This evening we're going to be taking a look at specifically Proverbs chapter 28 and then verses 15 through 18 as we do continue on in our contemplation of God's Word in Proverbs, this book given to us by His servant Solomon. And as you know, God gave Solomon the opportunity to ask of him whatever he would. And Solomon chose wisdom because he knew that he needed wisdom to govern God's people. And we are thankful But that was Solomon's choice because, of course, we were blessed with that decision in that Solomon has left behind for us this record of the wisdom that God gave him, this instruction that we need as we seek to live out our Christian lives in a fallen world. The problem is not finding this Word and reading the Word. The problem, though, is applying the Word, and often we see that it is very difficult to put into action, particularly when it's stuff that is larger than us, the choices of a nation, for instance, in terms of rulers or the people who are put into power. This is not something that, although you can vote, that we as individuals have direct control over, and yet we find wisdom and guidance and we should be propagating these truths. One of the sad things is that not only do God's people not share the gospel with others, We seldom share God's truth. We seldom go to the Word of God and talk to others about the truths that we find there, the things that we need to be teaching. So let's be zealous, not only to learn these things ourselves, but then to share them abroad, for this is the truth that the Lord has given to us, and it transcends time. It is timeless wisdom. Let's therefore ask for the Lord to help us to absorb it and then to convey it. Sovereign Lord, truly you are worthy of all of our praise, and we should, in our own hearts, Lord, be obeying that line that we sang, crowning you Lord of all. Certainly, Lord, you are the only all-wise ruler, and you should be the one who we look to for examples of wise rulership. We pray then, Lord, that as we come to this word that you gave to King Solomon, that we would be listening and that we would be taking this in. Although we may not be rulers of nations, often you will give us leadership in other areas, whether it is leadership in a family, leadership in a job, leadership in a unit. Yet we have many opportunities to rule well or to rule poorly, and therefore we pray we would have ears to hear and that we would not be led astray by the things that beguile men. O Lord, please help me to preach. I have no wisdom and no power of my own. I need your help to unpack this word and apply it right. Help me to do so now, O Lord, and do not let me go astray to the left or the right, but to cleave to your word and to speak the truth to your people. I pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Proverbs chapter 28. In verses 15 through 18, I do remind you this is the word of the Lord to his people in every age, every place, and every time. Like a roaring lion and a charging bear is a wicked ruler over poor people. A ruler who lacks understanding is a great oppressor. But he who hates covetousness will prolong his days. A man burdened with bloodshed will flee into a pit, let no one help him. Whoever walks blamelessly will be saved, but he who is perverse in his ways will suddenly fall. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever. Like a roaring lion and a charging bear is a wicked ruler over poor people. Charles Bridges wisely said of wicked rulers, and he had an opportunity to see many come and go in his own time, he said, a godly ruler is to a land the clear sunshine of an unclouded morn, the fruitfulness of the springing grass after the rain. But what a curse is a wicked ruler, where arbitrary despotism takes the place of right. We might as well live among the savage wild beasts of the forest, the lion roaring for the prey, and the bear raging in hunger. The terror of the weaker race are apt emblems of this tyrant over a poor people. No sentiment of pity softens his bosom. No principle of justice regulates his conduct. Complaint only provokes further exactions. Resistance kindles his unfeeling heart into savage fury. Poor and miserable indeed are the people who divine anger has placed under his misrule. There are many wicked rulers, obviously, who have come and gone over whom those words could be said, but few have so profoundly embodied all of the characteristics that Bridges brings up in that section as Joseph Stalin, the ruler of Russia from the death of Lenin in 1924 until his own death, I believe in 1953, if my memory serves. But Stalin was a man who was only greedy for the enlargement of his own power. He had visions of ruling over a mighty empire, a mighty industrial empire. But when power was snatched into his hands in 1924, he was not ruling over an industrial empire. He was ruling over an empire that was largely agricultural. It was huge, but it had very little developed resources and so on. And it was his ambition that he would build for himself a Russia that was industrialized and had a great and mighty army because it was his ambition, obviously, to conquer not only the republics that made up Russia but also the surrounding nations. So Stalin determined that he would take what Russia had, which was agricultural wealth and he would use it to build industrial wealth. Now, the great breadbasket of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the nation of Ukraine, a place where they grew tons and tons of