In his sermon titled 'The Pillars of a Just Kingdom,' Peter Allison delves into the principles that underpin a just society, drawing from Proverbs chapter 20. He emphasizes that vengeance belongs solely to God and should not be sought by individuals, as human limitations hinder the administration of true justice. Instead, God appoints civil authorities, referred to as 'kings,' to act as ministers of justice. These authorities encompass various government roles in contemporary society, including presidents, judges, and legislators. Allison underscores the sovereignty of God, asserting that earthly rulers must adhere to divine law, which is immutable and just. The sermon advocates for the necessity of self-government, stressing that a well-informed conscience is crucial for societal order, as no amount of external governance can substitute personal responsibility. Furthermore, the sermon highlights the importance of mutual respect among different societal groups and the value of wisdom and experience, particularly in elders. Lastly, Allison draws parallels between corporal punishment and Christ's sacrificial suffering, emphasizing that true healing and justice come through divine intervention and Christ's atonement.

Proverbs chapter 20, our scripture reading. I'd like to begin at verse 22. Hear God's word. Do not say, I will recompense evil. Wait for the Lord, and he will save you.

Diverse weights are an abomination to the Lord, and dishonest scales are not good. A man's steps are of the Lord, how then can a man understand his own way? It is a snare for a man to devote rashly something as holy and afterward to reconsider his vows. A wise king sifts out the wicked and brings the threshing wheel over them. The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord searching all the inner depths of his heart.

Mercy and truth preserve the king and by loving kindness he upholds his throne. The glory of young men is their strength, and the splendor of old men is their gray head. Blows that hurt, cleanses away evil, as do stripes, the inner depths of the heart. The King's heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water, he turns it whither wherever he wishes." Thus far the reading of God's Word may be blessed in its reading and hearing. Heavenly Father, we ask now that You would speak to us through this word and by Your Spirit, that You would sanctify these sinful lips, that You would open our eyes and our ears, that we may see and understand and behold the beauty, the wonder, and the truth of Your Word.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. Last week we looked at the pillars of a righteous economy, and this week the pillars of a just Kingdom. This is a passage, this section speaks extensively of the King. And by, and when I use the word King in this context, I'm not referring to a man with a gold crown on his head who lived in centuries past.

I'm referring to the civil magistrate, to the person or the people in our case in whom is vested the authority of the civil office as God's minister of vengeance on those who do evil and minister of good to those who do well. In our land these have many other titles. We have a president, We have legislators, we have judges, we have commissioners and other offices, so that that authority is not vested in one person. It's vested in multiple people. It's not vested in one institution.

The king doesn't serve as a judge anymore. Our president, I should say, doesn't serve as a judge or a legislature. Whereas in Solomon's day, the authority was more focused, more concentrated in one person. And Solomon could act as a judge, he could act as the lawgiver, the legislature, and he acted also as the enforcer of the law. And although he didn't do all those, he wasn't the only person doing that.

He in his office was the chief legislator, the chief judge, and the chief executioner of the law. Well today we divide that up. We pride ourselves in not having a king anymore, but we still have this authority. God has still given this authority to His servants. And so when I use the word king, I want you to think of not necessarily just the president, but think of judges, think of legislatures, think of commissioners, think of even law enforcement officers and so forth.

That is what the Bible is referring to here when it speaks about the King. The New Testament calls it the governing authorities that every soul every soul must be subject it says to the governing authorities and so the These proverbs lay out in typical proverb fashion, you know very pithy short Statements very succinct statements some principles of what a just kingdom looks like. And remember, we're talking about God's government here. God rules through three institutions we know. He rules through the family, He rules through the church, and He rules through the civil government, or called the king.

So we're looking this morning then at those principles that make for or are foundational to a just civil realm, a just kingdom. And the first principle is that vengeance belongs to God. Vengeance belongs to God. It does not belong to us as individuals. Sometimes there's the conception today that we're not to take vengeance and nobody will take vengeance.

