Deuteronomy 21 - Various laws and their meanings

Deuteronomy chapter 21 think about all of the challenges that go along with starting a country you know you've got a people who've been living for 400 years in Egypt and then they wander in the wilderness for another 40 years and they're about to take the land that God had promised their forefathers many many years before and and you know these people have picked up all of this all of the the ways of living that of the people around them they've been living in Egypt for you know although they'd kept to themselves in terms of their culture of of their race they they their religious practices they're just ways of doing things we're probably pretty Egyptian and so God has been speaking through Moses for the course and we'll through the course of this book to talk to them about just how to deal with things and I want to show you on the screen here the topics that we're going to be dealing with tonight there are five of them and verses 1 through 9 Moses is going to speak to the people about what to do in the case of an unsolved murder and you might say well if a server murders unsolved what's the big deal it's just unsolved I suppose and you just know God's got something else to say there needed to be some direction on how to treat women who had been taken from captive nations not talking about the Canaanites talking about city states or nations outside of Canaan where the women were available to be taken as wives the Lord had some important things to say there in verses 15 through 17 he's going to deal with the issue of the firstborn and the right of the firstborn to receive a double portion and the Lord is going to speak about that we'll get into that then he's going to talk about what to do in the case of a rebellious son there's a challenge and then finally the curse of being hung on a tree which is referenced several times in the New Testament this passage in Deuteronomy will give you some insight into why they said what they said in the New Testament we will even reference some of those passages so let's get started here follow along as I begin reading here let me just read verse 1 here and then give me give you a little bit of background it says if in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess someone is found slain meaning murdered lying in the open country and it is not known who killed him and then he's going to give them some Direction related to that but let me just let me just set this up a little bit for you just a moment you know today when we hear about things like this the word that is passed around is getting closure people talk a lot about getting closure on a matter especially when it involves a loss of life and when a murder has taken place closure usually means first of all I suppose figuring out who committed the crime in that second of all prosecuting you know the guilty party them getting what they deserve related to it then people will say I've got closure the rest of us say justice has been done but even today you know with all of the crime fighting methods that we have in crime solving methods at our disposal today including DNA evidence and all kinds of other incredible things there are times when murders still go unsolved and they call them cold cases these days well God needed to give the Israelites direction on what happens if they have a cold case a situation where there's been a murder and nobody is has been accused of it and we learn something about first of all when a murder is committed back in our study of the Book of Numbers I won't make you turn there but I will remind you of the fact that the Lord told the people in in the book of numbers that when a murder takes place the shedding of blood actually defiles the land or if you will pollutes the land by the way that's what describes the difference between what you and I might consider to be the result of a cold case which to us is just a mystery if it happens there's a murder and we didn't nobody's ever figured it out and it goes 20 30 years even longer and nobody knows who committed the murder we say well you know you know I'm sure there's even been books written and probably you know shows made about famous cold cases but we just kind of say well yeah that's an interesting mystery well it's more than a mystery in Israel why because the Lord lives in their midst and we can't ever forget that when we are reading in through the Old Testament and how they're to deal with things we cannot forget the fact that many of the things that are said to the Israelites are because the Lord is living in their midst okay the holiness of God is there so God said to the nation of Israel and in the Book of Numbers listen when when when innocent blood is shed it pollutes the land it defiles the land so things need to be done so what is going to be following here in these passages because there's no person to punish right because we don't know who committed the murder what is going to follow in this passage is the ritual that God is giving the Israelites related to purging or cleansing the land so that the land doesn't come under a curse because of the defilement of the shedding of innocent blood so what does he say verse 2 here's the instructions he says then your elders in your judges shall come out and they shall measure the distance to the surrounding cities and the elders of that city that is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer that has never been worked and that is not pulled in a yoke and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water which is neither plowed nor sown and shall break the purrs neck there in the valley Wow you know we we read this today with our American kind of sensibilities and it all sounds rather violent and