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Guest (Male): When someone does us wrong our natural inclination is to get them back and seek revenge. But the Lord would have us go in a much different direction. Here's Pastor Thom Keller.

Pastor Thom Keller: The Bible says vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. God has this thing going and he says, if you want to handle an issue, if you want to seek vengeance, you can. But we're both not going to do it. If you want to, you may. But if you want me to, I will.

God's dealing with people is always redemptive, always. Everything he touches is to redeem. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. God wants us to be merciful and compassionate and to give the benefit of the doubt to the person that we're up against with an issue. The benefit of the doubt should always go to the person.

Guest (Male): You could probably think of someone in your life that is really difficult, or maybe you'd even go so far as to classify them as an enemy. The world would say seek vengeance, but God says that's best left up to him. We're to be compassionate and loving. Today on Study the Word, we turn to the book of Joshua one more time, and we'll be taking a look at chapters 17 to 22. As you read through the Old Testament, it becomes clear there were severe consequences for serious crimes. As we begin, Pastor Thom Keller will contrast Jewish law with what we currently have in place in the US.

Pastor Thom Keller: To go on now and to look at the different forms of capital punishment, there were four methods of capital punishment that were prescribed by the Jews. I'm going to read these in order of severity from the most severe down to the least severe. There are four, and I'll explain them as we go.

The first one is stoning. People were stoned in general for these kinds of things: murder. If someone committed murder and fled to a city of refuge, they were found guilty, they would be stoned to death. That's how they would be killed. Stoning was for murder, sexual sins including all homosexuality, fortunetelling, and if you were a stubborn and incorrigible son, which means you were not correctable. I talked to a school teacher this morning that I think has some students that would fall under this category.

The criteria, if you were old enough to be tried, they said that if the child, the boy or the girl, has two pubic hairs, they're old enough to be tried under this law. So that's stoning. We'll talk about that a little bit more later. The second is burning. Burning is very interesting. It's not what you think. They did not burn the whole body. They said that would be to degrade the person. The Jews were very concerned about not degrading a person through a form of execution.

What burning was, they would take them and they would put them in a pit of manure up to their armpits. They would put them in a pit of manure up to their armpits and then the two witnesses—in every murder, in every case, there were two witnesses required to be found to testify. A person would not be put to death on the basis of just one witness, no matter how clear-cut it was. Only two witnesses.

When somebody was burned to death, they would put them in a pit of manure up to their armpits or their elbows if they fell down. They would tie two ropes around their neck and put them out in opposite directions. The two witnesses would hold the two ropes. You see what's going to happen here? If they lied, they're going to be causing this man's death. They would then pull on the ropes and somebody else would come in with a set of metal tongs and open their mouth. They would pour molten lead down their throat.

They would be burned from the inside. Where they got that from was when Nadab and Abihu, who were Aaron's sons, went in and offered unholy fire and God killed them by fire. When they carried them out, it says that they carried Nadab and Abihu out in their clothes. So the Jews determined that because they were killed by fire by the Lord but still had their clothes on, it could not have been an external burning. So they were not allowed to burn externally either. So they would pour this molten lead down their throat.

One of the reasons of why they put them in the manure, there are different reasons given, but one of them was again so that they would not be degraded because in the course of dying, their body would excrete things. Rather than them being degraded by that happening, people wouldn't see it if they were already in a pit of manure. It would help preserve the dignity of the defendant being killed. That's burning. That's the second most severe.

The third is beheading. Beheading was done by a sword. They would behead them. Then the fourth was strangulation, which is just like the burning except no burning. They would pull on the rope until the person died of being strangled. In the Bible, whenever the Bible calls for the death penalty without specifying the mode of death, strangulation was used.

If you go through the Old Testament and you see the penalty for this is stoning, the penalty for this is burning, and it says this person shall die for this but it doesn't say how, they assumed that it was the least severe of the four and they would strangle them to death. Boys were tried under law at the age of 13 and one day. Girls were tried at the age of 12 years and one day because it was assumed that girls matured earlier. I always had a problem with that when my school teachers told me that, but I guess it's true.

Jewish law, however, strongly emphasized the value of every soul. As you're going to see, as bad as this sounds, it was hardly ever practiced. Your understanding of this point is going to greatly affect your understanding of the New Testament as you read it from this point on. It really will. Let me explain why. As a safeguard, the trial process made it extremely difficult to ever prosecute someone on a capital crime.