That forgiveness means there is no vengeance. And yet that is not what this says. It is not what the Bible says. It is not what the New Testament says either It says do not say I will recompense evil don't say I will render what is a just sentence I will Carry out and and bring justice to those who have done evil. Don't say that.

It says instead, wait for the Lord and He will save you. In Romans, Paul said That God was a God of vengeance. And he takes that vengeance in time, in history, and in eternity. And in time, in history, he brings that vengeance through those whom he has specifically raised up to be the instruments of that vengeance, namely the king or the civil ruler. And so we are to recognize that as individuals it is not our place, it is not our calling, it is not our duty to bring God's vengeance on those who do evil.

We do not have a duty to act where God has not given us authority. Our duty to act is always commensurate with the authority that has been given. And that's why when people want to take the life of abortion doctors, as much as they ought to be executed for the thousands of murders they have committed, it is not our place as individuals to do that, to be that instrument of vengeance. And so it is rightly condemned when these people who do deserve to die, who have by their own confession, by their own mouth acknowledged and confessed to these murders, but it's wrong for any of us as individuals to do that. And there's a couple reasons.

We have imperfect evidence. Sometimes human justice is simply not possible. There's a lack of witnesses. There's a lack of evidence. There is a lack of any proof.

And so at these times, When we see that, we can accept this knowing that God, the righteous judge, will vindicate the righteous and he will punish the wicked. He has promised to do that. Wait for the Lord, He will save you. He is a God of vengeance, He will bring His vengeance on those who do evil. So we have imperfect evidence.

We are finite. We might have hunches and ideas and we might be mostly correct, but without evidence, without the proper witnesses, We cannot bring proper due process in a human court. And also, we have imperfect passions. We're really often not capable of determining suitable punishment when we have been attacked. Our pride is so easily hurt, isn't it?

And our eyes are so easily blinded to the proper, the big picture. We see how we've been hurt, or we think we've been hurt, and even there we don't always see everything. And that can easily mar our sense of justice, our sense of our ability to see what is right. We're so finite. And so we are not qualified in that sense to bring, to recompense evil, especially, especially on those who do it against us, because we've been hurt and our passions are aroused.

That's why, Even though anger is not wrong, that's why we're strongly warned to not sin in our anger. Because it's a time when we are prone to sin. It's a time when we are easily led astray in doing things that we would regret, doing things that are not right. The wrath of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God. And so especially where we have been wrong, but in any case, even when we see other people who are wrong, it's not our role to be the minister of God's vengeance.

Rather, we are taught to bless those who persecute, to pray for those who spitefully use us. That's not easy to do, is it? It's just very contrary to our nature. When we're spitefully used, our spirit, if you're like me, it wells up in you at this kind of injustice. God says, wait for him.

Wait for him. And God is sovereign, secondly. It's a very important principle that we have to remember in looking at the civil government. God is sovereign. Jehovah is the king over the king.

The king is not sovereign. We like to use that word. We talk about nations, sovereign nations, but that's really not true. There is no sovereign nation. There are independent nations, there are nations who exist as independent and self-governed nations, but they're not sovereign.

God alone is sovereign. And so God, in God's sovereignty, He is the lawgiver. He's the one that sets the standard of right and wrong by which kings rule. Kings don't. And this is one of the great principles that was brought forward out of the Reformation, that kings are under the kingship of Jesus Christ, of God.

And it is God's law that sets the standard of what is right and what is wrong. And so God says, And for the second time in this chapter, diverse weights are an abomination to the Lord and dishonest scales are not good. It's saying that the king may say this dishonest scale is okay. We have that in our land today, where the civil government has put their imprimatur, their seal of approval upon dishonest weights and measures. And yet, the Bible says that God sets the law.

He determines, and He alone determines, what is just and what is unjust. And the King is only His minister. The King is only the one who carries out this standard that God has set. He doesn't set His own standard. And that He needs to be, the King is under the law just as much as we are under the law.

