Lesson 43
Righteous Domestic Policies – 21:1-23
Tonight we will start winding up the conclusion of this section of
Scripture. I want to warn some of you
that have a little prissiness about you that you’d better start reading ahead
in this book because in chapters 22, 23, and 24 we’re going to get into some
terms that may be embarrassing to you, and I intend to go through every verse
and every word, so we’re not going to skip the passages. Therefore I would suggest for your own
relaxation, that you won’t be vibrating too rapidly when we cover this
material, that you will read ahead and get used to some of the terms that are
being used here. And if you feel shocked
about the language of Scripture I want to remind you of one point and that was
that this was a public sermon delivered to a mixed congregation. So that’s the way it was in the Biblical time
and if you have personal problems in this area don’t blame it on me and don’t
blame it on the Word of God because we intend to cover these things as they are
written. So my suggestion is to read
ahead, all the way to chapter 24 and read it a couple times until you can go
through it without turning three shades of red.
When you have reached that point of preparation then we will be able to
cover the material.
Deut. 21 is the last chapter in this particular section of Scripture and
because it is it’s time to once again check out where we’ve come from. From chapters 16-21 we’ve been dealing with a
general topic. We might summarize this
whole section by saying this section of Deuteronomy emphasizes righteousness,
just as chapters 12-15 emphasized the unity of the nation and it laid down the
basic principle that will be observed throughout all history. Those of you who are interested in social
action, those of you who are interested in politics and history might do well
to note this. There is a certain dynamic
in history that will always operate and it’s laid out for us in this forum of
this constitution called Deuteronomy.
Chapters 12-15 spell out one principle and that is that a nation cannot
exist unless it has a certain unity, whether that unity is geographical,
whether it’s racial, whether it’s spiritual, it must have something that
unifies it. It must have something that
unifies it!
And in chapters 12-15 we found out that the thing that unified
Now in chapter 16-21 it’s a result.
After you’ve got the nation unified and existing in history, what’s the
next logical result? The next thing you
want is standards, behavior patterns for that nation. So we come now to standards and so the theme
of chapters 16-21 has been the righteous standards that God lays down for the
nation. We said that He lays down
standards in two categories. First, to
deal with the officers; we dealt with the priest, we dealt with the prophet, we
dealt with the king and so on. We dealt
with these different offices. Then He
lays down policies for us, righteous policies.
And in the last few chapters we’ve been dealing with these righteous
policies. In chapter 19 we dealt with
the righteous policy that God laid down for the nation to protect the judicial
system. In other words, for this nation
to function properly in history it had to have a judicial system that would be
righteous. Therefore in chapter 19 you
will find due process and other things mentioned. Something the editor of the latest edition of
Life Magazine’s series never read because he says in this, I think it’s called
Cradle of Civilization, that the Mosaic Law had no due process in it, it was
some sort of crude law that somebody thought of years and years ago. Evidently the man never read chapter 19
because the whole chapter is on due process.
Chapter 20 deals with the righteous foreign policy and here you have the
policies laid down that control the nation’s relationship with other
nations. Here we have the problem of
warfare taken into account. Those of you
who don’t believe in war better read chapter 20 because it’s all outlined for
you.
Chapter 21 deals with domestic policies; chapter 20—foreign policy,
chapter 21—domestic policy and here you’re going to find some very interesting
things. In this chapter we basically
have two thrusts for the domestic policy; one concern is to protect the
land. The land has been given by God to
the nation and that land is to be righteous.
And there’s not to be any pollution in the land. That’s one thing that
lies behind this chapter. The second
thing that lies behind the chapter is this sticky problem, what is the
relationship between government and family? How far can the government
come into the family? What is right, what is wrong? Is a family completely autonomous or is it
totally subservient, or is there a middle ground some place? This chapter tells us. So this chapter is important not only for the
sake of understanding your Bible, for the sake of understanding, as we will, a
certain passage in Gal. 3 which borrows from verses 22ff, explaining the cross
of Jesus Christ. Not only is this
section of Scripture going to be important to understand the New Testament but
it’s going to be important for understanding our own times and our own
history.