maybe even a little bit unnecessary but remember what's going on here is God is giving these relights a ritual related to the purging or the cleansing of the land and so it begins by saying that the city nearest to the dead body is responsible for carrying out or performing this cleansing ritual and they were to procure a heifer bring it and by the way the heifer had to have never been worked before or yoked to a wagon or another animal and then they were to locate the nearest Valley to that town which had never been sewn or plowed and then they'd had to make sure that the valley had running water and there they were to kill the heifer by breaking its neck and you'll noticed in these verses that it doesn't say anything about building an altar doesn't say anything about offering that a heifer as a burnt offering there's no fire involved here there's no offering involved here there's no altar they simply kill the heifer in fact we read nothing even of the blood of the heifer being used in this ritual and it's a rather graphic kind of a picture but it's also a clear one to a declaration that is given to you a uni in the New Testament and that is the wages of sin is death and this being one of the most heinous sins that is listed in the scriptures related to you know the things that we can do wrong we see this rather graphic and rather violent sort of a thing that they go through in order to cleanse the land and the Jews are reminded here of the fact again that when there is sin there must be a death the death of one in the place of another and remember there's no culprit that has been caught for this crime and so this animal stands in if you will but there's more to this ritual than just the death of the animal read on with me verse five it says then the priests the sons of Levi shall come forward and then he just talks him again about you know why and how the priests have been specially chosen he said for the Lord your God has chosen to minister to him and to bless in the name of the Lord and by their word every dispute and every assault shall be settled and so therefore they're kind of the judges if you will in the land and also it says in verse six all of the elders of that city nearest to the slain man look at this shall wash their hands over the heifer so here's the need of the running water so they will wash their hands over the the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley they literally will take some of the water that is running through the valley and pour it over their hands as the elders wash their hands and we're going to see here in a moment that while they're doing it they actually recite something speaking of their own innocence but by the way this is but what's behind the idea of what we say today I wash my hands of you or I wash my hands of this situation it comes from this basic idea to say I I am free of all responsibilities related to this crime and that's what they're doing by washing their hands over the carcass of this animal they are declaring the elders of the city since they represent the city that they're saying we are innocent of this crime and any involvement or in this crime or knowledge of it at all and then it says they were to recite the following look at verse seven and they shall testify our hands did not shed this blood nor did our eyes see it shed except atonement Oh Lord for your people Israel whom you have redeemed and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel so that their blood guilt be atoned for and then Moses says so you shall the guilt of innocent blood from your midst when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord now although this ritual for purification may sound kind of strange to our ears today we need to be careful not to lose the meaning that is behind this idea and its root is the sanctity of human life because this this this murder is not just ignored they don't just simply go out and do an investigation and say well you know is there any evidence here do we no question you know we're kind of assuming that the the people around there would probably do some kind of an investigation but nothing comes of it there's no there's no culprit so instead of just saying well there's a there's one for the cold case file and closing it and putting it on the shelf and saying well maybe someday something will come to light somebody will make a confession on their deathbed or somebody will come forward with some eyewitness testimony or something until then all right we'll just kind of move on with life God doesn't let them do that because there are issues related to the the sin and the violation of that this sin presents to a holy and righteous God and there's also the issue of the sanctity of human life so I think one other thing I guess before we move on that we need to understand that about this ritual is that the death of the heifer is not meant to exonerate or excused the guilty party in other words the heifer didn't die for the perpetrator of the crime you with me the ritual was meant for the atonement of the land that was that was the main point the guilty person is still going to stand before God because even though there was no one who apparently saw this crime God saw it God sees everything and we have to remember that God sees everything and if we thought more about the fact that God sees everything it would probably stop us from doing some of the dumb things we do from time to time let alone some of the big things that we do that are really dumb next is the issue of taking a wife from a conquered enemy verse 10 when you go out to war against your enemies and the Lord your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire to take her to be your wife and you bring her home to your house she shall shave