The King isn't free to change the law and to change the standard of justice any more than we are. And so this idea that the king must be accountable for what he has done is something that came, has come as the gospel has been applied in our culture. And so we live in a day when that had been, has been the case, that the King is not above the law, but rather the King is under the law, and He's accountable. He's accountable to the people for doing what is just. What should be outlawed and what should not be outlawed.

This is what has to be determined by the Word of God. And the Scriptures are right, and they are wise in what they forbid and in what they require. And sometimes it's surprising what they forbid and what they require. Moses said to the people as they were preparing to go into the land of Israel about this law, keep therefore and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes." And what are these nations around them going to say? Surely, this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

Why? For what nation is there so great who has God so close to them as Jehovah our God in all the things that we call upon Him for? And what nation is there so great that has His statutes and judgments so righteous as all His law? Which Moses said I'm setting before you today. In other words, God's law as Israel used it and lived by it would cause those who are around them to marvel at the wisdom of those statutes under which they lived and the justice of them and it would cause them to want to go and Live in a land like that And we have seen that in our land that that in the for a couple hundred years people from around the world have wanted to come to our land because it was a land where the law of God was followed, obeyed, and it was something that was attractive and beautiful for people to come to.

And so the law of God has to then establish what is just and what is not. And God says diverse weights, different weights are an abomination to the Lord, and dishonest or deceitful scales are not good. We can look at, I've talked many times about some of the dishonest ways, dishonest measures that we have in our land. But there are many other laws that we have that have seemed good to people that have caused great harm when they've been implemented. One of the biggest areas is that is an area of substances, things that God created.

God told Adam and Eve that He gave every green leaf to them for their food. Every green leaf for food. And you know the Lord has created an amazing array of green leaves and seeds. Seeds were given to man as well. Adam was called on to study and to investigate and to search into the works of the Lord and to find the right and proper use of all these things that God has created.

So any nation that seeks to take away from us what God has given to us is an unjust law. So where we have laws that forbid the ownership of plants and leaves that God has given to us For food, they have a place, they have a use, and we are looking at an unjust law. However much it might conflict with our sense of what is good and wise. We are not wiser than God. And in our misguided zeal and compassion we have in our land in many cases created laws that are unjust.

So God is our law giver, but secondly, God is our potter. God is the potter of our life. In this, a man's steps, verse 24, are of the Lord. That's how then can a man understand his way. There's actually in the Hebrew, there's two different words that are used for man.

And the first man there, a man steps over the Lord, that first man is a warrior man. It's the word that's used for man to distinguish from women and children and other non-combatants often. So It's the word for somebody who is mighty. So if a mighty man steps are of the Lord, how then can a man, and that word is the common word for man, which means earth, Adam, how then can a common man understand his own way? Even the mighty man, right?

When you walk down the, when you see this, what's the epitome today, you know, maybe The person that carries the heavyweight title in boxing, or the mixed martial arts champion of the world, if he walks down the street, you think, well, there is nobody that's going to stop him very easily. And saying, if that man's way, if his steps are of the Lord, how much more are the common man's steps? How can a common man understand his way? You see, God directs the course of our life like a potter directs the making of a pot. What shape does it have?

What color does it have? What size is it? What purpose is it going to serve? The potter determines all that when He makes the pot. And in a similar fashion, God directs the course of our life, our calling, where we're going to live, our occupation, and sometimes those are different, our health, our family, who we marry, all of these things the Lord directs these steps.

And often we don't understand exactly why the Lord has put us where He has put us. Have you ever asked that? Lord, why am I here? What am I doing here? What is your purpose in bringing me to this point in my life, in these circumstances?

We often don't know. Sometimes the Lord will give to us a glimpse of why we are there. But His thoughts, as I said, are far above our thoughts. His ways are far beyond our ways. How can we expect to understand His plan?

I Just think of Joseph as he's sold into slavery. He's a young lad, probably under 20. And he's sold into slavery and taken to a foreign land. Sold actually by relatives, Ishmaelites and Midianites, they were descendants of Abraham. And What was he thinking?