Beginning in verse 1, verses 1-9 is the first section of chapter 21 and
deals with righteousness for the land, in particular anonymous murder. “If one be found slain in the land which the
LORD thy God gives you to possess, lying in the field, and it be not known who
has slain him,” the word “be not known” is in perfect tense which means that
these people have investigated this thing and they have reached the conclusion
nobody can tell who did this, there’s a body laying out there, there are no
eyewitnesses, we can’t find a hint as who killed this man. Now I want you to notice something about this
because it shows you a difference of attitude.
Frankly, I tire of this criticism that’s made again and again against
Christianity that this is crude undeveloped, unevolved religion, and that all
this stuff you’ve got in here about capital punishment and all the rest is
unhumanitarian, inhumane. I don’t see
that at all, in fact, in verses 1-9 it seems to me this shows greater respect
for life than what we have in our society.
If we don’t solve the murder nothing happens. Watch what happens. Here is an unsolved murder but watch what has
to happen, even for an unsolved murder.
Verse 2, “Then thy elders and they judges shall come forth, and they
shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain; [3] And
it shall be that the city which is nearest unto the slain man, even the elders
of that city shall take an heifer, which has not worked, and which has not
borne the yoke,” and this means an unused heifer and the city council, that’s
your elders here, they come out. Now
they assume responsibility. Isn’t this
an interesting concept; here you have a city over here, a city here, a city
here, a city here and here you have some gut that’s just been bumped off. Now, they bring out the surveyors, come on
out here and let’s survey this thing and find out which city is the
closest. So it turns out he’s closest to
city C. All right, what they say then is
that this murder is the responsibility of city C. Do you see what they’ve done already? They’ve fixed responsibility. In the United States if somebody gets killed
it’s nobody’s responsibility, we play around with it and usually the police
department is too busy to go investigate carefully because they’ve got so much
to do and every time they do investigate something the grand jury lets the
whole thing fly, it’s very discouraging.
You have the police department doing their job, trying to anyway, and
they’re not respected. But in this day and age there had to be some fixation of
responsibility. One of those cities had
to bear the blame.
This would mean for example, translated into 20th century of
America that if you were assaulted within the city of Lubbock, and they couldn’t
catch the person who made the assault, the city of Lubbock corporately would
bear the responsibility for that and pay indemnity. That is a sense of community responsibility
and I’m sure that it would do wonders for crime because if the city all of a
sudden had to pay some of these damages and had to reimburse people for
unsolved crime that all of a sudden the message would get upstairs that crime
is expensive and we’d better do something about it. But in this day and age they had this system
crime so serious that the people were interested in solving it.
So they came out with a heifer, verse 4, “And the elders of that city
shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley,” the King James says “a rough
valley,” that’s a guess, the King James translators were good men with the
language and the tools that they had but this is better translated, first of
all it’s not the word for river, it’s called a wadi; now a wadi is usually a
seasonal river, it’s a great ravine and you get runoff, you have wadis running
into this canyon and they only fill with water when it’s raining, and then they
really fill. But then when it’s not
raining there’s nothing there. That would be a wadi. So here’s what you have, a wadi. Now a wadi is picked because of a certain
characteristic, it adds, “a wadi of continuous flow,” meaning that here was a
wadi that was unusual; it had water flowing through it all the time. It wasn’t a seasonal type think it was a
continual washing, a continual purging going on. Now why do you suppose they picked that kind
of a wadi to do what they’re going to do?
Let’s read on.
Verse 4, “And the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a
rough valley, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall strike off the
heifer’s head there in the valley.” The
word “wadi” includes the valley and the runoff and so on. Now why do they pick a continuously flowing
wadi to do what they’re going to do?
Because of two things. The scene
is do not pollute the land, so if you have a continuous flow, when they make
that sacrifice with the heifer, the blood is guaranteed of flowing completely
out of the land. Furthermore they say it
is not plowed nor sown which means there is no farming operations done in that
particular area of real estate.
Why? Because they were afraid
that this blood would seep into the ground and the farmer plowing his land
would come and he’d plow it and turn it up again. And they had the conception that any blood,
innocent blood, spilled on the face of the land was obnoxious. As God looked down they had the idea, and
this is really omniscience, but they conceived of God looking down upon the
land and where He looked and He saw innocent blood shed it was pollution in His
sight and they wanted to cover it up and get it out of the way. So therefore
they made sure that this was a sacrifice, this whole ceremony was done to wash
away the guilt and that the guilt would never again be uncovered before
God. This is why these particular things
are noted in verse 4. You will break the
neck, and this is a symbolic infliction of the punishment that the murder would
have faced had he been found. But the murderer never was found and so the
heifer acts in this case as a substitute.
