know your justice and your mercy, which is found in Christ alone.

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In his name we pray, amen. So if you remember, we just had three weeks of guest preaching, but before that,

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I had given two messages on our national condition. In that particular week, two distinct things had hit the news cycle.

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In particular, there was the stabbing on the subway, a very senseless stabbing, if you don't know what

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I'm referring to. There's a young woman who was just stabbed senselessly on a subway, and afterward,

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Charlie Kirk was assassinated. These two things made it evident that many people need answers to our national condition, and understanding it, understanding our response.

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The last message was particularly on the notion of the land mourning. This is a phrase that you see in the

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Bible repeatedly, that the land mourns because of sin. This is something that is not just true of the land of Israel, for the covenant people.

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It might be easy to imagine that, well, that's just because they're under a particular covenant, so God just describes their land as mourning because of that covenant.

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No, rather, it is a phrase that is used of other lands as well. Other lands, likewise, mourn because of sin.

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Our land is a land that should be regarded as mourning because of the weight of the sin that is under.

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Last message was mostly about the problem. This passage gives us the solution.

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It says in verse 33, you shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed in it, except, here is the answer, by the blood of the one who shed it.

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We've been reading all the way through Deuteronomy about how Moses, sitting there in Moab, explaining to the people everything that they must do in order that they can maintain this land.

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We have finally finished that reading today in chapters 33 and 34, as he passes off the reins to Joshua, and Joshua enters into the land with the people.

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They must obey the law of God. They must uphold justice if they are to keep the land, if the land is not to mourn and to be taken away from them, if the land is not to be polluted.

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Once again, we are not under an identical covenant to the covenant that Israel was under.

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Yet, at the same time, the truth of the land mourning belongs to us, the truth of land being polluted belongs to us, and the truth for justice needing to be upheld belongs to us.

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Numbers 35 explains the parameters of such justice.

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It explains the parameters of such justice, and these are truths that we must embrace today, not only if our land is to thrive in a mundane fashion, mundane meaning things of this world, but even if it is to thrive in a heavenly fashion.

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First Timothy two talks about the relations of earthly justice to the advancement of the gospel of God.

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The gospel of God advances with peaceful and quiet lives, us being godly and dignified in every way when justice is upheld.

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It is important for justice to be upheld, not that the gospel would be entirely thwarted otherwise, but the gospel is able to advance further when it is not, when justice is not trod upon.

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There have been many people who have misunderstood this passage. In fact, there is one particular group that has made grave errors over this passage, and that is what is known as the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, the Mormons. If you're unfamiliar, they have taken this passage.

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Brigham Young taught that there were certain sins that were so great that the blood of Christ could not atone for them.

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Instead, you had to die for your own sins, and so in order to save people, occasionally in the early days of Mormonism, they would go and kill their own people in order to save them, that their own blood would atone for their sins.

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These were sins like adultery, mixed -race marriages, and Mormonism in the early days of Mormonism regarded as a sin.

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Now, just because this passage has been misapplied for a false kind of atonement, and you might be used to thinking of the word atonement as only referring to eternal kinds of salvation, which is exactly what was going on in the

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Mormon church, that they're thinking of this as referring to an eternal kind of salvation, does not mean that it should not be regarded as something that applies to us in the sense in which it was intended to be communicated.

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There is an atonement, there is a covering for the effects of sin on the people in the even mundane ways that happens through the shedding of blood on behalf of those whose blood has been shed.

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Just to walk through this passage, the notion of pollution in verse 33.

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It says, you shall not pollute the land in which you live. The Hebrew word here is the word hanaf, excuse me, hanaf.

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This is a word that is used a number of times throughout scripture. I'd like to give you a few examples of this. It won't always show up in the

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ESV as the word polluted. Psalm 106, verses 37 through 38.

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They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons. They poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.

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So this is talking about those people who lived even before Israel.

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Those people who lived before Israel, sacrificing their sons and daughters, and the whole anger, sorry, the whole land being polluted.

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And then the people themselves, the Israel, continuing in that, continuing to pollute the land.

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So land is polluted by child sacrifice. Isaiah 24, verse five says, the earth lies defiled.

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That's that same word, polluted again. Under its inhabitants, for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.

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So law -breaking in general, covenant -breaking, pollutes the land. Jeremiah three, verses one through two.

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If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her?

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Would not that land be greatly polluted? You have played the whore with many lovers, and would you return to me, declares the

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Lord. So in order to illustrate the people's idolatry, he describes it in terms of divorce and remarriage.

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And he describes wrongful divorce and remarriage would pollute the land. So just wrongful divorce and remarriage pollutes the land.

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And then it says in verse two, lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see. Where have you not been ravished?

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By the waysides you have sat, awaiting lovers. Like an Arab in the wilderness, you have polluted the land with your vile whoredom.

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And so the people, by their idolatry, have polluted the land. The land is polluted for all these various sins.

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Yet, most quintessential of all those kinds of sins is the particular sin of murder, is the particular sin of shedding blood.

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Now, as I mentioned a moment ago, and as we discussed in the previous message, this is a truth that is true of other nations.