different wheats and cereals. Ukraine not only was prosperous enough in terms of agriculture to produce enough wheat in a good year to feed itself, but to feed the entire Soviet Union. to tell the truth. But Stalin hated the Ukrainians, not only because after the Russian Revolution they had tried unsuccessfully to gain their own independence, but because they were a people who resisted Russian principles, communism and Stalinist power. In particular, he hated a group described as the Kulaks, who were these farmers who had their own wealth, village farmers. And he determined he was going to break the Kulaks, and at the same time break the Ukrainians, and then also to enrich himself. So he determined that we are going to go about liquidating the Kulaks. class and bringing the Ukrainians to their knees. What he did first was to begin to round up the wealthiest of the Kulaks, to round up entire villages, in fact, and begin the process of deporting them to places like Siberia and various settlements in the worst places in Russia. He had determined that not only would he break the Kulaks, but he would settle and colonize these incredibly inhospitable places. For instance, in places where it was cold and dark for most of the year, and then the sun didn't set, and it was a place filled with bogs and mosquitos and so on. Places where people had wisely decided not to live. But unfortunately, places that had huge mineral wealth and many trees, a lot of lumber. And so what he did was he gathered up these kulaks and he shipped them off. And through just the awful conditions and the mismanagement of his ruthless NKVD thugs, millions died that way, and the Gulag system. But he wasn't done with them. He began the process of collectivizing their farms. Now, the Ukrainians had developed a system of village agriculture, private ownership, and it worked fairly well. What the Russians did under Stalin was they enforced collective farms. All personal property was taken away, it was made part of these combines, and then it was very badly mismanaged. Socialism does nothing well, and farming is not an exception to that rule. So they became reduced to the level of individual workers, in many cases working on their own or what had been their own farms as simple laborers. And those who had too much property were sent away. Those who resisted were either executed or, again, sent over to gulags. And any sort of resistance, any sort of pushback was treated horribly. But what they did not know, as they were working for the harvest in 1932, was that Stalin's plans were to gather up all of the wheat and let them have none of the products of their own labor. Apparently, Stalin did not care about what Paul had said, quoting Deuteronomy, about the not muzzling the ox that treads out the grain. These men and women were going to work like laborers, like common farm animals on the land, produce a harvest. And then what Stalin did was he systematically took that entire crop that they had harvested, packed it into freight trains, and shipped it off to Russia. From Russia, it was placed on boats, and it was sold to the West. No, this is a great shame of the West. We had only listened, knew what was going on. In many cases, people in Russia and the Ukraine were writing letters to the West, telling them about the disaster that was unfolding, but the West only saw cheap grain and the opportunity at the same time to sell machinery to the Russians, which they did. They enriched Stalin, sent their machinery, even as he was sending other people's food to them. The Ukrainians were left literally with nothing. Any attempts to hide food would result in execution. And over the next year, seven, an estimate, obviously the Russians did not want to release the numbers, but seven million people, we guesstimate, died of famine. Conditions got so severe that women commonly would throw their babies onto passing freight trains in the hope that those trains going to cities would arrive, people would find the infant. and that they might feed them. Unfortunately, in most of the major cities in the Ukraine, people were starving to death. This was a wicked ruler, a man who was possessed by greed, a man who determined that he would enrich himself, realize his own power at the cost of millions of people dying. But in many ways, Stalin himself, raised in a poor family, the son of a drunken cobbler, embodied all of the worst characteristics that Solomon speaks of, of a ruler. A man who loved money, a man who wanted wisdom, a man who had a raging ferocity. It's kind of an apt coincidence that under Stalin, of course, the symbol of Russia was the Russian bear. Only the bear in this case was not only evil to those surrounding Russia, but to his own people as well. Greed and folly possessed his heart and enforced that folly in Russia. Now, we are told by Paul in 1 Timothy 6.10 that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and that certainly is true. Solomon knew that as well, which is why He warned that that desire for riches that he spoke of, a ruler who lacks understanding is a great oppressor, and he who hates covetousness will prolong his days, he writes. But of course, men who are covetous, not only will they be a people who are like locusts amongst their own people, they will be people who bring down their own government. Now, two things are spoken of throughout this section. And that is obviously folly. And that's a theme that we've seen developed by Solomon