Deuteronomy 1:14-17

Are you beginning to see a change? With Exodus 18, this gives us an idea that Moses did all of the choosing, and now we are finding a clarification of that. You can see that the clarification is really very logical because how many people did Moses actually have enough conversations with, business with, out of millions of people? He knew these people all well enough to appoint them because he knew their background, their wisdom, their understanding.

That statement, ‘the judgment is God's’ is a promise to them that God would make them discerning and able to understand the cases that they were going to be hearing.

The clarification is this: when Jethro told Moses to do the choosing, Moses carried through but he was hit with a problem—he really did not know very many people. When you are dealing with twelve tribes and millions of people, he just knew a very few number of people, so he turned that responsibility, using the authority that God gave him, over to the people of Israel, and the people of Israel then chose the people to represent them.

What we see here is very intriguing because, how did the people settle who was going to represent them in each and every tribe? They may have voted, they knew one another fairly well, and each tribe then chose the people that were going to represent them, first before Moses, and then before God.

What this means in practical application is that in this world God did not appoint every leader of every nation in every circumstance. We can see that He very clearly turned that responsibility over to Moses, and to the children of Israel, then God accepted the people’s confidence in the leaders that they chose. Then He had to pass on what He knew about those people, and apparently He did.

That brings us to an assumption. That is, despite the character, the personality, the evilness of the leaders we have, let us say, in the United States of America, did He actually appoint Barack Obama? We do not know, or did He allow us to make the choice of Barack Obama and God passed on it and He passed on it because Barack Obama had the personality and the character to fill the role that He wanted Him to fill at this time and His purpose?

If God did not absolutely want him he would have never been there. God is still exercising His authority, so this leads us to an assumption that we must make. That is, we should always assume that God has passed on this person and that we are before someone that God has then set in this responsibility. That is why we must treat each one of these people as though we are in the presence of God. Therefore, because we must assume His passing on those in office, they must be treated with respect as His personal agent, because that is what it says there in Romans 13.

Deuteronomy 1:13-15

Do you see what that says there? The Israelites elected their own leaders That was a republic in the making, it is almost like a democracy. In neither case did God object to the people’s request that these people be our leaders between us and you, He just accepted them. That is why I said earlier that God does not necessarily appoint everybody that is in office. He does pass on them, that is different. As the ruler over all, He is sovereign and He has ultimately the responsibility.

We can see here that there is a pretty good chance that He is going to give these people a chance to do right, even though it not a government of His. He did not appoint it, He even allows the people to have a part in saying who will be their leaders.

Once He accepts them, they are now constituted authority. They may have been good old Joe my next door neighbor, but now he is a councilman, a senator, a representative, a policeman, school principal. I have to respect him, and that is good. Deference is due to these people and that is the lesson for this day.

Deuteronomy 1:14-15

This is interesting when we get to the New Testament, because we will find that the people chose the deacons who were to serve them. And the apostles, like Moses, confirmed those people into their office.

So they were set up in a military type of organization.