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Other nations that lived in the land of Israel before, that was this covenant land.

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Nations like Egypt, the notion of the land mourning, the notion of the land being under some kind of curse because of the people's sins, these are truths that are said of other lands, other nations.

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And likewise, these are things that we should regard as true for us as well, that our own sins pollute our own land, that there's a societal effect of our sins that we cannot escape because of the hand of God who upholds justice.

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He is not mocked. If the land goes on in injustice, will it not have massive societal effects?

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Not just those natural ones, but in addition, God, by his hand, not being mocked, demonstrating his anger to the people.

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And so what is needed is an atonement. Once again, this is not speaking of the eternal atonement that we might receive so that we might live forever in the promised land that God has told us of the new heavens and the new earth, but it is a covering for sin that there would be peace in a particular land.

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The notion of atonement means, the Hebrew word refers to a covering. What is needed is justice, specifically retributive justice, as it says in Genesis 9, 6.

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Whoever sheds blood, by man his blood shall be shed. Those were words given to Noah in the

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Noahic covenant, a covenant that applies to all people. The Noahic covenant was not like some of the other covenants that were for a particular time, but Noah and his group of eight people in total,

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Noah is given this covenant. This is for all people. The sign of that covenant is the rainbow.

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The rainbow still exists today, and so that covenant still exists today, that whoever sheds blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for the image of God, he made man.

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It is important that this be upheld, and this is what is known as retributive justice.

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People have taken the word justice and then used it to mean different things. True justice is only retributive justice.

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There are not other kinds of justice. People might talk about justice as though it were this sense of fairness, that everybody needs to be given an equal chance of things, and then they apply this to God, and they imagine that, well, if someone never hears about Jesus Christ, they'll certainly be saved because God is a just God, but what they really mean is that God is a fair God, and he has to comply with my sense of justice, which is not retributive justice, it is fairness, and so they imagine

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God owing people something that he does not owe them, and God's own character of justice is undermined.

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Often, they imagine that justice ought to be corrective justice rather than retributive justice, that the purpose of the government wielding the hand of the sword is not to punish people, it's not penal, but it is corrective, it is to discipline and correct people.

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This is not what government has been tasked to do. God is to correct his children.

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Government has been authorized to use the sword in vengeance. They have a distinct role, and so in as much as they try to engage in some kind of corrective justice, they're setting themselves in the role of God in a way that has not been given to them.

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They are ministers of God, representing him in retributive justice, but they are not to represent him in some kind hand of discipline that belongs to him alone.

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Man often considers himself like God in being especially loving and kind, et cetera, and so man wants to take up that role and call himself these things when

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God has not given that to him in particular. Rather, government is called simply to retributive justice.

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Whoever sheds blood, by man his blood shall be shed. He has not been authorized to use the sword for anything more.

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There's also the notion of social justice, which is pretty similar to that notion of fairness, where there needs to be an equality of outcomes, not an equality of rights, where rights must not be violated, and that is what justice is, essentially is punishing someone who would violate the rights of another, but rather some kind of equality of outcomes, some kind of social justice.

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These are not true justice. If you have to start taking justice and turning it into other things, it is not really justice.

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I once saw a pastor, a very respected pastor, I even respect him and will recommend certain of his books, but I once heard him advocate for social justice by telling people, just look through, do a word search for all the times that you see the word justice and go read those, and that the implication he was giving was that this will lead you to the conclusion that God cares about social justice because he was taking that definition of justice and importing it into the word, and so if you go and you think that justice is social justice, justice is some kind of fairness, and you go and you read all those things, you'll be really reinforced, oh,

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God really cares about that, but if justice is simply what he has commanded in Genesis 9, 6 and Romans 13 for the wielding of the power of the sword, it is retributive, then none of that is any real argument, just the number of times the word justice is used, the meaning of the word justice in the context of civil government has to do with the government's authorization to punish, not to correct, not to equalize in some outcome sense.

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Let me read this verse again. You shall not pollute the land in which you live for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the land, for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who sheds it.

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Several takeaways I want for you today. First of all, we lack justice. Second, our folly undermines our justice, and third, restoring justice advances the gospel.

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This is not something, I'm not trying to offer you mere human flourishing. This is important for the advancement of the gospel.

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Though the gospel advances even in the midst of oppression, God has told us to advocate for justice in part because of the advancement of the gospel.

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All right, so first of all, we are a nation that lacks justice. This notion of the land being polluted applies to many things.

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When Genesis 9, 6 says, whoever sheds blood by man, his blood shall be shed, refers to, it authorizes government to punish all sorts of wrongs against people, all sorts of violations of rights that don't necessarily require the literal shedding of blood.

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For example, if someone were beaten and they were only bruised and not a drop of blood were shed, would that not also warrant some kind of action?

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Likewise, when your property rights are violated, something is stolen, you see this throughout the law of Moses that there would be some kind of retribution in order to make payment for that.

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Likewise, penalties for contract breaking, covenant breaking, et cetera. So you should think about bloodshed the way you would think about the term blood money, right?