throughout this section. He has spoken of how folly makes the life of the person miserable and then makes the life of the people around the fool miserable as well. But we see again and again how rulers who are foolish, who don't listen to the Word of God, they make the entire nation miserable. The man who is foolish is not only a man who lacks wisdom, but he is usually brutish, and in this case, barbarous and bloodthirsty. In order to maintain his power, because he doesn't have wisdom and the ability to rule well, what does he turn to? Oppression. He is savage amongst his people. The things he does to his subjects are rather like the things that wild animals do to their prey. Now, having seen that kind of misrule, we should consider, then, what makes a good ruler? Well, the good ruler is somebody, as Solomon tells us, who hates covetousness and who desires, instead of ravaging his people like a wolf amongst the sheep, he desires to be a shepherd. He desires to serve his people, to build them up. As we will see again and again, the greatest example of this is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We talked about how he was a servant He was born in a low estate and then served those who, like him, were in a low estate, teaching us that we, too, should strive to be servants, even when we are placed in positions of leadership. Our desire should be to serve and not to enrich ourselves, but to enrich, rather, those who are under us. We need rulers also who seek understanding. people whose desire is to not only learn about things, Stalin certainly knew how to industrialize, he knew the equipment that he would need, he had the intelligence to do that, but we need men who need wisdom so that they will actually follow God's Word and not industrialize using barbaric methods. Men who will, instead of being wicked despots, will be gracious rulers who encourage the growth of their people, instead of repressing them, will encourage them and cause them to shine and to turn to righteousness. So, again and again in Proverbs, we're going to see how Solomon, and we have already seen how Solomon says that the best of rulers is a righteous ruler, a man who listens to God's word. And in times when we don't have righteous rulers, we suffer, the nation suffers. Jesus Himself said that the best of rulers would be men who do not lord it over their subjects, but who rather desire to enrich them by serving them. And, of course, the Son of Man Himself came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. Covetousness, again and again, produces oppression, and so a ruler who lacks understanding is a great oppressor, but he who hates covetousness will prolong his days. It's something that we need to remember in our own time. If we are going to be good in management, good in ruling, we will not seek covetousness. Many a man who could have been great has destroyed his ability to rule well by being a man who takes bribes, a man who seeks to take money that belonged to other people and transfer it to himself. As we'll see in a little while, a lot of this is applicable to the church. Many of the leaders of the church have desired money, and in so doing, they have taken money that did not belong to them, and they have been the source of their own downfall. A man who takes bribes in our society may get away with it for a while, but eventually he is usually found out. and it will be his destruction. We need to sacrifice that ambition and turn away from it. Now, one of the things that Solomon makes very clear is that while rulers who rule poorly, who rule savagely, who are awful to their people may succeed for a little while, they will eventually be undone. In the case of the great dictators, most of them are destroyed by the very processes that they set in motion. Winston Churchill had a very witty, well, he had many, many witty quotes. Churchill is a wonderful source of witticisms. The one-liner zinger, for instance, I don't think anybody ever outdid him. I wouldn't want to be, let's say, in his bad books and sitting in a dinner party with him at any point in time. But in one of his speeches in 1937, reflecting on the rise of men like Mussolini and Hitler and Francisco Franco, he said, dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry. Now, it should be obvious to understand that these are men who use savagery and ruthlessness. They ride about on tigers. But the problem is, the moment they attempt to stop the processes they've set in motion that are carrying them along, or to dismount, to leave power, for instance, they will be eaten by the very tiger that allowed them to rule. And so we need to take that to heart. Many of these men did not learn that lesson. Certainly Hitler and Mussolini eventually were destroyed by the very evil that they set in motion. They were consumed by the tigers that they rode. Mussolini in particular was killed by his own people with his mistress, you remember, near the end of the war. But we're also told that justice eventually catches up with a man. Verse 17 reminds us of that. A man burdened with bloodshed will flee into a pit. Let no one help him. Those who have committed murder will eventually end up destroying themselves. Often a man is haunted by the deeds or the misdeeds that he has committed. And so we see examples of that in literature, crime and punishment. The Telltale Heart, for instance, speak of the madness that will afflict somebody who may think that they have gotten away