And you pick one, a strong young one.
Verse 5, “And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near,” now,
notice who does it “the sons of Levi,” remember what we said about the priests,
remember you have in Israel the prophets and the priests. The prophet is the man who receives direct
revelation from God, gives it forth to the nation, and he can be anybody, he is
called by God. Amos was a vineyard
keeper, you had other people that had various professions, a prophet can come
from any profession. Priests no; only
from the Jewish tribe of Levi could one be a priest and only then; it was a
right conveyed by birth into this tribe.
Today if you have a Jewish friend by the name of Levi he’s probably, if
the name is conservative, is a member of this tribe. So you have the Levites. These are the people and only the people that
can be priests.
What are the priests? They act as
God’s representatives. We see this in
other countries. For example, if you study the Hittites you see in the land of
the Hittite empire, if you draw a map and this is Turkey, you have the eastern
end of the Mediterranean and you have Cypress here, the Hittite Empire was
right in here; Israel’s down here.
That’s what’s in the eastern part of Turkey where evidently it was
centered. And the Hittite Empire had this kind of thing in the same kind of
situation. Instead of calling them
priests, they didn’t have Levites obviously but they had someone else that did
the same thing and here is a section of their law, and I will quote: “Now the
commander of the garrison and the mayor and the elders shall administer justice
fairly. And the people shall bring their
cases.” In other words what happens over
in the Hittite Empire is that you not only have your civil court but in
addition to the civil court you have a representative of the king, the
commander of the garrison that might be situated here and he also is in on the
administration of justice, showing once again that the Hittite Empire was
unified under the concept of the king and in this case in the Bible showing
that Israel was unified under the concept of Jehovah. Jehovah’s representative had to be there in
addition to the civil officials.
Therefore they are not only present in verse 5 but they are the ones
that actually perform the ceremony.
“And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near; for them the LORD
thy God has chosen to minister unto him, to bless in the name of the LORD: and
by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried.” This means that these priests were the ones
who controlled. Now ask yourself a
question, why pick the priests to control? What did the priests had that no one
else had custodianship of? The Word of
God. The priests were the ones who had
the Torah, or the Law of Moses. The
first five books in your Bible is what these people had; they carried this
around, they became experts in it, so therefore the reasons why the priests
were the ones who did is they were the ones that had the Word. And then it says “by their word shall every
controversy and every stroke be tried,” and this means something interesting. This means that the Word of God was the
criteria of all decisions made in this nation.
That goes for us as believers. Is
the Word of God the criteria of all your decisions you make? It’s not for all the decisions I make, I’ll
admit that. But that’s our ideal. If we live in the Word, and remember the
steps of living in the Word as they are outlined in Deuteronomy; first you have
to take in the Word of God which means you have to study the Bible on your own
in addition to studying it by tapes, coming to church, or something else, you
take it in. But you should be digesting
this material. Thirty minutes on Sunday isn’t going to hack it for the rest of
the week; it’s just not going to do it.
Could you survive eating physically one meal a week? Obviously not. Well how can you survive spiritually by
eating one mean a week? You can’t! So living in the Word means that first of all
you have to eat it, you have to take it in on a systematic basis. Secondly, not only do you have to take it but
you have to digest it. The Word of God
says that you have to think upon these things, you have to talk in terms of
them when you’re in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down,
when you rise up, put them for a sign upon your hands and they shall be as frontlets
between thine eyes, etc. All this, they
meditate; Psalm 1 says a godly man’s delight is in the law of the Lord and “in
His law does he meditate day and night.”
So you have this continual meditation going on or what I would call the
digestion of the Word.
Three, not only do you have the taking in coming in, you have people
eating it, digesting it, but you also have them use it to weed out human
viewpoint and get rid of it in their minds.
You have this demonstrated in 2 Corinthians where Paul said “Casting
down vain imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the
knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought unto the obedience
of Christ.” Every thought, that means in
your school work, for example, you will never take a course in school without
asking yourself how does this fit into the Word of God. Otherwise the course is a waste of time. If you want to get benefit from school work
you should integrate it with the Word of God and find out where it overlaps,
etc. If you have problems in this area I
will be more than glad to meet with you and suggest some reading, etc. for you
but I’m very concerned that those of you are students begin to adopt this habit
of analyzing everything in the framework of the Word. Otherwise your school work is just a waste,
you might as well just drop out because it’s going to do you no good unless you
integrate within the framework of the Word of God.
