Ah, sweet justice!  Few things are more satisfying than a rude driver caught in the web of the magistrate.   When that Dodge Challenger, sporting the fish, blows you off the road then gets pulled over, it’s hard to resist the temptation to honk and wave as you pass.   We feel it is simple poetic justice.  But perhaps, it is actually a desire for vengeance.  

Despite how they feel, vengeance and justice are not the same thing.   Vengeance demands punishment for any and every offense committed against us as individuals.   And it imputes guilt to everyone connected to that offense, whether past, present, and future.   Vengeance also demands its “pound of flesh” for every scratch or insult.  It always operates on an inflated scale of personal offense.  It is punitive.  And desires to inflict pain and loss on a much greater scale than that of the original offense.

Vengeance feels like justice, but it never quite satisfies.   It grows and grows out of all proportion to the offense.   And it consumes the avenged along with the offender.  One wit once noted that “The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.”   And in Laura Hillenbrand’s wartime biography of Louis Zamperini, Unbroken, she offers an important insight on revenge.

“The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.”

By contrast, true justice declares the value of an offense against a Holy God.  And only secondarily, what our sin cost someone else.  Every sin against God deserves His wrath and curse, both in this life and in the life to come.  But the Bible prescribes just temporal consequences to address how our sin affects others as well.  And its prescriptions are fair and limited.   Far from encouraging vengeance, the Bible warns strictly against it.   Vengeance, like unforgiveness, ties our souls in knots.  But justice teaches restraint, compassion, and mercy.  And reminds us to be more concerned about offense to God than ourselves.

After God spoke the Ten Commandments directly to the people at Sinai, he called Moses to come up the mountain to receive the Book of the Covenant.  This Book, recorded in Exodus 21-24, included needful reminders, examples, and illustrations of how God’s covenant people are to apply the Ten Commandments to their daily lives.  And while some of these examples apply specifically to the circumstances of ancient life, how they are unpacked has application for us today.  

God’s first concern is purity of worship.  His second, the condition and care of slaves.   Then he moved on to capital offenses then justice for personal injury.  And while the causes and nature of personal injuries highlighted by Scripture are diverse, one principle binds them all together – a call for justice, not vengeance.   When a servant is abused, or a vulnerable woman harmed by negligence, the desire for revenge is strong.  But what is truly fair and just?  Unlike our highly nuanced personal injury law, the Biblical directive is surprisingly simple.

“But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”

Exodus 21:23-25

Often called lex talionis or the ‘law of the tooth,’ this principle is assumed by moderns to be a primitive, barbaric sanction for revenge.   Indeed, Gandhi famously wrote, “an eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind.”  But like many things about Christianity, Gandhi failed to understand that lex talionis reflects God’s concern to protect life, not a disregard for it.  It is designed to guard against retribution and revenge, not foster it. 

Lex Talionis is a safeguard to prevent the escalation of personal injury into a blood feud.   And far from a literal demand for vengeful mutilation, it requires a careful assessment of the value of what sin destroyed and what restitution demands. Join us as we examine God’s law concerning personal injury in Exodus 21:18-27 and consider the important difference between justice and vengeance. 

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

As Christians, how do we respond when life is absolutely overwhelming?   We profess that our faith gives us strength for “many trials of various kinds.”  We are instructed to “count it all joy.”   We declare that we can endure “all things through Christ who strengthens us.”   We have an expectation that things will work out because, “if God is for us, who can be against us.”  Yet, when things go from bad to worse, how do those scripture truths hold up as threads in the fabric of our lives.  How do we keep from being overwhelmed? Or do we?

Or perhaps the question is not ‘how do we keep from being overwhelmed,’ but are we ‘overwhelmed by the wrong things?’   The Apostle Paul points to this paradox, writing to the ancient Church at Corinth. 

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies….  So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 

2 Corinthians 4:8-10, 16-18

Through a remarkable series of comparisons, Paul admonishes us to be overwhelmed by the grace of God, not the gravity of the present crisis.   Perhaps our problem is that we are overwhelmed by the wrong things?   A friend once noted that ‘fear is simply faith pointed in the wrong direction.’  Are you overwhelmed?  Overwhelmed by fear of what will happen next?  Or overwhelmed with faith in the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Join us this week as Rev. Bill Holiman preaches from 2 Corinthians 4:5-12 and shares how we can manifest the life of Jesus even when life seems overwhelming.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

It’s supposed to be completely random.  Yet while I have been chosen only once in 40 years, my wife is clearly on the short list for both federal and local courts.  Jury duty is for Americans both a civic responsibility and a privilege.  A justice system that depends upon a jury of peers is a great blessing.  And we should all be willing to serve if possible.  