with murder, and yet their conscience screams out that they have gotten away with nothing. And we know, ultimately, no one gets away with anything. Hitler may have managed to shoot himself. Stalin, although the circumstances of his death, as described by his daughter, were particularly awful. He still died of natural causes. He wasn't put up against a wall and shot or anything like that or hung like Saddam Hussein. He didn't die as many dictators do, like a dog. But nonetheless, the moment he passed out of this world, he passed into eternal judgment. His crimes came after him. And the pit that he fell into was the pit of Sheol, the pit burning forever. He was a man who was without help at that point, because he had turned away, of course, from the only help that he could ever have, and that was the Lord Jesus Christ. A man like Stalin, as great as his murders were, as terrible as his misrule was, like Manasseh, he could have cried out, even at the very last, to God for mercy. But instead, how did he die? He died shaking his hand, his fist, in the air against heaven. He died like the Emperor Julian, having to confess, thou hast triumphed, O pale Galilean, and yet never embracing the mercy that the Lord extends even to the worst of sinners. He was without help. One of the things that we need to remember is the importance of divine justice. That's something that's stated within Solomon, not only that final, eternal divine justice, but also divine justice in this time. We need to remember that the Lord, has instructed us what we should do with murderers. We should put them to death. In Genesis 9, 6, whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man. If someone kills someone else, what are they destroying? They are destroying the Imago Dei. They are destroying the image of God. They are taking a life that did not belong to them. When we murder someone, we are guilty, therefore, of blood And our blood needs to be shed as well. We need to be put to death. Capital punishment is something that is taught throughout the Scriptures, not only in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament as well. In Romans 13, we read about how the sword is given into the hand of the civil magistrate, that he might be an avenger. of evil, the man who punishes and prosecutes, and we don't use swords to spank people. We use swords in capital punishment, that is, cutting off their heads. Now, against that, we see, for instance, the Pope recently changing the catechism. Many of you probably heard about this. He changed the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. Now, the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church is filled with various errors, and he just added another one, where he repudiated the doctrine of capital punishment absolutely, saying that under no circumstances should capital punishment ever occur. But he also earlier had spoken against life imprisonment, saying that it was a kind of a creeping or a secret, can't remember his exact words, but saying it was just another way of taking a man's life. We have a pope now, Stiles himself, the vicar of Christ on earth, who is denying what the Word says about the murder and what should happen to him. Now, when popes and councils disagree with the Word of God, as Luther wisely told us, we should follow the Word of God. We should listen to our conscience in that matter. It's amazed me the number of Roman Catholics I've met recently who know that the pope is absolutely wrong in this. And yet, because they are Catholics, they're remaining silent. They will not say that the Roman Catholic Church has deviated from the truth. That ought not to be the case with us. But brothers and sisters, while we agree that those who shed the blood of men, they should be put to death if they're found guilty of that murder, at the same time, as we'll see in a little while, we should not hold off the possibility of eternal mercy for them even. Those who commit murder may ultimately go to the gallows or however we execute them, but that does not mean that necessarily they must fall into the pit. In verse 18, whoever walks blamelessly will be saved, but he who is perverse in his ways will suddenly fall. The word perverse there is the Hebrew word akash, and it means twisted, crooked. It speaks of someone who, for instance, speaks out of both sides of his mouth, the wicked ruler who says one thing to one person and then another thing entirely to another person, the kind of guy who You watch during a press conference, for instance, and you can see he's trying to figure out, what should I tell them? Or trying to remember the lies that he's told in the past, hoping that he will not contradict the ones that he's already told. That has happened again and again. But rather, we are counseled, trust in integrity, live a blameless life. If you don't want to suddenly fall, if you don't want to be destroyed by the webs that you weave, oh, what a wicked web we weave when we seek to deceive, to completely murder what good old William Shakespeare wrote. He told us that rightly, that if we seek to found our lives upon lies, then ultimately we will be the ones who are entrapped by them, and we will fall. We should therefore study integrity, uprightness, and desire to be preserved by it. Now there are many examples in the word of God of rulers, people who held positions of power who were not that kind of man. One of the most chilling examples of the man who was a man of