Then the fourth thing that you want to do is claim the promises, be
quick to claim the promises of God. This
means, by the way, you have to know the promises. And that’s why BMA [Bible Memory Association]
would be good for you if you don’t know the promises. And that is if you master a few promises,
maybe you only know Rom. 8:28 or 1 Pet. 5:7, so you use it 3,220 times a day,
after a day you learn what it is and then you learn something else, the next
day you find something over in the Psalms, a promise, Ps. 37:4-5, and you pick
up that promise and you try that one.
The next day you have an easier time and you only have to claim it 1400
times, so at the end of that day you know that promise. And you go on that way and you learn these
promises so that when crisis hits you don’t fall apart; you don’t act like an
unbeliever running around without God.
The fifth thing that you want to do in living in the Word and it applies
in verse 5, and that is that “by their word shall every controversy and every
stroke be tried,” this means that you live out the Word. This means the implications of the Word, you
begin to adopt this and accept some of the challenges the Word presents to you
and you begin to make this the criteria of your life.
So this nation in verse 5 lived in the Word and their whole judicial
system was grounded in the Word and they never made a court decision without
referring to the Word of God. So that shows you a total saturation of the
Word.
Verse 6, “And all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain
man, shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the
valley.” Here again is the idea that
they’ve got to cleanse themselves; the blood is on their hands. You say well that’s unfair, they didn’t
murder the guy. That’s right, but they
are civil officials and remember what we said government was for. The purpose of government is to execute God’s
judgments while God is putting off His big judgment. Until the Second Advent of Christ God has
delegated responsibility for His judgment upon government, and therefore that
is the role of government and that’s what government is supposed to be doing,
and that is why in verse 6… you would never have verse 6 without the legal
principle. Remember this, verse 6 is not just something stuck in there, verse 6
means that the government under which a crime has occurred bears blame for that
crime. That’s the principle; you would
not have the washing of the hands unless you had guilt. That’s maybe a revolutionary concept for some
of you to realize that any crime that goes on in Lubbock, for example, is the
responsibility of the city council and the mayor and whether that crime is
solved or not solved still is the responsibility of the city council and the
mayor in God’s sight. Now they may not
recognize it, even the constitution of this city may never recognize it but I’m
telling you what God says and God says that the responsibility rests on a
government under which a crime has occurred.
Now you figure this out and look at the USA and you figure out the
murder conducted, J. Edgar Hoover says one every six minutes, there’s a raid
for violent assault once every eight minutes or something, there’s a robbery or
burglary every two minutes or something like that, an what percent of these are
being solved? You figure it out.
In God’s sight where does the USA stand?
It stands pretty low, because if God is really holding a government
responsible for a crime that goes on within its borders, you can begin to see
the debt of the United States to God is very, very much more than our national
debt financially and economically. You
think our national debt is bad, look at this debt. That’s an important
principle. And you have to understand
that principle to realize why the United States is in the jam it’s in. Sure there are a lot of people that want to
take over the United States, the communists, the bankers and everyone else, but
let me tell you something, they couldn’t lay their hands on the United States
unless God sovereignly allowed it. The
communist party couldn’t do a thing in this country unless God let them do it.
And the reason why God is letting them do it is because of this; He’s fed up
with the crime and the corruption and the stink that must come up before His
nose in heaven. And then we ask for
God’s justice etc. We ought to just ask for His grace and we can be thankful
that He hasn’t lowered the boom more than He has.
But this is the mechanic behind history, all these other things that go
on, the communists and all the rest of it, those are interesting but looking at
those doesn’t give you the real picture of what’s going on. The real picture is deeper than even them;
the real picture is who’s in control of history, man or God? God is in control of history. All right then, if God is in control of
history it’s up to His sovereign will whether this country goes on or not. And to get an idea of the attitude He has you
just have to look at verses 6. Here’s
His chosen people and even on them He holds them responsible, responsible for a
crime that goes on within their borders.