her head and pare her nails alright stop there for just a moment first of all in the ancient world it was a fairly common thing for first of all men you know to go to war second of all within the context of defeating an enemy to see a beautiful woman in the among the aftermath of that particular military campaign and for somebody to probably desire her you know curse of being beautiful I suppose so God laid out specific guidelines for the Israelites to follow that we're largely going to see in these verses is meant to protect the woman which is pretty crazy because women weren't much to be protected back in those days there were more of a commodity than anything else and you're going to see here you know what the Lord says related to this first of all notice in verse 12 that the man was to bring her home to his home there he was to shave her head trim her nails which you know we don't know exactly what that was all about it probably had a significant meaning back in those days who knows maybe it just was talking about starting over again but you know in all the commentaries that I read about this everyone just basically kind of took a stab at it but we we honestly don't know but we do know that this man was to bring her to his home and that may not sound like much but is supposed to bring her there and care for her and he's to marry her bringing her into his home is means that she's not to be used she is to be actually married to bring a woman into your home is essentially to express the desire to make her your wife and furthermore in verse 13 it says that she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month and of course we don't know whether this assumes that the woman's parents died in in the battle or or simply the fact that she was taken away from her people and most likely won't get to see them again but however or whatever the reason was the woman was to be given a full month before the marriage was finally consummated or finalized if you will the man would bring her into his home but that would be tantamount to betrothal marriage back in those days was not it wasn't a marriage until they consummated the relationship and so um the man who brought this woman in was to take a full month to let her mourn for her family and the loss of her culture and everything else and to kind of acquiesce to this new family and lifestyle that goes along with it and you know it's a full month to do these things and and and he wasn't to just insist that she just you know become his wife immediately and so forth and then it goes on to say here in the middle of verse 13 after that meaning after that period of one month you may go into her and be her husband and that is a euphemism for consummating the relationship and she shall be your wife and again I want to just remind you that in the Old Testament again the act of consummating a relationship is what constituted marriage that was the marriage ceremony in fact you know it's interesting we know we know in the testament that there were marriage ceremonies they we don't actually ever get any information about the ceremony in fact really all we hear about is the feast because it's the feast that lasted a long time what kind of a ceremony they had we don't know do you guys understand and what we do in marriage ceremonies is all traditional I mean people think that it's probably biblical but you know it and this I maybe I'm ranting a little bit off the page here but it's just really interesting that how much we do the Bible doesn't say to have pastors perform marriages there's nothing in the word about that nothing in the Old Testament you want to make somebody your wife you bring her into your tent and you consummate the relationship and that and that constitutes basically saying you're my wife I've married you we're done let's go what's for dinner or whatever you know the thing is you know it was just it was like it was me again we know that Jesus in the New Testament oh Jesus attended a marriage feast the feast would last like seven days you know but there is nothing in the Word of God about ceremonies nothing so how do we do marriage there we just do it we do it the way we think we should and you know we just you know it's just really interesting we assume that because it's happening in a church this is the way it probably says it the Word of God but it doesn't so kind of yeah interesting isn't it now the Lord needed to bring some further rules into play here for the possibility of a failed relationship because not every woman who's taken away from her home her own people her family is going to be even willing to acclimate to a new culture a new family a new society some women are probably going to dig their heels in and just say you know you took me here against my will and I'm never going to act like your wife or something like that well that's a pretty dangerous response for a woman to have back in those days because a man could do just about anything he wanted with her and that would really put her at some pretty serious risk so the Lord gives some interesting guidelines look at this verse 14 but if you no longer delight in her and again this could be for any number of reasons not the least of which is the woman just simply not desiring to be this man's wife and her ability to kind of you know integrate into Jewish society he says you shall let her go where she wants Wow but you shall not sell her for money nor shall you treat her as a slave since you have humiliated her your Bible may say since you have humbled her it's clear from this passage that if a man takes a woman and then rejects that woman for whatever reason it is an act of humiliation toward the woman and interestingly enough I looked up this hebrew word in my hebrew dictionary