perversity, a man of deception and deceit, a man who ruled particularly harshly would be Joab. the leader of the armies under David. Often it's amazing when you read through the life of David, you see this man associated with Joab, who in many ways should remind us of a mafia leader, a leader of organized crime, a man who no deed was too wicked for Joab to commit as long as he could hold on to his power. You remember after David attempted to replace Joab, it was largely a political move. He was hoping, of course, to win the confidence and the trust of the tribe of Benjamin to heal the rifts that had come about in the political upheavals that followed his succeeding Saul to the throne. And to placate the people of Israel, the other tribes, he attempted to put Abner in the place of Joab over the army, but Joab wasn't having that. And so we read, now when Abner had returned to Hebron, Joab took him aside in the gate to speak with him privately, and there stabbed him in the stomach so that he died. And of course, Joab justified it by saying that he was killing him for the sake of his killing Asahel, his brother, who Abner had killed in battle. But that wasn't the reason. Joab was killing Abner because he wanted to maintain that power, that control that he had, the political influence. He did not want to be displaced. He did exactly the same thing a little later on with Amasa. And the way that he killed him there was even worse. When they were at the large stone, which is in Gibeon, Amasa came before them. Now, Joab was dressed in battle armor. On it was a belt with a sword fastened in sheath at his hips. And as he was going forward, it fell out. Then Joab said to Amasa, are you in health, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with his right hand to kiss him. But Amasa did not notice the sword that was in Joab's hand. and he struck him with it in the stomach. I won't give the details of what happened after he struck him in the stomach, but let's suffice it to say he died eventually, and it was a particularly horrific death. Joab did all of that. He maintained his position of power in David's government. He did dirty work for David, which he shouldn't have done. You remember Joab was used in killing Uriah. This was a man of perversity, a man of deceitfulness, a man of violence. But what happened to him in the end? Well, David warned his son Solomon about Joab. He said, essentially, don't let him go down to the grave with his sins unpunished. And the opportunity to bring justice to Joab came when Joab allied himself with Adonijah. He sought to take part in a coup to usurp the position that David had guaranteed to Solomon. David had said, Solomon will succeed me. But a group of people allied themselves to Adonijah, one of his other sons. They attempted to put him in place and Absalom was one of them. So Joab, realizing that the coup had failed, fled to the tabernacle of the Lord. Solomon was sold. Joab is hiding in the temple. He's gripping the horns of the altar. He's seeking sanctuary. And what Solomon said was, Do as he has said, because he had said when Benaiah, his servant, had been sent to call him out of the temple, he had said, no, I will die here. And the words were reported to Joab. And so Solomon said, do as he said and just strike him down and bury him, that you may take away from me and from the house of my father the innocent blood which Joab shed. So the Lord will return his blood on his head, because he struck down two men more righteous and better than he, and killed them with the sword. Abner the son of Ner, the commander of the army of Israel, and Amasa the son of Jethro, the commander of the army of Judah. Though my father David did not know it, their blood shall therefore return upon the head of Joab, and upon the head of his descendants forever. But upon David and his descendants, upon his house and his throne, there will be peace forever from the Lord." And so we see the man who is guilty of bloodshed going down to the pit. He attempts to flee, but it follows after him. And a man who is perverse, suddenly falling, a man who had been exalted so high, who had thought that nothing evil would happen to him, suddenly struck down, in this case, in the very house of the Lord. We should learn the lesson from that, that although men may seek to use illegitimate means and bloodshed, perversity and deceit to maintain their power, almost always they fall suddenly. We see that happening in the lives, for instance, of Adolf Hitler. a man who was ruthless and perverse and full of bloodshed in his own time, taking his own life in a pathetic scene in the bunker. Napoleon, a man who also was like that, he too was taken down as in a moment and then from finally losing at Waterloo was sent off to St. Helena, this tiny island in the middle of nowhere. to live out his remaining days, and it's very likely that he was finally poisoned in the end. If you live that kind of life, you will end up coming to no good. You will end up going down to the pit. Now, let me give you two quick applications of this. They should be fairly obvious. The first is this. Tyndale put it very well when he said, the king is but a servant to execute the law of God and not to rule after his own imagination. He is brought to the throne to minister unto and serve his brethren and must not think that his subjects were made to minister unto his lusts. Let me ask you this question. Is this when you are in a position where you