What am I here? What is happening? He could not see the big picture. For many years he served as a slave in Potiphar's house. He gets thrown in jail for two years.

He's sitting in jail. And I'm sure he asked, why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? But you know what? In all of those circumstances, Joseph carried out his duty.

We can say then that God's will for us is found at the intersection of His providence and His Word. God's will for us is found at the intersection of His providence and His Word. What we have is His Word. And so we're to order our steps according to His Word. We apply His Word revealed to us to the circumstances and the situations in which His wise providence has put us.

We apply His Word to the circumstances and the situations in which His wise providence has put us. We apply His Word to the circumstances and the situations in which His wise providence has put us. David said, Order my steps according to your word. And so we may feel a great burden for something. Well if the Lord is calling us to that something, to whatever is tugging at our heart, Then he will, as we follow his word, as we apply his word and what the duty that is required of us in those circumstances, as we apply that word to his providence, He will direct our steps and He will take us to where He is calling us.

I'm standing here just because of that. Because God, I certainly never in high school, never intended to be standing before a congregation preaching the Word of God. But here I am. Because God in His providence directed my steps as I simply tried to obey the duty that was in front of me. I never went to seminary.

That would be the ordinary course that people would take if they are called to the ministry. But see, God has directed steps, and He is directing your steps in the same way. And our prayer ought to be that He orders our steps, that we order our steps. He gives us wisdom to order our steps according to His Word. What are the circumstances that He has put us in?

What is His providence in our life at this time? Because we know it is a good and wise providence. And what does His Word call us to do in those circumstances? Joseph got to see why God took him down to Egypt. He got to see that in his lifetime.

Because he was suddenly overnight in an instant elevated from prison to being second in the kingdom of Egypt. And then he was able to see why God brought him down there. So that when his brothers came to him after their father Jacob had died, fearful of his vengeance, he said to them, what you meant for evil, God intended for good to save many people alive. And we look back and we can see all of those steps that Joseph went through were God's preparation for what he had for the calling that he had for them. The same for Moses.

Moses spent Moses spent 40 years in a dead-end career. 40 years following sheep around the wilderness. Do you think he want... Here's somebody who has studied in all of the ancient knowledge of Egypt, and Egypt was considered a place of knowledge. They'd be like the Oxford or the Harvard.

And Moses was given an opportunity to acquire all of that knowledge. And then the second 40 years of his life he spent following sheep around. Do you suppose he wondered, why did God give me all this training so I can follow some sheep around? Forty years! I don't think there's probably very few of us in this room that, maybe some, that have spent 40 years doing anything, let alone 40 years doing something as menial and lowly as following sheep around, and seeing that they get water and taking care of their injuries and fending off the wolves over in the land of Midian in somewhat of a desert place.

A man's steps are of the Lord. How then can a man understand his way? Now that doesn't mean that we're passive. When we order our steps according to His Word, we're not just sitting around waiting for something to happen. We're not just sitting around for somebody to back A truck into our driveway with all the tools and all the equipment, all prepared, all paid for, for us to go do what we think we need to do.

Part of God's providence is the desires that He gives us, and then It's our duty to plan, to prepare, to study, and to pursue those desires. Ezra says he set himself to study the law of God. He was a scribe. He was called to be a teacher of the law of God in the land of Israel. And so he set himself to become an expert in the law of God.

That's part of our duty. It's part of what the Word of God teaches us. So vengeance belongs to God. God is sovereign. And the King, thirdly, is God's minister of vengeance.

He is God's minister. A wise king sifts out the wicked and brings the threshing wheel over them. The threshing wheel is one of the ways that they would thresh is to drive a wheel, a chariot or something, a wagon over top of the grain and that would break the hull and then you could blow the chaff away. Which method was the right method of threshing? There were several different methods.

Sometimes they were beaten with a stick. The Bible says that there are different methods for different foods, different grains, and God teaches us how to know what one to use. Well, a wise king then is bringing a threshing well, this is crushing, this is breaking the wicked. A foundation of, one of the most important foundations, apart from obedience to the word of God, is of lasting role, is that God's wrath is brought on those who do evil. It's this foundation.