and it literally means to be bowed down or afflicted this word humiliated or humbled to be bowed down or afflicted so the Lord is giving some very specific directions to the man he says listen if for some reason you decide this isn't working you need to let her go where she wants to go you may not and you can't say to her alright you don't to be my wife you'll be my servant can't do that because you already treated her as your wife you already brought her injury home you you you acted like she was your wife and now because it didn't work out you can't treat her like a servant you can't sell her god there's no you got to let her go where she wants to go I know these are pretty amazing things to read in the context of the day as far as the rights of a woman and so forth and the protection of a woman and it's and it's unfortunate that that God has to talk about these things but he but he does he talks about him because God deals with reality you know it'd be great I suppose if God just said by the way once you get married stay marry and sellers to it boom but God deals with reality and the reality of sin is that sometimes marriages end for whatever reason and a broken marriage always leaves an ugly scar and and you know so they had to know how to deal with these kinds of situations now beginning in verse 15 this next section deals with the rights of the firstborn and this isn't something that we typically do but there is some interesting stuff in here again it deals with a bad situation in marriage and we're specifically talking about polygamy which is of course the taking of multiple wives and it says here in verse 15 if a man has two wives and this is another one of those situations it's like why didn't God just come out and just say guys one wife just take one wife then we don't have to deal with all this stuff and you know it causes people to answer you know why did God allow this why did he bear with polygamy for a period of time and the answer is I don't really know I I wish I did I know that it wasn't his design originally for marriage I also know something else I also know that in Scripture polygamy is almost universally portrayed as a bad idea it is shown to be a very negative situation and it causes all kinds of problems and one of the things that one of the problems that is he's going to talk about here is what I suppose is kind of a natural outcome of somebody having more than one wife and that is the favors one over the other it happens happened to Jacob you know he loved Rachel he didn't love Leah so but again I want to just reiterate the fact that everything we read in the Bible concerning polygamy kind of speaks of the challenges of taking multiple wives which shouldn't surprise us because whenever we violate God's design we invite challenges into our lives right so that shouldn't surprise us so here we talk about another negative negative element it says if a man has two wives the one loved and the other unloved so he favors one and not the other and both the loved and the unloved have born in children and if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved meaning born of the unloved wife then on the day when he assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his sons he may not treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the unloved who is the firstborn but he shall acknowledge the firstborn the son of the unloved by giving him a double portion of all that he has for he is the firstfruits of his strength the right of the firstborn is his what's interesting about this passage and again we don't deal with this thing we don't deal with multiple wives thankfully we don't deal with the issue even of firstborn sons getting a double portion you know if you have if you raise multiple sons in your family and you actually come to the point one day of giving them an inheritance we just don't do this we don't say well you're my firstborn so you you get double but that's what they did in fact the Jews weren't the only ones that did it if a man had four sons or five sons a man had five sons and he got to the point of divvying up you know his inheritance he would actually give he would break it up into six portions and he'd give the oldest son a double portion and then dole out the a single portion to the rest of his sons that's just the way it worked and that's what God is telling the people to do here but what's really interesting about this is the Lord is telling them to obey this guideline which is being put into the law apart from emotion in order to notice here that the Lord is saying you can't do this just because you feel like it or just because you favor this individual more than the other in other words emotion is not to rule your decision-making in this thing you're to do this according to the guidelines that I've established right well it's an important statement you know the emotions are not to be the ruling factor in this case verse 18 if a man has a stubborn and rebellious son and we're going to see here in just a minute that it even goes beyond that who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother and though they discipline him in other words bringing some kind of correction will not listen to them then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of the city at the gate of the place where he lives and they shall say to the elders of his City this is our this our son is stubborn and rebellious he will not obey obey our voice he is a glutton and a drunkard notice that it goes beyond just rebellious and and whatever else I mean this guy is just off the rails it says then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones so you shall purge the evil from your midst and all israel shall hear and fear all right this is one of