Of course, even if tapped to serve, you may not be selected.   The cases on the docket may be dismissed, continued, delayed, or settled.  Or you may be called and dismissed during the process of voir dire, where jurors are vetted to eliminate those with prejudice or personal bias.  You can be weeded out for all types of reasons.  No one is automatically guaranteed to serve.  You may be excused because of personal knowledge or the defendant or because you have been a victim of crime.  Or perhaps because of your religious or political views.

And especially if the case is a death penalty case, voir dire seeks to impanel a jury that will not only fairly assess the questions of guilt or innocence, but also assess the necessity of imposing the death penalty.  In Arkansas, the death penalty can be imposed, without regard to age, on those found guilty of treason, murder, or capital homicide.  Arkansas currently has 28 prisoners on “death row” some of whom have been awaiting execution for decades.

Debates over the death penalty along with concerns about racial inequity, false conviction, cruel and unusual punishment, and lengthy stays on death row have raged for decades.  Judicial theorists argue that it is ‘certainty not severity’ that discourages recidivism.  And that, statistically, the death penalty provides no deterrent effect on violent crime. 

Furthermore, we have seen cases in which evidence or forensics, not available at the time of the trial, later emerged to exonerate a convicted murderer as he awaited execution.  Finally, our whole system of incarceration is predicated on the theory of “correction.”   Thus, prisons are part of the Department of Corrections.   And execution is clearly at odds with the goal of rehabilitation.

But what if our theories about crime and punishment are founded on faulty assumptions.  What if we have misunderstood both the human condition and the purpose and manner of punishment for crimes against people and property?  Our secular and humanistic culture despises the Biblical teaching about crime and punishment as barbaric and unreasonably cruel and unusual.   But is it? 

The Bible is brutally honest about the human condition and the effects of sin.  That is its major theme.   And the way of redemption is never some false notion of “paying a [penitential] debt to society” through decades of incarceration.  But rather through faith in Christ.  

Biblical sentencing guidelines declare the justness and justice of a Holy God, the absolute necessity and sufficiency of Christ alone to satisfy that justice, and the value of what was destroyed by crimes against people and property.    God created us to live in society.  Certainly, he knows best how law-breaking should be addressed.   Perhaps our real problem in this debate is that we have not settled the question of whether we or God should have final authority.

Do OT civil laws have any continuing relevance? Or are they, like ceremonial laws, abrogated by Christ’s finished work? Are the laws concerning crime and punishment mere relics of the theocracy? Or should they carry authority in modern civil justice?   The Westminster Confession of Faith makes an interesting statement regarding the continuing relevance of the Old Testament civil law.

To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

Westminster Confession of Faith, XIX.4.

But what does ‘general equity’ mean?  While our forms of civil government are not prescribed by scripture, there are principles of government derived from the civil laws in the Old Testament.  So, what does the Old Testament teach us crime and punishment and particularly the death penalty?   To what extent are these laws still applicable?  And how do they inform our civil magistrates to “bear the sword” faithfully and effectively?

Join us as we examine Exodus 21:12-17 and consider what the Old Testament teaches about the application of the death penalty and about civil justice today.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

My dad was “old school.”  A child of the depression, he believed firmly in the value of child labor – especially mine.  I had weekly chores for which I was paid if I did them in a way that passed his rigorous requirements.  But the pay was meager, especially when compared to the gratuitous, labor-free allowances received by most of my middle-class peers.  During the summer I mowed the grass for $2 per mowing and in Fall I raked 1.3 billion leaves working pro bono.   Now, as an adult with a healthy work ethic and the ability to appreciate the value of money, I am thankful my dad was “old-school.” 

But at the time, my thoughts were not so charitable.  As I mowed the grass with a rickety push mower, my friend was playing ball while his mother did the mowing.  “Now that was liberation I can get on board with,” I thought.  I recall thinking, “Daddy treats me like a slave.”  And I had to ‘slave away’ at yard work under a broiling Georgia summer sun, while my friend lived a carefree childhood of leisure and comfort.