Or you could say this is the central purpose of the civil magistrate. There was a documentary very recently done by a, called Seattle is Dying. Anybody seen that? Let me see, Seattle is Dying. It's a eye opening video.

It's done by a local TV news station, KOMO, in Seattle. And it documents this general breakdown of law and order and the proliferation of drug addicts living on the streets, using the streets as their bathroom, and that's not to take baths, using the streets as their trash cans. It looks something, in the pictures that this shows, it looks something like the slums of Mumbai. You can fly over the slums of Mumbai, it just goes on and on and on. It's just absolute complete filth, garbage.

And the reporter that did this documentary, Eric Johnson, he traces the beginning of this breakdown of law and order in Seattle to the legislature decriminalizing many crimes and the suspension of prosecution of many crimes. In fact, it was something like almost half of the police reports of crimes don't even get turned in, don't even get reported. So they're not even going to show up on the crime statistics. They talk about these ministers, these people who are to be ministers of God's wrath, releasing felony fugitives the following day. The documentary is one, well many things stand out, but one thing really stuck out.

They reported on this one man who had dug into a bunch of data and compiled a list of 100 offenders who had each averaged 36 criminal cases and 7 jail bookings in the last year. And one of these men, his name was Travis, he was interviewed live for this documentary. And it was particularly striking, because he exuded a confident scorn for the rule of law. He actually said he boasted and that I have broken the criminal justice system. I don't ever expect to be arrested again.

He had a confident scorn for the criminal justice system and anybody involved in the rule of law. He had 34 felony convictions since 2014, many of which were violent. And when he was told about that, he was gleeful. He was a yahoo, right on camera. And there was a video footage of one of his encounters with the police.

He started with him being on a destructive rampage, throwing merchandise, bicycles and things around the street, breaking them. And the police are pleading with him to put this stuff down. You can just see like a mother pleading with her two-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. And he's not listening while this is an adult, not listening to the police pleading with him to stop his little temper tantrum. They might as well have been talking to the bicycle.

He could have cared less what they were telling him to do. He was putting on a show for them. And this went on for quite some time, went on for hours. And it escalated to him attacking them and whoever tried to restrain him. And it ended up with this full grown man in basically his underwear sitting in a trash can container in there, the kind that are bolted down, cemented down to the street, sitting in the trash can taunting the policeman, acting like a, acting like a, you ever catch a raccoon in a cage, you know, it kind of hisses and spits at you.

That's what he was doing. At the people, at these police. And there must have been a crowd of policemen around him all saying, now Travis, here I'll give you a smoke, oh Travis, won't you please stop. And he was mocking them. For hours.

That brothers and sisters is an incorrigible criminal. It's not compassion to suspend the execution of God's vengeance. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 17, the man that will do presumptuously and will not hearken unto the priest that stands to minister before Jehovah your God, or even to the judge, so this is the church or the civil ruler, the man that won't harken to them, even that man shall die and you shall put away evil from the land." That man, Travis, and all those other people who have become scorners and mockers, who will not listen to the judges or the rulers, God says they should die. It's not compassion to withhold punishment from them. And Seattle is a great example.

It's the utter breakdown of all law and order. I talked about one store owner called 911 500 times in the last year and a half for thefts. She said the police would come in, they'd give them a trespass warning, and then they'd walk right back in the store the next minute. A wise king, a wise king, sifts out the wicked, brings the threshing wheel over them. And corporal punishment is very, very effective.

It blows that hurt, cleans away evil as it stripes the inner depths of the heart. A threshing wheel going over grain is crushing it, it's breaking it, It's painful. Corporal punishment is effective. It's effective at restraining sin. It's effective and it's helpful.

It helps the guilty where people have done something that is wrong, and they are brought into pain for it, it helps them to say, I have paid my debt. When you have paid your debt, You feel a sense of relief. You've suffered for the harm that you've caused. But secondly, it's also a great restraint to sin. We have a strong aversion to pain.