are over others, is that what animates you? Do you think to yourself, I have been put in this position to minister to others, to serve others, to do all that I can to enhance their lives, to make their lives better, to be as Christ to them? in whatever charge you have been put. That is the way you should be acting, not abdicating your power, but not acting like a tyrant. Remember, I mean, as we've seen how quickly tyrants and men who abuse their charge can be cast down. I am very well aware of the poor examples often that have been given by men who should have been good shepherds but instead have been tyrants in the church. I gave you one example of a tyrant in the church and the current Pope is a man who obviously is seen as a darling by the world media and by so many who are hoping that he will move the church even more radically away from the Word of God. But at the same time, he is a tyrant because he rules by his own will. He imposes his will upon the people of God instead of going and simply acting as the man who ministers the Word of God. A good pastor, a good spiritual leader should be willing to tell the people the truth even when it's hard, even when it goes against his own natural inclinations. It would be very much easier. So many times I come to a place in Scripture where I really want to, let's just say, massage the message, soften the blow, or say something that's more in keeping with what people want to hear or what society already believes, to tell them things they want. But at that point, believe it or not, although you may not see it this way, I would become a tyrant, saying, you shall do this when it is not the word of the Lord that you shall do that. At that point, I cease to be an ambassador of God, and I become a petty tyrant, a petty king, making up my own rules and laws. And that will never go well. There's another way, of course, that pastors can act like tyrants, and that is by being deceitful and perverse in their callings and being foolish and seeking to enrich themselves by taking money, for instance, that's not theirs, or by using the flock for their own perverse. uses. We saw an awful example of that recently occurring in Willow Creek. I'd always hoped that the whole Willow Creek seeker-sensitive movement would finally run out of steam. People would say, no, maybe having a 60, 70, 80, whatever, thousand-member church is not a good idea. I'm exaggerating for the sake of hyperbole. It's probably something like around $14,000 to $16,000 or something like that. Having the giant church where the people don't know the shepherd, the shepherd doesn't know the sheep, where you're using all these consumer methodologies and so on, that eventually they would run out. The people would say, no, this is not biblical. This is a business model. This is a worldly model. And that it would go away that way. I never, to tell the truth, expected that Willow Creek would end up imploding because of the perversity of the senior pastor. and sexually abusing the women of his congregation. We need to remember, though, that if we think we can get away with that kind of activity, we cannot. Ultimately, that too will redound upon our heads. We need to remember what James warned, that those who seek to be teachers in the church will be held to a stricter judgment, something that I fear whenever I stand up here. That's one of the reasons why, as I said before, I don't massage the message. I'm looking forward to an exit interview that I would like to go well with my boss when I'm finally called to give an accounting for my ministry. and I am already very fearful about, would not want to add to it, having misused the members of my congregation. So, brothers, it doesn't just apply to pastors, whatever position you're in. There are far too many cases where business managers have misused the members of their company in that kind of way. Sexual harassment, something that we've suddenly become aware of for the first time in the early 21st century, has been going on for centuries. And it ought not to be so. Let it not be named amongst Christian men. Remember, there is one who sees all of these things, who keeps an accounting, and who brings men like that down suddenly. Secondly, and this is obvious, we've already seen it, we ought not to be or try to be wiser than God when it comes to those who shed blood. In our own time, as Bridges said, he said it's miscalled philanthropy that protests against all capital punishments. Shall men pretend to be more merciful than God? Pity is misplaced here. The murderer, therefore, of his brother is his own murderer. He shall flee to the pit, hurried thither by his own horror of conscience, by the sword of justice, or by the certain judgment of God. Let no man stay him. Let God's law take its course." And so just as it would be wrong, and Solomon points it out, that if a man has committed murder, if he has taken the life of another willfully, putting him to death, it would be wrong to assist him, to help him to escape justice. So, too, we should not be assisting those who have committed murder to escape justice by removing the death penalty entirely in our own age, taking away justice. We call it goodness, but it really helps no one. It certainly does not help those who have been aggrieved. When their relatives have died at the hand of a person who showed them no mercy, to hear that that person is being shown mercy merely convinces them that there is no justice. at least no