Verse 7, “And they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this
blood, neither have our eyes seen it. [8] Be merciful, O LORD, unto thy people
Israel, whom thou hast redeemed,” and the word “be merciful” here is the word
to atone. It actually does not mean “be
merciful,” it’s kaphar and it’s the
word that is used throughout the Hebrew language to refer to atone or cover, so
really the word means “cover up, O God,” cover up. And this is the idea of forgiveness in the
Old Testament. Some of you have asked me, how did the Old Testament saints, how
were they saved? This has been a puzzle
because you figured how could a person that lived before Jesus Christ ever be
saved. Here’s how they were saved, it
tells you right here. Here you have an
Old Testament saint, he has sins. All
right, what’s the issue for the Old Testament saints; people were always saved
by faith in the Son of God as He was known in their dispensation. So what does this man do? Here he is an Old Testament saint in the land
of Israel. What information is available to him to be saved? Where’s the
gospel? One place, the gospel is in the
Tabernacle, every time he walks up to that Tabernacle he sees the whole gospel
story enacted. He has information in the
calendar, we’ve seen that. He has
information in the sacrificial system.
He has information by the Levites; the Levites are Bible teachers, a
Bible teacher stationed in each town. So he has enough information and so he
says Lord, “cover me, I trust You to cover me.”
That does not mean that God removed the sins from him, it means that He
put a cover over them so that He wouldn’t have to see their sin. And that is how the Old Testament saint was
saved. God covered over their sins.
Romans 3 tells you what happened.
Those sins were covered over in anticipation that Christ would provide
the basis so that later God would not only cover but He totally removed the
sins. So people were saved in the Old
Testament just like they are now and just as surely as they are now but it’s
described as a covering, not a removal.
New Testament you are saved because your sins are removed; Old Testament
you are saved because your sins are covered.
So here’s a prayer [v. 8] to “Cover, O LORD, thy people Israel, whom
thou hast redeemed.” In other words
don’t count this transgression, we know that we bear the guilt but put this
cover over it Lord so it won’t offend your sight.
Now do you see something? This is a picture of salvation that these
people had that was a tremendous force in their life. I am convinced if we would evangelize clearly
we wouldn’t have half the problem with Christians that we do. If, for example, when you witness about Jesus
Christ to an unbeliever you just make one point clear, that is, that God is
righteousness and just and must always without exception decree death for
sin. Death with 1800 exclamation points,
death, death, death, death, no matter who you are God says die. Now if we would convince the unbeliever
before he accepts Christ that God’s judgment is inevitable, unavoidable and
total, and then we say to him, now the only way that this can be removed is by
Jesus Christ taking that inevitable judgment and moving it over upon
Himself. And the person says yes, I see
that, I believe that Jesus Christ has done this for me.
If people understood that concept I’m sure we wouldn’t have half the
trouble with new Christians that we do.
But we’re sloppy today, witnessing is trivial, people are so anxious to
get a decision they will try to hard-sell somebody on the gospel to produce
some emotional response and “get ‘em saved,” (quote, unquote), get ‘em down the
aisle, get ‘em to do something, to join the church, to be baptized. Don’t fall into that pitfall. If you do
you’re hurting that person. I have seen
people who have met the Lord on a minimal amount of information and they are
weaklings for years after that, until eventually the Spirit of God works in
their life when they begin to get in the Word.
Some of you have had that experience, you’ve told me, you look back now
and wonder how in heaven’s name was I ever saved on what little information I
had. I came out of a zero background and
I had minus information, and some of you have gone along in your lives for
maybe five, ten, fifteen years before you got with the Word of God and began to
see some of these issues. That is tragic and that tells me that evangelism in
our day is done in a very sloppy, poor fashion.
You should spend time on it and never press a person until they understand,
and if they don’t understand just forget it.
Wait until the Holy Spirit has given them understanding. Press upon them information, information,
information. Evangelism is not winning souls; evangelism as defined in the
Bible is presenting information to the unbeliever. You do not win souls, the Holy Spirit wins
the souls. Evangelism is presenting information and doing it clearly. Do you want to be a good evangelist, a
skilled Christian in talking to someone else about the Lord? Then specialize in one thing, clearly
communicating content, all you have to do is convey information.