The Bible says we need that pain to keep from sin. We need, the civil magistrate needs to effectively use pain to restrain wickedness in the land. So it helps the guilty. If we had a law that forbid, that treated abortion as murder, there are many, many women who are getting abortions today who wouldn't do it because they would be restrained. They would fear the wrath of the civil magistrate if they did it.

And so you see how righteous laws that are enforced help even the guilty. Yes, they may want in their heart to kill their baby, to murder their baby, but they will be restrained from the expression of that evil in their heart, and that's to their good. That's to their benefit. But corporal punishment also is a help to the victim. Because humiliation of the guilty brings a sense of justice to the victim.

And it helps them to overcome their disdain and revulsion in the perpetrator. Our heart naturally goes out to somebody who has felt pain. And So if the victim is to see that the one who caused them pain has received 40 or 39 lashes, there's a sense of restitution being paid. When they see a murderer being put to death, and the grief caused by that family, there is a sense that justice has been served. And it eases, it eases their loss.

It can't replace it, but it can ease it. Helps to ameliorate the anger, the rage against a gross injustice like that. So corporal punishment is good. Blows that hurt cleanse away evil. Blows don't atone for sin, But they do help to heal.

Now the civil magistrate, this God's minister, also is a civil magistrate for good. And so he must reflect the character of the God whose servant he is, whose minister he is. And so not only does a wise king bring a threshing will over the wicked, but his rule needs to be characterized by mercy and truth. Mercy and truth preserve the King. God is truth.

And God is a merciful God and a wise King. One who wants to have a prosperous kingdom needs to reflect That character of God as well. Mercy and truth preserve the king, and by loving kindness he upholds his throne. The Bible talks about kings and queens being nursing fathers and mothers. Yes, nursing fathers, how's that for an analogy?

Another key, I think it's the third or fourth pillar of a just kingdom is the necessity of self-government. Verse 27. The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart. That spirit of man is his conscience. The Bible calls it the lamp of God.

That's what God shines on, the innermost parts of our being, of our heart. Searching, it says the inner depths of the heart, literally that's the rooms in your belly, the innermost part of our being. That's the lamp of God that searches us. It directs, it convicts, it consoles, It accuses us when we do wrong. It consoles us when we do right.

And no human government can ever replace a lack of self-government. That's a very significant point to remember. If people's conscience is seared and hard against the truth, no amount of civil government can bring law and order. You can never have enough policemen where people lack this conscience, where it's been seared and hardened. You can never put enough policemen in enough places to stop crime.

That has to come from self-government. What happens is you try, is you end up with a police state. We have a mass shooting, so what do we need? More laws and more policemen, more draconian measures. But more policemen and more laws, and more policemen and more laws cannot replace self-government.

This is necessary. This self-government, this conscience that's informed by the law of God, that comes by God's Spirit, is necessary for a just and prosperous kingdom. It's foundational to the prosecution of crime. We have to have people that are willing to testify. Too often people are unwilling to get involved.

They don't want to, they see something, they're a witness to it, but they don't want to be involved. Why should they risk their neck? Why should they risk difficulty? This unwillingness, this retraction, It also produces, Isaiah talks about the good people, the good men, have no interest, no willingness to exercise leadership. Because they don't want to be involved.

Self-government is critical for any government. Nothing can replace self-government, not even really family government. But you know, we will be governed some way, somehow. If we're not self-governed, if we don't govern ourselves, then somebody else will govern us, whether it's in the family. If the family doesn't govern us, then the civil magistrate will govern us.

And believe me, it's no fun when the civil magistrate is your primary governor. He's not a very kind and loving governor. Now another principle here in verse 25 is a necessity for thoughtful deliberation in all of the proceedings of a kingdom. It is a scenario for a man to devote rashly something as holy and afterward, afterward to reconsider his vows. Deliberation needs to be beforehand.