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Blood money refers to any kind of ill -gotten gain, even when no literal drops of blood have been shed.

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Similarly, you should think about bloodshed in that way. All the same, murder, that kind of literal bloodshed is the most quintessential kind of violation of right because in the image of God, he made man.

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Just to give you a couple of examples of the word bloodshed being used to describe other sorts of things, most likely.

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Habakkuk 2 .12, woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by iniquity. There bloodshed and iniquity are put hand in hand.

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The idea that these are the same, it's referring to all kinds of sins, not just murder and then every other sin.

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Micah 3 .10, who builds Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with wickedness. Once again, bloodshed and wickedness are put in parallel.

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It's not murder and then every other kind. It's really talking about bloodshed as being the same thing. But nothing more quintessential than murder itself.

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And so what is needed? What is needed is retributive justice. What is needed is the death penalty.

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27 states in our nation have a death penalty. The others do not.

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The other 23 do not. The average sentencing that happened, or sorry, the average time spent on death row is about 20 years for those nations, or for those states that do have a death penalty.

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20 years. The idea here is not that you sufficiently handled the pollution if you let people live almost a completely full life and then end it right at the end.

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This is not the kind of atonement that this passage is talking about. Rather, there needs to be a swift hand of justice.

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And even the mode of the death penalty that exists in our nation, the different kinds of modes, do not uphold the death penalty the way the

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Bible describes the most ideal ways of upholding it. In Deuteronomy chapter 16, excuse me,

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Deuteronomy chapter 17, it says in verse seven, the hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death.

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An ideal implementation of the death penalty would be one where the witnesses would not just get to make their accusation and then not be involved.

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They must be involved. Also, it says in verse 13, and all the people shall hear in fear and not act presumptuously again.

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The death penalty as it's implemented today is a very private thing. It is, there is some degree of public nature to it, but it's largely a very private thing that does not stir up fear in the hearts of others.

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I mentioned that the death penalty is, or that justice is not meant to be corrective, but it is to be corrective for those who would look on in fear.

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So even the way, first of all, few states are doing it. Those states that are doing it delay and do not do it in the way it's commanded.

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And then furthermore, they do not do it in a mode that would be as profitable as it ought to be for the purpose of God's purposes of justice.

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Now, what about our own state? Our own state actually technically has a death penalty. It has been on a moratorium.

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Executions have been on a moratorium since 2019 when Gavin Newsom put them on a moratorium.

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In August 2025, there were 581 people sitting on death row.

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They're just sitting there, just continuing on. That number is way down because frequently those sentences are commuted.

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In other words, they have a death sentence and it's just changed a life in prison. Our nation and our state in particular are places that are polluted by bloodshed and there is no atonement that has been made for it.

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You may not see that. We have incredible scenery out here. We live in a beautiful area.

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If you go out to Yosemite, you can see it's beautiful. You go out to the coast, it's beautiful. Go out to all the places around here.

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There's just so much beauty in creation and it does not look like a place that you would think of as polluted.

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But if you see it with eyes of faith, you know this is a place that has been polluted by bloodshed and no atonement has been made for it.

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This is something that should unsettle you. Too few people are unsettled by this.

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One of the things that disturbed me the most, and maybe it shouldn't, maybe I should just be more pleased with what

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I saw, was that week when there were those two high -profile murders how many people seemed to be caring for the first time.

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In part, that makes me joyous that people are caring about this issue for the first time. Another part of me is, why were you not caring all this time?

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Our nation and our state has been polluted with bloodshed. Why are you only now just caring?

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There should be a serious concern in your heart and you should know even when you go and see the beautiful California landscapes that it is polluted, it's all polluted.

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Prison is not a sufficient way of dealing with justice. It is not a sufficient way of dealing with bloodshed.

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Whoever sheds blood, by man his blood shall be shed. It's not good enough just to put someone in prison.

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Prison is cruel and unusual punishment to keep somebody in a cell for the whole entire life.

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It's cruel and unusual punishment. You do not see prison being used this way in the

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Bible. Now, whenever I say that, a lot of times people will point out, Joseph, well, wasn't Joseph in prison for a very long period of time?

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I'd like to show you that passage. If you want to turn to Genesis 40, you can see this passage here.

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In Genesis 40, speaking about the prison where Joseph is at, it says, in verse 40, beginning in verse one, sometime after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their lord, the king of Egypt, and Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined.

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And the captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them and he attended them. They continued for some time in custody.

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Okay, first of all, notice that the cupbearer and the baker are only there for a temporary period of time in order that they would be tried.

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But like I said, the objection is, people usually see Joseph and they say, well, isn't Joseph there just kind of indefinitely?

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Don't they consider that a sufficient punishment for his having the false accusation of him attempting to sleep with Potiphar's wife?

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Notice this one detail that I think adds a lot of color to the situation. It says the captain of the guard appointed

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Joseph to be with him, to be with them, the cupbearer and the baker. Who is the captain of the guard?

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Do you know? 39, verse one. Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an

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Egyptian, had brought him from the Ishmaelites and had brought him down there. Potiphar is the captain of the guard.