As a part of this, there was a 23-member court that was authorized to try capital crimes. It had to be 23 members. Every time there was a capital crime, these 23 members would sit. It required a majority vote. The law required that a candidate to this court, if you wanted to be a member of this 23-member court, this is what you had to pass.

You must be humble, God-fearing, one who despises money, a lover of truth, beloved by the people for his qualities of goodness and humility, is sociable, self-composed, compassionate, and not the subject of any gossip. For this reason, neither a childless man nor a very old man could serve on this court because this person might lack compassion and would be unduly harsh with offenders.

Can you imagine a prosecuting attorney as he goes for his jurors saying I only want compassionate people? Can you see them dismissing the prosecuting attorney, dismissing people because they're not compassionate enough? That's what they looked for in this court. It wasn't trial by jury. It was trial by a court, and the court, these 23 men, had to be compassionate men.

In addition to these 23 men, there were three rows of candidates for the court who sat in front of them. These were men that were aspiring to get onto the court. These men would watch the proceedings, these candidates would watch the proceedings and alert the court if any error took place that might lead to an unlawful conviction. They cannot, however, interfere when the error would favor the prosecution's case. They would have to be silent.

They could only speak up if they could help the defendant's case. If they saw something going on that could have hurt him, they couldn't speak. They wouldn't be allowed to speak. Again, the benefit to the side of compassion. If they found him innocent, they would release him. If the majority voted to acquit him, he was acquitted. If they did not find him innocent, if they could not decide, they would adjourn in couples, in twos, for the night. They'd take a little food but no wine, and they would discuss the matter through the night in twos.

The following day, early in the morning, they go back out to the court and then vote again. If 12 acquit and 11 convict, he's set free. If 12 convict and 11 acquit, they add two more members to the court, even though it's a majority vote. They add two more members to the court until they get to 71. That's how serious they were about not making a mistake.

Now, there's other criteria that went into the trial. No circumstantial evidence was allowed. It had to be firsthand. No circumstantial evidence. Two witnesses who had no material interest in the case had to be found. Again, this is why when they tried Jesus, they tried to find two witnesses that would come together against him. In the light of this, and again, the Mishna was written between 70 AD and 200 AD, this would have all been in place during the time of Jesus. Everything I'm reading would have been in place in the time of Jesus.

Witnesses were disqualified if they were motivated by a desire to testify in order to escape punishment themselves. A man could not be found guilty through his own confession or through the testimony of immediate members of his own family. But here is the deal-breaker. This is the big one. A conviction would only be brought if the act was committed as a cool and premeditated act. He thought it through and still decided to do it.

What was the test of that? How could you prove that? The test to determine if this crime was cool and premeditated was this: the law specifically laid out that in order to be found guilty, the criminal had to have been warned prior to committing the crime and the criminal must have verbally indicated by responding to the warning that, yes, he is fully aware of the crime, he is aware of the punishment of the crime, but he chooses to go through with it anyway.

If that did not take place, he would be acquitted. Do you get what I'm saying? So who could be tried? Who really could ever be found guilty? As you can imagine, this provision did away with the death penalty in all but the very, very rarest of instances. The rabbis were aware of this because they openly declared that they found capital punishment disgusting and repulsive.

Over 18 years ago, an accepted rabbinic authority said this: the Sanhedrin or the Supreme Court that puts one person to death in seven years is termed tyrannical or destructive. Another rabbi reading that added and says, no, one person in 70 years. If the court puts one person to death in 70 years, it's wrong. Another goes on and says that if we had been the Sanhedrin, no one ever would have been put to death.

In practice, these four capital punishments were almost never used. Instead, this trial process was used mainly as a deterrent to let people see the seriousness and to let the drama play out to highlight the seriousness of the crime. Let me give an example. Back to stoning. For example, when a person was convicted of murder and they took him out to be stoned, this is what took place. They would take them out to a place of execution outside the city. Remember Jesus was killed outside the city because they weren't allowed to kill anyone inside the city. Leviticus 24 says, bring him forth who has cursed to a place outside the camp.

So they take him outside the camp. Now, picture the scene. They walk him out and he's to the place to be stoned. One person stands at the door of the courthouse with a flag and the jurors standing there. There's another man there with a flag. Some distance away, there's a man on a horse who can see the man with a flag. The man on the horse is watching the man with a flag.

If one of the judges says the man's already out to be executed, he's standing there waiting to be stoned, if one of the judges says I have something to say in the favor of the acquittal, he's already been tried guilty, found guilty, the flag man would wave the flag, the horseman would run off to the place where he was being executed and stop it and bring him back and they'd retry it.

Even if the prisoner says, "I have something to plead in my behalf," don't you think you'd get a lot of thoughts at that last minute? If he says, "I have something to say in my behalf," there was a flagman there. He would throw the flag. They would take him back. Even if the prisoner did that four or five times, they would let him leave the site of execution four or five times and go back and present his case. That's how serious, how sure they wanted to be that what they were doing was right.

As he was going to the place of execution, a herald, a man that would talk loudly, would walk along with him. From the city, from the courtroom to the place of execution, he would be shouting this: "Mr. Smith is going to be stoned for murder. The witnesses against him were so-and-so and so-and-so. Let anyone who knows anything in his favor come and declare it for him now."

Even after the trial, they left that open so that if somebody wanted to defend this person, they could still do it. When he reached the distance of about 15 feet from the place of stoning, they would say to him, "Confess, since it is the way of all who are condemned to death to confess." They got that from Joshua and Achan. Remember when Achan sinned? Joshua says, "Confess your sin." He did. That's the basis of them requiring confession. They said if he would not confess his sin, then he was asked to say, "May my death be an atonement for all of my sins," before he was stoned.

When he is six feet from the place of stoning, they remove his garments. The Mishna said that a man is stoned naked, but not a woman. The place of stoning was a cliff, a height of a minimum of 12 feet, the height of two men. One of the witnesses who testified against him pushes him by the hips over the edge of the cliff down. If he dies from the fall, the law has been carried out.

If not, now they'll stone him. If when he's on the ground he's facing down, the other witness goes down and spins him around so that he's facing upward. The second witness takes a stone, the stone being the weight as to require two men to carry it. When you picture stoning, these little things? Did you ever wonder about that? "Ouch, ouch, oh, he hit my head." That's not how it happened. They laid you down on the ground 12 feet, a stone two guys one guy couldn't carry it. One guy can carry a can, you can carry a big stone, I bet.

It takes two from 12 feet. How would you like a stone coming down at you from 12 feet carried by two strong men? He faces upward. The other witness comes and he drops the stone upon his heart. If he doesn't die, then all the others drop rocks. The bodies of the person stoned are then hung, no matter their form of execution. Any of those four, they would tie them by their hands and put them on a pole for the remainder of that day. Men face forward, women not face forward. They would hang there for the remainder of the day as a warning to people the consequences of serious crimes.

They were taken down before nightfall and they were put in a separate cemetery, in a separate place. The bodies were not buried in the cemetery of their fathers. Instead, there were two burial grounds reserved by the court. One burial ground was specifically for those who were stoned and burned. A second burial ground was for those who were decapitated and strangled.

How does this compare to the death penalty in the United States today? The Eighth Amendment contains a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. It likewise states, as Jewish law does, that punishment must be done in accordance with maintaining the dignity of the man being punished, again, along the lines of Jewish law. There are some areas where the Jewish system is harsher. Under Jewish law, as I said, a 13-year-old male, 12-year-old girl, can be tried. In the US, it's limited at 16. No one under 16 can be tried capital punishment. There have been some cases, extreme, where some states have allowed 15, but not less than that.

Under Jewish law, there were many crimes punishable by death. In US law, only murder is punishable by death. Although in 1994, Congress passed the Peacetime Espionage Act, which allows someone who is caught spying during time of peace to be killed, although no one has. The primary difference, however, is under Jewish law, it was extremely difficult to be tried and found guilty. In the USA, as comparison, executions have become almost numbingly routine.

We don't live with the pain, the ordeal, the struggle of going through that trial process, of giving the person the benefit of every last doubt, of wanting to find a reason to acquit them. It maybe reflects more of who we are. In other religions, Buddhism, there's disagreement as to Buddhism forsakes or permits death penalty. You can make a case from their writings for both. Hinduism, the same. A case can be had for both permitting it and not permitting it.

In Islam, it's permitted for two purposes only. One is intentional murder and the second is for spreading mischief in the land. Those are the only two things that a person can be killed as a capital crime in Islam. Mischief in the land has been meant to mean treason, apostasy, when someone leaves the Islamic faith and joins another, terrorism, land, sea, or air piracy, rape, adultery, and homosexual behavior.

How does this apply to the New Testament? It's going to apply in a lot of places. Let me just make one. Remember the story of the woman caught in adultery? They catch a woman, they say, "Jesus, this woman has been caught in the very act of adultery." I think this is John 8. "This woman's been caught in the very act of adultery. The law says to stone her. What do you say?" Remember the story?

He gets down and he starts writing in the dust. He says, "Well," he says, "you can stone her, but only he who is without sin may cast the first stone." He continues writing in the dust. One of the translations indicates that what he was writing in the names of the dust were the names of women because it says that the religious leaders dismissed themselves oldest to youngest. Who would know that order? Would they know that order? They wouldn't have known the order oldest to youngest.

The conjecture has been that he's written the names of things that those men did with women. He'd write a woman's name, the oldest man. He wipes it out. He walks away. Writes the next oldest woman that he had a problem with at one time. Wrote her name in the dust. Wipes it away. He walks away. Whatever the cause, here's how it'll change. When we read that story without the understanding of what we talked about today, there's a tendency to think that what they were after was they wanted to kill her.

Don't you get that impression? These hard-hearted men wanted to kill her. The law says to kill her, what about it? That's not what was going on. They didn't want to kill her. The law really didn't allow them to kill her. They hadn't killed people for that. It wasn't a practice that they did. But the law said to do it, and they're trying to hang Jesus on him not obeying the law because they thought he had to say kill her even though their current tradition was looser than that. It spins it.

So, probably exactly the opposite of what we think happened there. The premises that were underlying there were opposite that. Well, what are applications to us today? The Bible says vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. God kind of has this thing going and he says, look, if you want to handle an issue, if you want to seek vengeance, you can. But we're both not going to do it.

If you want to, you may. But if you want me to, I will. God's dealing with people is always redemptive, always. Everything he touches is to redeem. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. The second is that God wants us to be merciful and compassionate and to give the benefit of the doubt to the person that we're up against with an issue. The benefit of the doubt should always go to the person.

If you look at David, David was a man after God's own heart, right? Yet he was merciful to a fault, wasn't he? He really got in a lot of trouble because he was so merciful. He really did. Here's the question: Was David merciful because God showed him so much mercy, or did God show him so much mercy because he was so merciful? The answer is yes.

Here's the truth: I would rather get to heaven and found out that I believed the best in a person and I was wrong, than get to heaven and find out that I believed the worst in a person and I was wrong. So people say all the time, "Well, you know, how can I believe the best in a person when they've failed me so many times?" They've, you know, so many times they've done the same thing. Drugs are a big part of this. You know what I'm talking about.

How can I believe the best when it's been 10 times, 15 times, they've done the same thing over and over to me? Well, I think here's maybe part of the answer, is choose to believe the best in them but risk on the basis of their past. Girls, if you're dating a guy and he's been in a lot of trouble but you really like him and you think there's a lot of potential there and you're thinking about marrying, would you marry him? No.

Would you believe the best in him? Yeah. Don't risk your future on the basis of what you hope to be true. It doesn't mean you can't believe the best in him. You can believe the best in him, but don't risk your future on anything but the basis of what's happened in the past. Can God do a sovereign work in their life and change them overnight? He can. He can. Wait and watch it happen. Then marry. There are so many women, especially women because there are so many compassionate women, and that's good.

But that have risked their future not on the basis of what someone has been like, but what they hope they will be like. That is not wise. But it is good to think the best, believe the best, and tell them that, that you believe the best. But risk on the basis of what you know to be true. And if you don't do it that way, you're actually probably going to get to a point where you won't even want to be with people because you got burned so many times that you won't even take a chance on anybody. Set some limits.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller, and today we've been in the book of Joshua. You can hear this study again by going to ccleb.com. Visit ccleb.com and have a look under Resources. There you'll find our teaching archives, or call and request a CD copy at 717-507-7862. Let me repeat that, 717-507-7862.

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