Rationalist leads to errors. Need to be before hand Rationists leads to errors the justice process needs to be deliberate careful and Sometimes not and not rushed If a man vow avowed to the Lord or swear an oath to bind his soul, he shall not break his word, he shall do everything that comes out of his mouth. Psalm 15 speaks of the righteous man swearing To his own hurt and not changing we make a vow we Promise something and then it turns out a little differently than what we thought well Psalm 15 says we need to keep our vow Or else seek maybe to be to be mutually released from it It's always possible But vows there are vows or should be an important part of our life. We ought to think of our duties in terms of the vows that we take. So the first vows that we take are the vows to follow Christ, church membership.

When we join with Christ's people, we are vowing to follow Christ, the profession of faith that we make. We're vowing to follow Christ and to submit to His rule. Secondly there are vows in marriage, marriage vows. Vows to maintain life-long fidelity toward our husband or wife, to cherish our spouse, to fulfill our duties as husbands, wives, to each other. There are also then baptism vows if the Lord gives us children.

These are vows to faithfulness in teaching our children the Christian faith by our instruction as we lie down, as we rise up, as we walk by the way. These are our vows. And then there are civil vows. Vows of a citizen to be loyal to the governing authority in the land. It's not the person, it is the authority, the office that God has established.

And this of course is a warning against rash vows. Vows where we have insufficient knowledge to know what we are agreeing to do. And of course that would include any secret society, because secret societies require you to vow upfront that you will be absolutely confidential. You will not disclose their secrets when you don't know what those secrets are that they don't want you to disclose. That's a rash vow, and it's forbidden in scripture.

I think we could, there are many applications of this necessity for thoughtful deliberation, but I'd like to look at the last principle, and that is that of mutual respect. The glory of a young man is their strength, and the splendor of old men is their gray head. We are made up of many different classes of people. We have nursing infants, we have little children, we have young people, we have those who are not so young and not so old. We have older, old people.

We have many different, many different groups of people. And they all have different gifts different strengths different abilities and a prosperous kingdom a just kingdom is going to recognize and have a mutual respect For these different groups of people young men are strong That is their glory They have strengths We shouldn't be jealous or envious of it, but recognize that this is what God has given them. This is their glory. The glory of a young man is his strength. What is the glory of little children?

It's their father. The glory of a woman is their long hair. The glory of an old man is their white hair, their wisdom. Old men don't have the strength of young men, but they have something young men often don't have, which is experience and wisdom. And all, you see, all of these things are a necessary and vital part for this body, not only the church, but the same is true in society.

And when you have one class of people, the haves, fighting against the have-nots, you don't have a just kingdom. There needs to be a mutual respect for each of the classes of people that make up the society. Respect for old people. The Bible talks about rising when elders walk into the room of old men. Rising out of respect.

That's their gray hair, their wisdom and experience is their glory. Now How does this apply to Christ? It's interesting, it says that blows that hurt cleanse away evil. Isaiah tells us that it is by Christ's stripes that we are healed. By his stripes His stripes were effective Because in healing us because his stripes did bear the wrath of God for all of our sin, for all the sins of all of His people.

And so it is with Christ's stripes that we are healed. And so as we come to the Lord's table today, We come remembering this truth that is by His stripes. We are healed. After He is appointed to men once to die and after this to judgment. God searches our heart and His eyes search the earth.

But when we stand before Him in that day, our prayer is that we be found not clothed with our own righteousness by His righteousness, and that we are healed, that we be healed by His stripes, that His obedience to the law of God is the ground and the basis by which we are forgiven, by which we are healed, not our own. Let us pray. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are good, we thank you that you are wise and that you know the end from the beginning. And in our finiteness and with our limited vision and limited understanding we can trust in you, we can hope in your word, we can rely upon your commandments and your precepts knowing that they won't be overturned by the next thing that we discover, knowing that they will never need to be edited, they will never need to be updated. But your Word is truth, and it endures forever.

We submit ourselves to it we bow before your sovereign and majestic rule through Jesus Christ Amen.