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Joseph is in prison in Potiphar's house. He has not left Potiphar's house and Potiphar is still treating him as a servant doing his work.

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In order to save face, he has put him over in the prison but he's still, his purpose is to save Joseph's life.

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It is not to punish him by the prison. Okay, he is trying to save his life by the prison.

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He is not, he recognizes that Joseph, my suspicion is he recognizes

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Joseph is innocent but doesn't know how to deal with the situation given this one person accusation that doesn't have two or three witnesses.

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Not that he has that kind of clarity of law but he understands that there's something off about the situation.

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Joseph is his favorite servant. What does he do? He makes him serve elsewhere. You do not see indefinite time in prison as being sufficient justice for real sins.

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There is a place for forced labor as a way to pay down something that could be, that is a financial wrong.

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For example, if you've stolen, it would be right for there to be some kind of, you know, you could call that prison if you wanted, some kind of forced labor that you would have to pay things off and a lot of times prisoners are required to do forced labor but not in any kind of truly retributive way, not in any kind of restorative way where the person who has done wrong receives, who has been wronged receives anything.

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There's no justice in that sense. It's just the prison that's receiving funds. You know, who gets the money out of all the license plates that are stamped and everything in the prisons?

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It's not any kind of restorative justice that is restoring that which was taken away.

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In 1st and 2nd century Rome, one of the things that I have found interesting in reading about that era is that bakeries often doubled as prisons for financial crimes where there was just a large debt that was owed.

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Bakeries doubled as prisons because the very difficult work of running the mill around in a circle, you know, just going like that, walking in a circle all day, was the hard forced labor that they would do until someone had paid off their debt.

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So you could imagine that that kind of prison would be true justice, but this kind of prison where you're just sitting there wasting time is not true justice.

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But many Christians think that because God has commanded us to be forgiving, that that forgiveness must extend to even those who bear the office of the sword wielder.

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We are supposed to be forgiving to others in personal accounts to us. For those who wield the sword, for those who hold that office, they have not been authorized to forgive in that way.

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Do you not see this passage? No person shall, excuse me, you shall accept no ransom for the life of the murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death.

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There shall be no ransom made for those who are guilty of this. It is necessary that they must suffer the death penalty.

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So many sentences have been commuted by those who consider them merciful in handing someone a life sentence rather than a death sentence.

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There was at one time a, and you may know who I'm talking about, I won't bother naming him, but there was at one time a candidate for president who

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I supported back before I had studied real biblical justice because I thought, you know, the one who understands it best is going to be someone who seems very

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Christian. And this is a Christian man who had been a Baptist pastor. And I thought at this time in my young years, okay, this guy was a

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Baptist pastor, surely he understands real justice. And one of the things that he frequently got critiques on was the fact that he had commuted more sentences than all three of his predecessors combined.

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That his three predecessors before him, he had commuted more sentences than them in total, turning them from death sentences into life sentences.

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And his justification for that was that because he is a Christian, he's being very forgiving.

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And I thought at the time that was very wise, like this is a really forgiving guy. He has no authority to forgive in that way.

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He can forgive sins against himself. He cannot forgive sins against God. Consider what

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Genesis 9 says. Genesis 9 says, verse five, and for your lifeblood,

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I will require a reckoning from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

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Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood shall be shed for God made man in his own image. So what's it saying there?

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Is it saying, okay, he needs to be, the one who has shed blood needs to have his blood shed because of the wrong he's done to someone else?

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No, it is particularly because the wrong he has done to God. God is the one who owns life. When someone has killed another, he has done wrong particularly against God.

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So what is the one who is wielding the office of the sword doing when he does not use his office for what it was for, but instead forgive somebody?

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He's not forgiving anything that he has authority to forgive. You know how Jesus was accused of wrongly putting himself in the place of God when he forgave sins?

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This is exactly what someone is doing when they commute one of those sentences from a death sentence to a life sentence.

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It's they are putting themselves in the place of God because it's not them that have been wrong. It's not the state of California that has been wronged ultimately.

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That's not why the death penalty exists. It exists because God has been wrong because he owns all life.

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This is why suicide is wrong as well. Your life does not belong to you. God is the one who requires life from every man.

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This is why he is the one who is supposed to take your life in the end. That's why you will eventually die if the

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Lord does not tarry is because he will ultimately take your life. That is his to take. If you take it yourself, then you are taking something that belongs to God.

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And so the one who forgives, the one who commutes forgives. The one who commutes sentences sets himself in the place of God claiming to forgive that which they cannot forgive.

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And so our land is polluted both naturally by the inherent way that God has set up society such that yes, if you allow injustice to continue, if you allow murderers to live, if you allow people to go on without real fear of the hand of justice, then yes, there will be evil in the land.

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But then in addition, there is a divine guarantee that God will in his own particular ways ensure that there is some effect of that pollution on us.

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You should think of it like a curse. How do you deal with these things?

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If you see mold in your house, do you just paint over it? Like the trope of the landlord that deals with everything by just painting over it?