Had I paid attention to the numerous passages in the Bible which speak about the work and attitude of slaves, both actual slaves and those who like me fancied themselves to be slaves, perhaps I would have gained a heart of wisdom.   But like many who hear the Bible’s teaching on slavery, slaves, and masters, I foolishly relegated it to a collection of things in the Bible which have nothing to do with me.   In the same way, Christians often view the Bible’s teaching on slavery as an antiquarian embarrassment in our present enlightened age.

But slavery is not an ancient problem.  And our attitudes toward work are often a daily struggle. Consequently, the Bible deals honestly with the issue of slavery.  And with all the subtle forms it takes.  While many today are impatient with the Bible’s apparent lack of forceful denunciation of slavery, this critique fails to recognize that the Bible is thoroughly opposed to slavery, as we know it, from beginning to end.   

Yet Scripture is imminently aware that many labor in difficult, oppressive, and evil circumstances. And so, the Bible also prescribes pastoral instruction and care for those who labor in service to others.  Many of these pastoral exhortations to slaves and masters, employees and employers instruct us how to do our work, no matter what the conditions, “as unto the Lord.”  

And above all, the Bible’s instruction to Christian slaves illustrates how we are to serve our Lord.  We delight in calling Jesus ‘Savior,’ and rightly so.  But if He is our Savior, then He is also our Lord.   Christ delivered us from the slavery of sin, but as Christians we are his bond-servants, transferred from one kingdom to another.  Paul points this out explicitly.

For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise, he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. 

1 Corinthians 7:23

God spoke the Ten Commandments directly to the people at Sinai. Then he called Moses to come up the mountain to receive the Book of the Covenant.  This Book, recorded in Exodus 21-24, included needful reminders, examples, and illustrations of how God’s covenant people are to apply the Ten Commandments to their daily lives.  And while some of these examples apply specifically to the circumstances of ancient life, how they are unpacked has application for us today.  

God’s first concern was purity of worship, but his second, pressing concern was the condition and care of slaves.   Speaking to a nation of recently emancipated slaves, God demonstrates his concern for those who are vulnerable and oppressed.  He calls his people to be a covenant community characterized by gracious and tender care toward those who are ‘at risk’ socially and relationally.  

Far from evidencing repressive institutionalized racism, classism, or any other -ism, the Bible’s teaching on the care of the oppressed is more progressive than the ‘wokest wokist’ can imagine.   It is care rooted in grace, forgiveness, and the gospel, not an egalitarian denial of depravity.   And what it means by ‘slavery’ extends far beyond the narrow confines of what that word conjures in our minds and experience. 

Far from a theological embarrassment, God places instruction about the care of slaves first in his application of the 10 commandments.  This is not an editorial blunder but a call for Christians to live out their faith in gracious ‘life together.’  This week we examine Exodus 21:1-11 and consider what the Bible teaches about slavery and what this has to do with us. 

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Graduations, weddings, and birthday parties!  We receive all kinds of invitations.  Some bring excitement.  Some apprehension. Many bring both.  As a boy, my neighbor’s dad occasionally invited all the neighborhood boys to hockey games at the Omni.  We coveted these invitations.  Especially when ‘miracle-on-ice’ Olympian, Jim Craig tended goal for the Atlanta Flames in his NHL debut. 

But there were other invitations that were not so exciting.  Like the one from Mr. Parker, my elementary school principal, to bring my parents to his office for a conference.   Confident this spelled my doom, I fretted for weeks.  I was sure my less-than-stellar conduct grade was on the docket.  But when the dread day arrived, the conversation was not about my failure at all, but an invitation to be part of a new course he was developing.  Invitations can be stressful, even when we are invited to something good.

As a younger man I attended an evangelical church which concluded every service with a ‘walk-the-aisles’ invitation. I worked for months to convince an unbelieving friend to visit our church.  When he finally accepted, I asked him later what he thought of the experience.  “I found it all very interesting and helpful,” he said, “except for that ‘uncomfortable time’ at the end.”  The ‘Anxious Bench’ had proved too much and he never visited again.  Invitations, especially those that relate to our spiritual lives, create tremendous anxiety and fear.

When God gave the Ten Commandments, he spoke to directly to the people.  Out of thick darkness, fire and lightning, he spoke in a voice like thunder.  The people were terrified of the sound of his voice but even more by the words he spoke.  Beforehand, they swore they would do whatever he commanded, but when he spoke, his voice and his law brought terror.