So we have the necessity in the Old Testament for understanding this; in
the New Testament we have the understanding of death, and this is the point
that Israel is looking at here. Our
hands have not shed this blood, why are they bothered with this if they don’t
have a tremendous concept of the righteousness and justice of God. You talk about the fear of the Lord… now I’m
not saying walk around and think of Jonathan Edwards, “sinners dangling in the
hands of an angry God” kind of thing. But I am saying that unless we have a
living reality, a concept in our minds of the righteousness and justice of God
I don’t know how we can possibly appreciate grace. How can you possibly appreciate God’s grace
on your behalf unless you realize the righteousness and justice of God and you
just don’t hack it, and you can’t hack it and you can’t come close to
satisfying His righteousness. Now until
you have that there’s no use talking about grace. So this, then, in verse 7-8 is the background
for these people’s tremendous faith.
They understood the righteousness and justice of God.
Verse 9, “So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among
you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the LORD.” Now notice what is right in the sight of
God. Did they say oh look, here we’ve
got city C over here and city C had this problem and so what we’re going to do
now, we know crime was committed in our streets so we’ll be good boys from now
on; Lord, we’re going to be good. So
they crank out good, good, good, good, a whole pile of it and God says I’m not
interested in it, sorry pal, because I’m interested in the crime that was
committed, not all your human good that you’re trying to use to bury it
with. So therefore to these people doing
right in the sight of God does not mean cranking out human good. What it means
is that you respond to grace. If you’re
a believer you use 1 John 1:9 and you tell the Lord that I acknowledge
responsibility for this, I realize I’m out of your will and I realize that you
provide complete cleansing and access, so do it, and that’s 1 John 1:9, that’s
confession. And you don’t wait around
for three hours waiting for some feeling; you just walk along believing
it.
So this then is what they were to do, verses 1-9. Now skip to verse 22 and you’ll see a
continuation of this same theme. “And if
a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou
hang him on a tree,” now I think some of you thinking of the New Testament are
going to immediately think of crucifixion. Sorry, that’s not crucifixion. “Hanging on a tree” is literally hanging on a
tree. It’s as simple as that, crucifixion
was not known until known until 63 BC.
So therefore this means you take the body, who was this body by the way,
was the person alive? Crucifixion, the
person was alive, but this means that “if a man has committed a sin worthy of
death, and he be put to death,” after he is put to death hang his body up on a
tree. Wouldn’t you love to see that
right along 34th street, it’d be a display for the whole community?
That’s what they did, that’s exactly what they did.
Verse 22, “you will hang him on a tree.” If you want an example of how
that worked out turn to Joshua 10:24, now here’s where if you do not understand
the Bible someone is going to say oh-oh, primitive God. Here we go, undeveloped, unevolved religion
back here, blood and gore. Just wait a
minute before you jump to conclusions.
“And it came to pass, when they brought out those kings unto Joshua,
that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said unto the captains of the
men of war who went with him, Come near, but your feet on the necks of these
kings. And they came near, and put their feet upon the necks of them. [25] And
Joshua said unto them, Fear nor, nor be dismayed, be strong and of good
courage; for thus shall the LORD do to all your enemies against whom ye fight.
[26] And afterward Joshua smote them, and slew them, and hanged them on five
trees, and they were hanging upon the trees until the evening.” That’s what they did. Now why?
You have the solution for it in Galatians 3 so turn to the New Testament
and we’ll try to fill you in on the background for these passages in a New
Testament epistle, why Jesus Christ was hung and it’s spoken of as hanging on a
tree.
I realize that certain cults use Gal. 3:13, they say oh, Jesus didn’t
hang on the cross, Jesus hung on a tree, etc. well that misses the whole point
of the passage. “Christ hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed
is everyone that hangs on a tree.”
Notice the first part of verse 13, what is verse 13 talking about? It’s talking about this; it’s talking about
the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ became sin for us. Do you realize what that says? Jesus Christ became sin, there was a point in history, apparently for three
hours while He hung on the cross that He was sin in principle and total, all
the sins of the world were piled on Him.
Now you can imagine how offensive it was to God and that’s why God
turned the lights off. And for three
hours Christ hung on the cross in darkness.
Now that tells you what’s going on here.
The person who hangs on the tree is one who has been condemned of a
crime, has been cursed and rejected under the Law.
What do we mean rejected? All
right, what are the two attributes of God? Righteousness and justice,
righteousness and justice looks down on sin and decrees death, “the wages of
sin is death.” And so therefore in the
Old Testament when these people would commit a crime God said you die. So therefore after they died they were hung
upon a tree and left there as testimonies to the fact that God’s sentence had
been passed, His law had been fulfilled, death!