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That is not how you deal with some pollution in your house. If you had sewage coming in through your drinking water, would you just cover it up with a little bit of lime?

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No, you would correct the pollution entirely. So it is, our land is polluted.

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It needs real atonement, real atonement that cannot be given in any way except the shedding of the one who has shed blood.

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Now, why does this exist? Why does this pollution, why is it allowed to continue?

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Why is there no justice in our land? The answer is because our folly undermines our sense of justice.

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Our folly, our lack of following the word of the Lord. We are a pragmatic people who instead of trusting

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God's word and what it says about the nature of justice, think that we can do better. We think that we can find out the best thing, that we can correct others because that's gonna be best.

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I've used this illustration a number of times because it's just so, I guess it's personal, but it's very pointed too, is that the guy who, drunk driving, ran into me and Sebastian a couple of years ago at a really high speed ended up getting off with very little community service or whatever it was, and when the judge was asked why, something more, or the lawyer,

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I forget who it was that Sebastian had asked, the answer was, well, this is not, we don't want him to be so discouraged that he's not able to rehabilitate.

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It wasn't about justice, it was about whether or not, what's gonna be the best thing to correct this guy? It's a very pragmatic, pragmatic situation.

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We have our own priorities. Okay, it would be best, what is the ideal society and then how do we pursue that?

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And then the means justify the end. The Lord has given us instruction. He's given us his word.

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We should fear that word. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. How are we going to begin correcting this problem if we think that it's up to us to figure out what's best?

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God has told us what is best, at least in the most basic sense of the framework, he has told us what is best.

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Why else? There is something that is known as toxic empathy. Having compassion in ways that the

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Bible has not commanded. Of course, compassion is good, but there are certain ways that it is not commanded. For example, having compassion on one that we're told not to have compassion on, that someone who has shed blood, his blood shall be shed regardless of what we think, regardless of any kind of compassion we might have toward him.

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And so you have things like insanity pleas, how many death sentences have been changed because someone has made some kind of insanity plea?

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Oh, it was because I have this really good excuse for why I killed this person. There's nothing like that in scripture.

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It's not about us to decide what was going on in their heart, et cetera. If this person had willingly and not by accident shed the blood of man, then it doesn't matter whether or not they have some kind of insanity plea.

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We are not to show compassion to those sorts of states of mind in such a way that we would think that we can sit in the place of God and forgive them what

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God has pronounced. You see this also, this kind of toxic empathy with mothers who abort their children.

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Very common position among those who are opposed to abortion is that there should be no penalty for the mother because she's one of the victims.

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She has had the closest hand. She is the one who is most in charge of whether or not her child dies.

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Should she not suffer for this? And you know these numbers, 581 in California, et cetera, how much higher would that number be if we counted all the people who actually murdered?

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I mean, I'm sure it's a fraction of just the murder of those who have been born.

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And then you add those who are unborn to that number. I'm sure that number is countless.

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And people are permitted to continue because of toxic empathy.

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Now I'm not saying that there is not, that God wouldn't forgive in an eternal way, but there is no, but for the minister of vengeance, there is no forgiveness that is supposed to be given in terms of the administration of the sword.

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People want to conceal shame. They see shame as a bad thing and the only thing you can do for shame is to cover it.

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Like that's the atonement that's given. You cover the shame. You don't actually cover the sin. You just cover the shame of the sin.

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We're told to cover the actual sin, atone for it. What else?

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Competing uses of the sword. Deuteronomy 16 is an important verse when considering justice.

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Deuteronomy 16, 18 says, you shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you according to your tribes and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.

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You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality. You shall not accept a bribe for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous.

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Justice and only justice you shall follow that you may live and inherit the land that the

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Lord your God is giving you. Now in a very simple way, if you pursue things other than justice, you will lose focus on justice.

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Okay, that's obvious. But there is another way that if you're, if you have been given the power of the sword to pursue justice, that any other use of the sword necessarily undermines justice.

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It's either upholding rights or just taking away rights. There is no other potential use of the sword.

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If you use the sword to enforce something else that is not justice, you are taking away someone's right.

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That is the only other thing that you can use the sword for. It helps to understand rights.

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People, just like people throw around the word justice to mean things that doesn't mean, people throw around the word rights to mean things that they don't mean.

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True rights, biblically, are all negative rights. They are things that people are not allowed to take away. Made up rights tend to be positive rights, things that people must give you.

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For example, if I say you have a right to property, everyone knows that that doesn't mean that everyone owes you property, right?

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That society needs to hand you an acre of land or something like that. People usually understand that that's not what the right to property means.

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Yet, people will come up with other kinds of rights, like the right to healthcare. And this is something that must be given to you.

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Okay, let's say you have both of those that you're upholding, both true rights and then these made up rights.

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Can you uphold the one and also uphold the other? Well, who has to provide the healthcare?

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With whose money, with whose time, with whose labor? If it is being forced, if it is happening through taxes that were supposed to be for true justice and not for other kinds of things, true justice is undermined.

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You cannot use the power of sword for anything other than true justice and uphold true justice.