those interesting passages that again tends to kind of assault our American sensibilities first of all I want to tell you something about this what you may not know is that in other cultures there was no mitigating element between parent deciding that their child should die and actually putting the child to death what I mean by that is in certain cultures like Greek and Roman under Greek and Roman law parents had absolute authority if a parent decided that their child should be punished unto death they didn't have to take him to the city elders they just do it and nobody would have said anything and that was not under under Grecian and Roman law that was not considered an act of murder so you see the first thing you need to understand about this is that God is putting another step in the way he's saying you got to bring your son to the elders and-and-and assumably we're you know the elders have an opportunity to look at this situation for what it is and to corroborate the the testimony that the parents are bringing or to say hey listen you guys need to chill this guy is not so bad you know just but either way they do not have that ultimate right under Jewish law and then I want to point out the fact there as it said in verse 20 that the this son is guilty then much more of much more than just not getting along with mom and dad again it says here that he is a glutton and a drunkard so there's a bit more going on here than then rebellion but but rebellion is the other thing I want to talk about because this is you need to understand something rebellion is seen in the Word of God as a great evil and that comes a little bit as a surprise to most American Christians certainly it comes as a great surprise to Americans who are not Christians and one of the reasons for that is because our American culture tends to highlight rebellion and think it's a good thing you know we we think I mean we we we cherish rebellion we have all kinds of movies that are based on rebellion and they're considered the strong people the honorable people you know you know the bumper sticker that says question of RIT you know we we applaud that yeah yeah that's a good thing we think we're tough and we're strong because we look at authority in the face and we say forget it I'm not doing what you want well God says that's rebellion you know we read in in in Romans chapter 13 who were to obey the laws of the government and we read that were kinda like wow yeah but they did Paul didn't know what kind of a government we have to obey do you know what kind of government he had to obey Paul who was in charge at that time Rome who was in charge of Rome at that time Nero do you know anything about Nero he was insane he was literally out of his mind so imagine you know we talk about our president sometimes in rather negative tones how would you like to have a guy who just for fun killed people put him on sticks big poles and lit him on fire in his garden to light up the garden that was Nero then interesting and it was concerning that government that Paul wrote to the root to the Romans and said obey the laws of the government Oh BAE the laws that are out there why because rebellion is a great evil it is not a sign of Independence it is not a sign of strength what is it a sign of I found an interesting kind of quote slash definition if you will of rebellion let me put this on the screen for you you might find this interesting an obstinate resistance to God actually exalts a self will to the place of authority which ultimately belongs only to God you see here's the point God is the one who is the authority of our lives ultimately do you know why we obey the laws of the government do you know why because God said to do it right said to obey the laws of the government so that's why we and and the reason we you know follow it there's because the ultimate authority told us to do this he is the ultimate authority of our lives he is the leader you know here's the other word we use for it Lord we don't often think about what Lord means but Lord means ultimate authority master master he's the master of our lives right and so we obey Him because there is no authority greater than he he is the if you will Supreme Court or whatever do you understand that that rebellion is ultimately a rejection of the authority of God in a person's life and and the declaration that they are their own authority you can't tell me what to do you're not going to tell me what to do I'm not going to listen to you why it's my life and I'm going to do what I want with my life again we make movies of that attitude and we celebrate it but it is a great evil and something that under God's economy was a capital offense the fact that this offends us is proof of the fact that we don't understand the depth of how severe this thing is and how important it is you know for us as parents to deal with rebellion in our children I'm not talking about taking them out to the city and having them stoned either I'm talking about just dealing with the usual kind of parental discipline that is needed to make a child understand that rebellion is not going to be tolerated in our home and to understand what the the root of rebellion is you know samuel spoke of rebellion and said that it's as the sin of divination so there's a there's a similarity there of just rejecting the lordship of God you know the oversight of God and searching in other self-directed areas for my answers and and so on and so forth you know so there's a similarity to the sin of divination in that sense yeah so rebellion is a serious matter you know and we need to love our kids to it unfortunately we you know today most parents we talk about our kids going through that rebellious stage as if this is a normal part of childhood