At Sinai, they were confronted with the contrast between God’s holiness and their uncleanness. Between God’s perfect law of liberty and their enslaved lawlessness.  And between God’s sovereign right to judge and the judgment they deserved. To their credit, they did not run away from God.  Rather, they sought a mediator to speak God’s words to them.  They understood that without a mediator they could never approach the Lord and live.

On behalf of the people, Moses drew near to the Lord in the thick darkness where God began to unpack his gracious law.  And just as the Ten Commandments begin with worship, so God’s explanation of the law to Moses begins with instructions concerning worship.  Why?  Because worship is the invitation for men to draw near to God through the means he has provided.  

God desires fellowship with us.  He made us to “glorify and enjoy him.”  But our sin separates us.  Our law-breaking erects an impenetrable barrier.  Any invitation to draw near to a holy and just God rightly creates anxiety, uncertainty, and even terror.   Yet no sooner had God spoken the law, then he provided a way for lawless men to come to him in grace, repentance, and faith.   The prophet Isaiah wrote.

“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
    call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
    and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

Isaiah 55:6-7

Every page of Scripture invites us to draw near, to be restored, to engage the purpose for which God made us.   Your sin is a barrier, but God has provided the sacrifice.   How will you respond to his invitation?   Will you ignore it?  Decline it?  Dread it?  Or will you joyfully accept it?

Join us as we examine Exodus 20:22-26 and consider God’s invitation to draw near. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Arkansas has only two seasons, December and Tornado Season.  And even December may not be twister-free.  Locals always have a plan for cover.   When the sirens go off, the church basement becomes a community center for both man and beast.  Every school opens its saferoom.  Those outside towns have storm shelters.  We all have multiple weather apps on our phones.   And we know how to program those old NOAA weather radios as a backup.  

Our storms follow well-travelled paths.  Past destruction and regrowth surround us.  Silent reminders that a tornado is not to be trifled with.   Its fury is prodigious.   Its power is immense, destroying everything in its path.  It shatters, dissembles, disintegrates, and strews the debris of broken lives over vast areas of space and time.  Deafening and terrifying, every warning of its approach tells us to “seek cover immediately.”   Only the most foolish of fools refuses the offer of a sturdy storm shelter.

Yet our instinct and experience with tornadoes does not translate to our spiritual lives.  Like the spiritually blind Pharisees and Sadducees, we “know how to interpret the appearance of the sky but cannot interpret the signs of the times.”  No storm we will ever encounter is more deadly than the judgment of a holy God for our sin.  Our refusing, despising, and disregarding his law is the perfect storm from which no man-made shelter can protect us.  

Whenever God spoke directly to men in Scripture his voice was deafening and terrifying.  Time and again, he spoke out of a storm.  The Psalmist likened his voice to a tornado that breaks the cedars and strips the forests bare.  At the foot of Mount Sinai, even Moses trembled as God spoke to them out from

“a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken [directly] to them.”  

Hebrews 12:18-19

Every sense of the people was filled with the terror of God’s holiness and majesty.  Every commandment made clear the impossibility of law keeping as a way of righteousness.  And the thick darkness, rolling thunder, and flashing lightening underscored the deadly consequence of failing to do all that God commanded.  In their terror, the people of Israel sought a storm shelter.  

They cried out to Moses to mediate with God, saying “you speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”   Before the Law was given, they hastily confessed, “all that the Lord has spoken we will do.”  But faced with God’s consuming glory, they realized their need for a mediator.   And so, we read “the people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.”

Our God is a consuming fire. For him to look upon us without a sufficient covering means certain, eternal death.  Our only hope is for a shelter, a mediator, who can endure the blast of God’s justice.  Unbelieving men seek flimsy shelters “calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.’”   But Scripture invites us to shelter under the True and Perfect Mediator, Jesus Christ.

Jesus entered the thick darkness of God’s justice on the cross.  He shelters us under the righteousness of his perfect obedience and the satisfaction of his perfect sacrifice.   No other shelter will do.   Where will you shelter from God’s judgement?  Under your works?  Your family?  A faithless ritual?  What mediator can you trust?  The Bible tells us there is only “one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus.”   And “whoever comes to [him he] will never cast out.” 

Do you have a storm shelter that can weather the ultimate tempest? Join us as we examine Exodus 20:18-21 and consider how the Ten Commandments lead us to understand our need for Christ.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.