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This passage in Deuteronomy 16. Justice and only justice you shall follow.

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If you pursue anything other than justice using the power of the sword, you will necessarily undermine justice.

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It talks about not taking bribes. This is most of what, this is mostly how taxes function.

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They function as bribes in order to get them. Now, they're forced bribes in a lot of way, but they are for purposes other than upholding justice.

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They are for the purposes of upholding positive rights or other kinds of made up rights.

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Now, taxes are good when they are for justice, but so much as they are not for what the power of the sword is, then they are things that undermine justice.

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There are other kinds of things that compete that God has given us exclusively. For example, our worship, right?

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You cannot say, oh, well, I worship the true God, but then I also worship false gods.

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And so my worship of the true God is not undermined by worship of the false God, right? Everyone knows who is a

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Christian. Now, there are a lot of people who aren't Christian who don't understand that, but if you're a Christian, you should understand that upholding the true worship of God means not worshiping other gods.

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Likewise, adultery, right? God has given us the gift of sex that is for one particular other person.

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You can't go and use that with others and then say that you're upholding marriage while you're going around and committing adultery.

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It's something that is exclusive. Justice is the same way. The power of the sword is the same way. It can be used for one thing, and the second you use it for something else, you are undermining that one thing that you were given it for.

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And then the other reason is, of course, atheism, the last kind of folly that undermines justice is atheism.

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If people think the crime that has been committed, if it's not God who has created mankind in his image, but the main crime that has been committed is to someone else who is dead, then why couldn't someone act on their behalf and forgive on the behalf of the deceased?

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The problem is that is not what needs to be forgiven. Other kinds of things could be forgiven, right?

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If someone steals from you, the government could come in and they could say, all right, you have to pay back this plus some extra amount.

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And you could say as the individual, you know what, I'm going to forgive. I'm going to say that this person does not have to pay me back.

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Okay, you would have the power to do that. But when it comes to life, the sin is not primarily against you, it's primarily against God.

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And so if people don't believe in God, people don't believe that we are made in the image of God, why do you have to uphold any of that?

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And so atheism leads people to throw away the death penalty because they do not understand the one who has been sinned against.

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It is God who has been sinned against. Now, we need to restore justice.

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And we need to restore justice, not just for general kind of human flourishing, but in particular for the advancement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

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Now, once again, I'm not claiming that the kingdom could not advance even in oppression, it does and it has.

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But we've been told there's a relationship between these things. First of all, taking a step back and understanding how these illustrate very important truths to us.

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Israel was given a land. In order to maintain it, they needed to not shed blood or they needed to atone for the blood that was shed.

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We have been given a promised land. We've been promised a new heavens and a new earth. We are people who have shed blood.

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How is it that we can inherit this land without bringing our pollution into it? That sin must be atoned for.

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How is it atoned for? Do we shed our own blood? No, it is through Jesus Christ. He is the ransom that is great enough.

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Unlike this passage here, where no life is precious enough, as it says in Psalm 49, to be given for the sake of another.

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And then later on it says that, but God will ransom my life. Whose life is precious enough? It is God himself, it is

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Jesus Christ who has died in our place in order that we may enter the promised land and maintain that promised land.

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So understand the importance of the illustration that's being made here. God has set up his creation in such a way that these mundane truths illustrate the divine truth.

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That we are a people who have committed wrongs against man and against heaven, against God himself.

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We need our sins atoned for. And the only thing that can accomplish that in order that we would maintain this land is either our own death, which we could not endure because it would require an eternity of wrath, or another to bear that in our place and that one being

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Jesus Christ. So keep this in mind that there's an illustration that is going on here.

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Keep in mind also what the beginning of scripture tells us about this nature of justice. When Abel died, it says that his blood cried out from the ground.

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Genesis 4 .10 says, and the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.

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Hebrews speaks of this. And it says that Abel's blood,

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Abel's blood cries out for justice. Though he is dead, his blood still speaks. Says that in Hebrews chapter 11.

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By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous,

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God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. This is referring to him crying out in blood.

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And this becomes evident in the next chapter when it's mentioned again. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 24 says, and to Jesus that we have come when we are worshiping together, we have come to Jesus, who is the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

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Abel's blood cries out of the ground for what? For vengeance. Jesus' blood cries out for what?

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For mercy. His blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. But if you ignore the voice of Abel's blood, if you ignore the blood of the victims, and you do not listen to that because instead of atoning for that blood the way that God has told us to, you instead atone for the shame, and you do not hear that blood, you do not know the need for the blood of Jesus Christ.

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He is given the one for the sake of the other. If you do not have the law, you do not have the gospel, you know this.

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You know that if you go to a church that does not preach repentance, that does not preach about sin, that doesn't matter how many nice words they say about Jesus Christ, they don't have the gospel.

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If you undermine what God has told us about our sin, you are undermining the gospel itself.

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God has structured this world in such a way that we would understand these truths. Consider that he has given marriage as a means that we would understand the union between Christ and the church.

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And when you undermine marriage, you understand our understanding of Christ and the church.