justice to this side of glory. And we should remember, though, at the same time, that while we should deliver up the murder, never, obviously, taking matters into our own hands, executing vigilante justice, revenging ourselves that way, while rulers should be that terror to evil, they should be the avenger to execute wrath on those who practice evil, as Romans 13 puts it, at the same time, even as that is happening, We should be desirous that the very person who committed the murder would not go down to the eternal pit. While they may receive justice, this side of glory, as I said, it should be our desire to convey the gospel message to them. I can think of no better example. of that than the example of a brother who died a little while ago, a pastor, a friend, Francis Nigel Lee. His father lived in South Africa. Francis was raised in South Africa, even though his family wasn't from that country. His father was killed in cold blood, and the murderer was caught. He was put in prison, and it was Pastor Lee's desire to speak to him. The authorities were initially a little hesitant about allowing that, but when he went to him, his purpose in going to him was to preach the gospel to him. He did not say, I'm glad that you're here. I hope you burn in hell. Know that the wrath of God awaits you, and I can't wait for it to be carried out. Goodbye. But rather, he went and he warned him, yes, you have committed murder as a fallen man full of sin. Nothing but wrath does await you on the other side of glory. But I'm here to tell you of the way of escape. And he ministered the gospel to him, and that man came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is precisely the kind of desire we should have. But at the same time, it was not his desire that that man be let free. He said to him, even as he's ministering, you have to pay for what you did to my father, for the evil that you committed. You shed men's blood, and by men, your blood should be shed. But at the same time, he loved that man's soul, and it was his desire that he would be delivered. One commentator said this, yet we must not cast off his soul, speaking of the murder. Visiting the condemned cell is a special exercise of mercy. While we bow to the stern justice of the great lawgiver, joyous indeed it is to bring to the sinner, under the sentence of the law, the free forgiveness of the gospel. not as annulling his sin, but showing the overabounding of grace beyond the abounding of sin. Now, brothers and sisters, you may be thinking to yourself, well, I could never do that. If somebody were to kill one of my relatives, to kill a father, a mother, a wife, a husband, a child, I would never minister the gospel to them that way. In fact, I would want them to receive eternal wrath. But brothers and sisters, in that moment, not only are we failing to show the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, who even as He was being nailed unjustly, being judicially murdered, even as He was being nailed to the cross, what did He say? Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing. He prayed for the souls of the very people who were executing Him, and we're not following the example of Christ in doing that. At the same time, we're forgetting where we were before Christ found us. Brothers, you and I were all guilty of breaking all of the commandments. That includes the sixth commandment. Kids, what is the sixth commandment? You shall not murder. We were all guilty of that, and we were awaiting our own execution, sitting in the cell. It was Christ's willingness to come to us and say, I will die in your place. I will take the very wrath that should fall upon you eternally from the Father that saved us. So how can we not convey that same kind of mercy to others? How can we not preach the same gospel that abounded in grace to us, to those who sin against us? Brothers and sisters, I pray that I will never be put in a situation where I have to forgive that deeply. But I do pray this, if I am, I pray I will be enabled to forgive that deeply and that fully, because I know how deeply, perhaps I will never know fully how much I have been forgiven. Just the imperfect view of all the things that I have been forgiven for in Christ should lead me to do that, and you as well. Let us be then willing to forgive as we have been forgiven. Let's go before the Lord who calls upon us to do that. Lord, we are thankful that you are a God of justice and that wicked rulers are usually brought to a sudden end. Although they may for a time rise and seem to be doing well, those who rule unjustly, those who are full of evil, usually they are destroyed as in a moment. But remind us, O Lord, that the seeds of all kinds of wickedness are present in our hearts as well. And were it not for Your grace, Your goodness, we too would have spent eternity in hell. So let us then be willing to forgive when we have that opportunity. And, O Lord, help us to live lives of righteousness, not to be men of perversity, not to be men who quest after power, not to be people who abuse the positions that we're put in. Let us not be as voracious lions and raging bears over the people that You've put over us. And we do pray, Lord, for what we don't deserve. We pray for good rulers, rulers who are not covetous, rulers who are not guided by folly. but who know You and know Your Word. O Lord, we pray that You would grant these things by Your grace. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen.