ON TRUTH AND JUSTICE ~ Psalm 35

A federal trial looked nothing like what I would have expected it to look like. Every witness who takes the stand to testify to the truth must raise his hand (no Bible) and answer affirmatively to the question: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? No “so help you God”. When God has been removed from the United States Federal Justice System, the citizens of our country are in real trouble and heading for serious judgment. So, my question is this: To whose truth does the witness on the federal witness stand testify? And is the Court bringing judgment by the authority of God or by its own authority?

John MacArthur has said this: What is truth? One of the most profound and eternally significant questions in the Bible was posed by an unbeliever. Pilate—the man who handed Jesus over to be crucified—turned to Jesus in His final hour, and asked, “What is truth?” It was a rhetorical question, a cynical response to what Jesus had just revealed: “I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.” Two thousand years later, the whole world breathes Pilate’s cynicism. Some say truth is a power play, a metanarrative constructed by the elite for the purpose of controlling the ignorant masses. To some, truth is subjective, the individual world of preference and opinion. Others believe truth is a collective judgment, the product of cultural consensus, and still others flatly deny the concept of truth altogether. (Grace to You. What is Truth? - August 4, 2009.

In the same sermon, Pastor John defined truth according to what the Bible teaches. “Truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God. Truth is the self-expression of God. God is the author, source, determiner, governor, arbiter, ultimate standard, and final judge of all truth.”

News flash! You can take God’s name out of the courtroom, out of the printed newspaper, trying to remove all remnants of Him from your life, but He is still there sitting in judgment. And that judgment is as sure as the truth it is based upon. Why do people agree to give a false witness? Ultimately, it is because of human nature. Added to that, specifically, those who enforce “justice” today are bullies. Rather than seeking the truth, they seek convictions. Rather than saying, “Just tell us the truth,” in so many words they say, “Tell us what we want to hear, or you will be looking at the same fate as the defendant.” If a case stands on its clear evidence, there would be no need for any of this. A “justice system that intimates its witnesses into testifying to what they want them to say—under threat to their own detriment—is a perverse system that can in no way represent true justice. I ask you: Who will incur the greater judgment? While the system that stands for justice will be held to a greater standard, the witness must decide whether he or she will fear God or man. How serious is giving false testimony? Exodus 23:1-3, 6-8—"You shall not bear a false report; do not join your hand with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not follow the masses in doing evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after a multitude in order to pervert justice; nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his dispute. You shall not pervert the justice due to your needy brother in his dispute. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent or the righteous, for I will not acquit the guilty. You shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of the just.”

Psalm 35:11a—Malicious witnesses rise up…

Spurgeon said: To be misunderstood or to be made the deliberate target of false accusation is great sorrow.

We feel the pain, heartache, and outrage every time we see this scenario played out for us on television and the movies. Though television is not real, we all know of similar situations that actually took place. This verse ought to make us think ultimately of what Jesus encountered when He was falsely accused (indicted), brought to trial, and convicted in the most egregious representation of “a court of justice” in all of history. Malicious indicates the cruelty of the witnesses’ intentions to harm the defendant. False witnesses are those who are guilty of injustice and wrong. Their false testimony is as injurious as an act of violence would be.

Psalm 27:12-13—Do not deliver me over to the desire of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and such as breathe out violence. I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

Psalm 35:11b—…they ask me of things that I do not know.

When my father was forced to testify in the grand jury hearing regarding my son and me, he became known to the jurors as the “old man who doesn’t know anything.” Later, in a meeting with my husband’s attorneys, a meeting in which I was asked to be present, I witnessed the aggressive show put on by these “officers of the court” in order to manipulate and force my husband to take a plea deal. He was adamant about going to trial. When they could see that their pleadings were not going anywhere, my husband’s attorney excused himself. As he was leaving the room, he walked between our two chairs and mumbled, “Oh, by the way, the prosecution is threatening to indict your father-in-law, Greg.” Shocked and in unison we both yelled, “For what?” He replied, “For lying to the grand jury.” My father was on anti-anxiety medication at the time he had testified before the grand jury. He had lost my mother, his wife of 50 years, to breast cancer. We later learned, when we were able to review his transcript, that he had not lied about anything. He honestly did not know the answers to their questions.

I think a better translation of the above portion of verse 11 would be: They laid to my charge things that I knew not. They demand answers for things I have no knowledge. This was certainly true in my case. I was not involved in my husband’s business. I was a full-time mother who homeschooled her children and taught women’s Bible studies for the eleven years after my daughter died. My husband had already been sentenced and sent to prison (conveniently) just prior to the commencement of trial for my son and me. Our whole trial was focused on my husband and the allegations towards him. Basically, the prosecution put on the case they would have used against my husband. I do not believe the names of my son and I even came up until two weeks into the trial. How were we to defend the accusations against another; and why should we have been forced into that situation at all? We begged our attorneys to call my husband to the stand to testify. Greg’s attorney told me to my face that it would be insane not to do so when we ran into him before the trial began. Supposedly, when my attorney contacted him, later, he said, “It would be insane to call him.” So, they refused and thought it best to put us on the stand instead. Our attorneys called no one to testify on our behalf, re-examined few of the government witnesses, and introduced very little of the massive amounts of evidence we could have offered in our defense. For the most part, our answers consisted of, “I don’t know.” Why? Because we didn’t. And here is the kicker. Because I answered truthfully that I didn’t know the answers to the questions I was being asked, and because the jury convicted, the judge concluded that I had lied on the stand and added a 2-point obstruction of justice charge to my sentence. I believe that the Court already had sentences in mind for both my son and me. When I DID NOT get convicted on all counts as charged, the Court added more charges in order that I would incur the same sentence that was established for me before trial. Innocent until proven guilty is a sham, and the consensus in our society proves as much.

Deuteronomy 16:18-20—You shall appoint for yourself judges and officers in all your towns which the Lord your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, that you may live and possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you. Deuteronomy 32:41—If I sharpen My flashing sword and My had takes hold on justice, I will render vengeance on My adversaries, and I will repay those who hate Me. 1 Kings 3:28—When all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had handed down, they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice. Psalm 37:28—For the LORD loves justice and does not forsake His godly ones; they are preserved forever, but the descendants of the wicked will be cut off.

We know that one day God will say, “Enough!” He will bring destruction to the earth in righteous judgment. (Revelation 11:16-18; 15:3-4; 16:7; 19:1-4). 2 Peter 3:10-13—But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. When Christ physically reigns on earth, God’s righteous justice will finally be on full display. Today is not the time to be complacent. We must keep our eyes fixed on Him and our hearts set on fulfillment of the Great Commission. Justice is coming; freedom is coming, because the King is coming!

Do you love justice, Beloved? We all love freedom, right? You do not have to experience a prison sentence to get an understanding of what a loss of freedom looks like. It grieves my heart to see the country we live in today. We just celebrated Memorial Day, and it grieves me to know of all those who lost their lives fighting for our country’s freedoms. What would they think of our country today? In Deuteronomy 16:20, we can see how justice based on truth leads to freedom. Injustice should bother us. America has experienced God’s blessings for hundreds of years. If our system of “justice” is perverted and corrupt, how much freedom will we lose? Today, we are beginning to see the ramifications of just how far our government is willing to go to take away our freedom to worship. How can a liquor store or an abortion clinic be essential to the well-being of Americans, but churches are not? America is ripe for judgment.

Luke 18:1-8—Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.’ For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, ⁵ yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

O Church arise!