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Why is it the case that we live in a generation that doesn't have real commitment to the body of Christ, doesn't have real commitment to Christ, doesn't understand those kinds of commitments?

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Is it not because marriage itself has not been held in honor? Why is it that so many people fail to understand

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God as a father and you have things like the book, The Shack, where God is represented as a mother to help people understand him better?

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Is it not because fatherhood in our land is not upheld as it ought to be upheld? I mentioned this recently, but 25 % of Gen Z is fatherless.

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These are staggering statistics. And likewise, why is it that when you try to share the gospel with someone else, most of the conversation is not spent describing the marvels of forgiveness and how wonderful forgiveness is, but instead trying to explain

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God's wrath and why his justice makes any sense and is not an evil thing.

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Is it not because justice itself is so undermined in our land that people do not understand the justice of God?

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You undermine marriage, you understand the truth that marriage is pointing to. You undermine fatherhood, you undermine the truth that fatherhood is pointing to.

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You undermine justice, you undermine the truth that justice is pointing to. These things are needed in order that we would understand we are children.

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We cannot understand things except by illustration, by parable. When I first began preaching,

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I found giving illustrations, and I'm still not the best at this, I found giving illustrations difficult in part because it felt too condescending to give a lot of illustrations as though people needed them.

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But you see, Jesus speaks in parables because we need them.

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He has spoken to us this way with illustrations given throughout all of creation because we need them, because we are children.

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And when you undermine those parables, when you throw out the parables that God has given us, how will people know?

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You will spend your conversations in evangelism trying to apologize, and I mean that in the good sense of defend, the wrath of God, rather than showing the wonders of his forgiveness.

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Because people think that, well, the forgiveness is just owed. Why isn't it just given to me by default?

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Why do I even have to come to him? Because they don't understand wrath. They don't understand that bloodshed requires a real penalty because shame is covered up rather than held up.

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But then more than that, not only is it important as an illustration that we would understand the gospel, it is likewise important for the advancement of the gospel according to 1

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Timothy 2. It's probably obvious why I chose today in particular to pray such specific prayers for the representatives we have ruling over us.

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It's because 1 Timothy 2 tells us that we should offer supplications, intercession, prayers, and thanksgiving for all people, even those in high positions, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives, godly and dignified in every way.

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Why is it that praying for rulers would lead us to live peaceful lives? Is it not that if they do not do what is just, then we will not live peaceful lives, either because they will be directly violating our rights, oppressing us, or because those who do oppress will be allowed to go free and continue oppressing?

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Is this not important for the Christian in order to serve God faithfully, to not be oppressed in this way?

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Is it not beneficial? Secondly, in saying godly and dignified life, godly almost certainly refers to worship.

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Is it not important for our worship that it not be impeded by, being undermined by injustice?

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You may not realize all the ways it is undermined by injustice, but it is drastically.

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So many things that compete with justice are being upheld. So much of people's property is being taken away to uphold things that have nothing to do with justice, so the power of the sword is used by other things.

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How much more flourishing would there be if God's people had the funds in order to advance his work across the earth?

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How much, how many opportunities would we have to advance the gospel if we didn't have to deal with a city that has fairly onerous restrictions on what we would do with our own property and trying to build and expand?

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These are things that undermine the church's capacity to live peaceful and quiet lives, godly and dignified in every way, to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Now, once again, his kingdom will advance regardless of whether or not people comply.

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It will advance, but we are called to pray for this for the sake of the advancement of the gospel, not just our own earthly comforts.

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We are to pray for just rulers and even saved rulers that they would submit to the king.

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They would submit to the king either outwardly in doing what is just, but ideally inwardly, truly submitting to him.

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Okay, so what should you do? First of all, repent. If this is not something you've cared about before, when before I started seeing all that the

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Bible said about biblical justice, I thought that this was a matter of preference, and I prided myself in not caring about politics, you know, politics.

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The Bible says much about this. This is something that you need to care about. This does not mean that you need to be a, like I said last time, this does not mean that you need to be a current events junkie, but you must care about those people that you dwell around, and the way to care for them is by caring about justice itself.

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Maybe you have engaged in a lot of pontification about what the right way of handling justice would be.

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Oh, well, it seems like it'd be better to have life sentences because the death penalty is often wrongly administered, and so it's better just to do life sentences instead.

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If you say those kinds of things, and you say that the government should not do the one thing, the one primary thing it has been commanded to do by God because it doesn't do a very good job of it, and said it should do other things instead, repent of this.

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Don't say those things anymore, and also recognize the way that your culture may have seared your conscience when it comes to understanding who

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God is because of things like this being undermined. If you fret about the justice of God, and you struggle with his wrath, and you say,

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I just don't understand how God could be angry at sinners, I don't understand how he could not give everybody a chance,

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I don't understand how everybody's not forgiven. If you struggle with that kind of thing, recognize where that is coming from.

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That is coming from the lies that the enemy is telling you that are reinforced by and corroborated by the undermining of justice in our nation.

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Recognize where that is coming from. Other cultures would have never had problems with these kinds of truths. Okay, they would have understood that, and then moved on to the next thing.