And it was left there so everybody that walks by sees death and sees how
horrible it is. Not it wasn’t a bunch of
ghouls that lived in Israel. That’s not the point; they didn’t go around and
say oh goodie, I’m glad he got it. That
wasn’t the purpose of this at all, that’s misreading the intent of the
text. The reason for this was to impress
upon the citizens of the nation the righteous standards of God and that He
wasn’t fooling around. So a person that had faced this judgment was hung there
so they could see his corpse, and you can imagine what the corpse looked like;
just use your imagination, these people were killed by stoning. So you figure out what a person would look
like if you took someone and hit them with about a hundred bricks; that’s the
way a person looked and it isn’t a very pleasant sight to look at, it’s not
something I’d like to have hung on my front lawn. Yet that is what happened. They hung these
people up here.
So Paul takes this same passage in verse 13 and applies it to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now do you see the perfect
analogy? Jesus Christ has become a
criminal in God’s sight, that’s what this passage is saying. People say this imputation of sin business is
something that’s only mentioned in one or two verses; it’s all through the
Bible. What do you make of this
passage? Christ has become a criminal;
He’s hung there just like a criminal is who has been convicted of a crime. By the way, theological question, of what
crime was Christ convicted? Your crime,
He took every sin that you’ve ever committed, or ever will commit, and those
crimes are the crimes that Jesus Christ was convicted for. He was convicted for your crime, He was
convicted for my crimes and that’s grace.
There you have grace in action.
Now you can understand the love of God because you see the details. Jesus Christ was made a criminal and His body
was displayed in public, just like a criminal because God was showing once
again as He did in the Old Testament Law, I hate crime, I hate anything that
clashes with My righteous standards and I’ve decreed death. This is why in Gal. 3:13 Paul makes this
statement.
Turn back to Deut. 21:23, “His body shall not remain all night upon the
tree, but thou shalt surely bury him that day” you must bury him that day,
why? Why is this necessary? Because the point here is that you have this
person, and for one thing it was a physical thing, they didn’t want the
buzzards and everything else coming around and eating this body and causing more
pollution, etc. It was just up there
long enough to give them a memorial and then take it down and bury it. Therefore, you shall bury him that day but
the reason, and here’s the verse that Paul quotes, “(for he who is hanged is
accursed by God), that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God gives
thee for an inheritance,” and the word “accursed” means he’s convicted; this is
a convicted criminal you’re talking about.
Now think back to what you would have thought if you had been in the
early church in Jerusalem, and you had faced people who had been raised on this
verse, verse 23, and you went out in the street and started witnessing to them
and said my Savior was a criminal. Now
do you see the problem, do you see the tension you’d face. I’m saying that God became incarnate and He
was my Savior and they hung Him on a tree just like a criminal, and He was a
criminal in God’s sight because the Law says anyone that is hung is accursed of
God.
Now do you see why in the New Testament they had to do something besides
talk about the cross? What did they
always tack on? Resurrection. Why did they tack on resurrection? Because
resurrection is the sign that God was satisfied, that although Jesus Christ
appeared as a criminal for a short time God was satisfied with that payment and
He came down, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity was all
involved, but He rose, Christ rose from the dead, and so the resurrection is
always an integral part of the gospel because if you just talk about the cross
you have no guarantee that the cross is acceptable in God’s sight. What’s the
guarantee that it worked? The only
guarantee we have in history that the cross really did something was that
Christ rose again from the dead. That’s
why the resurrection is always tacked on to the gospel, or actually is part of
the gospel in the New Testament.
Now let’s go back, this is the section on the land, and let’s start with
verse 10 for the section on the family.
Verses 10-14, the captured woman.
“When thou go forth to war against your enemies, and the LORD thy God
hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, [11]
And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire for her,
that thou would have her to be your wife, [12] Then you shalt bring her home to
thine house; and she shall save her head, and trim her nails., [13] And she
shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine
house and bewail her father and her mother a full month; and after that thou
shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. [14] And
it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go where
she will. But you shalt not sell her at
all for money; thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast
humbled her.”