and we just need to kind of love them through it you know but we I think as Christian parents we need to do something more than that you know and that doesn't mean getting frustrated and and getting angry but it does involve stepping up our parental guidance in their lives to understand how serious rebellion really is all right then we come to the final two verses of the chapter and it says and if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death so now we got somebody who's been you know accused of a crime he's been punished for it by death and by the way that death would usually occur or come about by stoning and he says and you hang him on a tree now this is not referring to crucifixion and it's not saying that's how he died what they would do is they would impale the body what a different time of living wasn't it they would impale the body on a pole on a tree and leave it there as a deterrent to other activity of the same kind that got this guy into trouble so in other words it was you know it was a way of letting people know this isn't tolerated so if those things happen verse 23 his body shall not remain all night on the tree but you shall bury him the same day and that there is the you know the Jews a tradition right there laid out they buried people the same day and here's the reason why God says it for a hanged man is cursed by God you shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance all right you can see here from this verse the idea here is that leaving the man hanging on a tree would defile the land if he's left there too long so he's saying don't do that but it's also important to note here that the body of this individual was not cursed by God because it was hanging on a tree it was hanging on a tree because it was cursed by God you with me the the curse was not because it was on a tree it was on a tree because of the curse they were cursed because of their crime because they had been accused found guilty of a crime and they had to be put to death for that crime and so there was a curse upon that individual that was shown by hanging them on a tree so God says don't leave him overnight because that would defile the land take him down barium and so forth now what's interesting about this is this passage definitely points forward to Christ excuse me and when we read through the New Testament we find the New Testament authors have picked up on this idea of a tree when they refer to the cross of Christ and Peter and the other apostles did this let me show you some examples up on the screen the first is from Acts chapter 5 this is Peter and the other disciples speaking the God of Our Fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree notice they didn't say specifically on a cross they said on a tree and that's interesting because they're using language from Deuteronomy and then you've got Peters remark in 1st Peter chapter 2 verse 24 that says he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds you have been healed and then the Apostle Paul actually borrows this passage from Deuteronomy he says in Galatians chapter 3 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us for it is written cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree and you'll notice when you read that in your Bible there's a footnote pointing you to this very chapter in Deuteronomy and what we learn by that is that Jesus not only died in our place but he took upon himself our curse the curse that was on our lives because we had disobeyed the law and and so forth and he received the curse that we deserved and we received as a result what we did not deserve which of course is the promise of new life in Christ so it's interesting isn't it that God declares in Deuteronomy chapter 21 that anyone who you know is hung on a tree there's a curse that's obviously there because of the crime in which that they that they committed and so forth and this is the reason you see why the Jews just couldn't accept Jesus as the Messiah for most Jews this was this was an unmanageable conundrum because you see Messiah means Anointed One and they had a pretty high view of The Anointed One but they knew that Jesus had been hung on a cross which was tantamount to being hung on a tree since they were made of wood and they knew that that made Jesus the cursed one and so in a Jewish thinking it's like wait a minute he's the anointed one and he's the cursed one at the same time how can the Anointed One who is blessed of God be the cursed one who is rejected by God how is that possible and so in most cases they just said that is the most ridiculous contradictory thought I've ever heard in my life and they rejected it out of hand let's put Galatians back up one more time here's what they didn't understand Christ redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse right by becoming that curse yes The Anointed One redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us literally taking that curse on himself for us and yes and Paul openly cites Deuteronomy in declaring Jesus Christ as the savior of all mankind he openly cites this contradiction but the Jews could not handle he he doesn't try to soft-pedal it or say you know I know there's this passage in Deuteronomy and I know that bother some of you guys but listen just don't worry about that Jesus no no he connects the two and says yes yes anyone who's hung on a tree is under a curse Jesus was under a curse for us he took our curse so that we might be set free what a powerful statement what a powerful reality you know that is rooted right here in Deuteronomy chapter 21 you

Channel: Calvary Chapel Ontario

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Length: 44min 5sec (2645 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2017