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Naturally, you should participate in the capacities that you have opportunity to, whether you should pursue the office of sword bearer, either in the military or in actual higher offices.

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You should pursue those things with a sense of justice. What is it you're doing? What are you wielding the sword for, et cetera?

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And then, given that we live in a land where we all, should we take the opportunity, actually participate in deciding who our leader should be, choose those with a real sense of justice.

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Choose those with a real sense of not, well, this guy's going to advance my personal interests, but rather, will he advance the interests of Jesus Christ, given that he has told us what justice looks like?

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Pray, pray for rulers, for their salvation, and that they would do justice.

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Pray for the health of our nation. Pray using the biblical language of pollution and mourning. Our land mourns.

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Our land is polluted. May it be atoned for. May it be forgiven and rejoice.

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Pray for the forgiveness of God. And speak openly. Herod spoke openly, or excuse me, not

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Herod. John the Baptist spoke openly about Herod's wrongful marriage. This could have been identified as too political.

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We should be willing to say what needs to be said about true justice, about right and wrong. Now you see what the

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Bible says about how the land is polluted by even wrongful marriages. Oh, no doubt, the land was polluted by Herod's own sin against God.

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And so, John the Baptist speaks out about this. And we should hold one another accountable, of course, as Christians.

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But then even as citizens of a nation that have duty, and if you're a citizen of a different nation, same thing.

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Those people you are around, you should care for them. But then also your own fellow citizens of your nation, you should speak to them about justice because these things matter to God.

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You have a duty with each other before God as you hold rulers accountable.

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This is not a duty that just belongs to those who would choose to take it up. This is a duty that all of us have because God has placed us in nations.

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He's placed us as part of peoples. A lot of people will take a pietistic approach where they say, well, look, we just need to preach the gospel and all that other stuff will be sorted out.

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Addressing matters of justice is truly loving others. How is it going to be sorted out if you just quote -unquote preach the gospel?

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And I understand preaching the gospel is the solution, but I know when most people say preach the gospel, they mean to the exclusion of these truths that people would find more offensive and you stick on just the central thing and you don't veer from just the cross.

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The cross covers all of this. Paul said in 1

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Corinthians 2 that he knew nothing among the Corinthians except for Christ and Him crucified. But to the Ephesians, he said that he did not have blood on his hands because he preached the whole counsel of God.

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Now, I don't think Paul had blood on his hands at Corinth. He preached the whole counsel of God, which is

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Christ and Him crucified. This is part of the counsel of God. It must be proclaimed as it is, illustrative of the gospel.

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And people's sin against God's notion of justice is something that they must hear in order that they can repent and be saved.

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Moreover, if you think that this is going to be solved by that very watered -down understanding of what preaching the gospel is, do you not know what

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Scripture says about Christianity being the narrow way? Do you not know what 1 Corinthians 1 .26

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says about not many of you are powerful? Christians will always be a minority.

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You cannot just preach to a point where a majority of souls will be converted and then people will follow real justice.

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This will not happen. Scripture has assured us that it is a narrow way.

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And so we must call people to give an account even apart from such a narrow concern over, quote -unquote, the gospel.

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Once again, in my former years, thinking that the idea of justice was too political a thing to talk about,

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I decided I didn't want to burn a lot of social capital on that.

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I would not talk to others about current events. I would not talk to others about matters of justice. And that way,

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I could just talk to them about the gospel. But once you realize how important this is to the heart of God and how related it is to the gospel, these are some of the best opportunities for discussing the gospel.

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If you can, from our nation's need for justice, when people are already talking about those sorts of things, show the need for true justice and how

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Christ's blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel, how much more important is it for us to speak to these things?

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Do not think that you cannot speak openly about this because it is not the gospel directly.

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Instead, make the connection to the gospel clear as you speak

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God's truth. I know the saying is that everyone avoids discussing two things, religion and politics, and you're a

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Christian who's evangelical, so you know you have to talk about religion. And it sounds like, well, now I'm telling you you gotta talk about both of those things.

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Yes, hold others accountable. Call them to full repentance, not just to those sins that you think they can handle hearing about.

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Call them to full repentance in understanding the justice of God's ways. Our land is polluted.

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The only way to care for your neighbor is to speak to these matters clearly, unashamedly, without apology.

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May God's justice reign supreme. And may we, in hearing the blood of Abel, hear the goodness, the sweetness of the blood of Christ calling for mercy, amen.

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Dear Heavenly Father, you are a good and perfect God.

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You have given us a perfect king. We are a people who are imperfect. We live among a people who are far from your laws.

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We ask that you would grant us forgiveness from our sins.

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We pray that you would turn our hearts toward justice. We pray that you would work in the hearts especially of the rulers over us, that they would recognize their need to follow

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King Jesus Christ and that they would do what is just. We ask for true justice to be upheld in our land, that whoever sheds blood by man, his blood shall be shed.

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We do ask that that sin would be atoned for in that temporal way. And we thank you for the eternal atonement that we have through the blood of Jesus Christ.