Here you have one of those sections that I’ve been anticipating, where
I’ve said again and again that women’s right and all human rights basically are
grounded in the Word of God. And until
you have this promulgated in history, women were on the level of about an
expensive cow and that’s about how they rated in the ancient world at certain
times. It’s tragic but in this country
some of the loudest foulest mouthed people that are anti-Christians today are
women. And they don’t realize it but
their rights were given to them by God and they protected themselves through
this law.
Let’s look at it in detail, verse 10, “When you go forth to war,” here
you have a military situation that produces this incident that’s coming
up. Verse 11, he goes down the slave
line, he says oh, look at that doll, and he goes down and says oh, there’s a
nice blonde, she looks pretty good, I’ll take her. So he picks out some person that he likes out
of the line and he says I want to marry that girl. And you might say this is a
captive audience, with true emphasis on the word “captive.” And the fellows
didn’t have any problem picking out dates.
Then verse 12, “Then you shalt bring her home to your house,” now I want
you to notice something; she is a POW at this time, POW’s have very little
rights, as shown by the way North Vietnam is treating our men over there. Now look, watch the protection given to the
most helpless type of POW, a captive woman in the house of a man. Watch how the Lord protects here. “You will bring her to your house, and she
shall shave her head and trim her nails.”
Now we’ve heard of all sorts of hairdos and this might be the extreme
form but this is a hairdo to end all hairdos.
She just shaved it all off.
Why? In the ancient world they
didn’t have something we call shampoo; they didn’t have that. If it was a dry summer the ladies were in
trouble so therefore the method of cleaning up was to shave your hair. Your hair got so dirty you couldn’t stand it
you’d just cut if off and this is what this ceremony here means, it means the
ladies… this is a cleansing ceremony here, “she will cut here hair off and trim
her nails.”
This is physical cleanliness but it’s also a sign of something else and
the something else is implied in the first part of verse 12, she shall be “in
thine house,” what does that mean? She
has become part of Israel. To become
part of Israel what has to happen? She
has to physically do what is spiritually supposed to happen, namely she is
supposed to be clean before her God. Now
she has a new God, Jehovah, and she’s supposed to be clean, she’s dwelling in
the land, she’s dwelling in a family situation, she’s supposed to be clean
before him. So the first thing that this
captive woman does is to clean herself, shave her head, trim her nails.
Verse 13, then she is given thirty days, “And she shall put the raiment
of her captivity from off her,” these are the POS uniforms, and she was to take
it off and put on normal clothes, and she “shall remain in thine house,” now
what is this for? Thirty days is a
mourning period. Turn to Num. 20:29,
some of you who are interested in psychology might do some study as to why it
is that throughout the Bible and the Word of God it’s always thirty days that’s
usually given as a mourning period. Whether this has some undiscovered psychiatric
implication or not it’s something that if I was involved in this I would like
to study. The reason I suggest this is
because for years and years nobody could understand why circumcision was on the
seventh day … [blank spot]
Verse 29, “And when all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, they
mourned for Aaron thirty days, even all the house of Israel.” For some reason the Bible specifies 30 days
as the mourning period. I do not know
why, there is no other indication in the Bible why this is, it just is always
there. 30 days is the mourning period,
and nothing could be done until these 30 days had passed. It’s almost as though perhaps God has built
it in us, something that takes 30 days to recover from an intense shock. And apparently this is the period of, you
might say, psychological healing that must occur after a great tragedy or a
great sorrow. But whether that is true
or not there is some reason why God has specified 30 days as the mourning
period.
Back to Deut. 21:13, “And she shall put the raiment of her captivity
from off her, and shall remain in thine house and bewail her father and her
mother a full month; after that thou shall to in unto her, and be her husband,
and shall be that wife,” after that the marriage is to take place. Verse 14, “And it shall be, if you have no
delight in her, then you will let her go where she will.” Now this is interesting and to get this you
have to understand about the price of slave girls. “…you will let her go where she will. But you shalt not sell her at all for money,”
now why does the Bible say don’t sell her?
Because you could get a racket going, these guys would go down the line,
pick out some babe and marry her for a month or so and then sell her off and
they could make money like crazy because the going price of a girl under 20 was
ten shekels, which translates in our language it’d be about $5,000. By the way, it shows you slaves weren’t
cheap. That’s why people in the Old
Testament took care of their slaves, it was an investment. So a girl under 20
was about equal to a small model Mercedes Benz.
And if she was over 20, then her price went up three times. Talk about inflation, $15,000 a slave girl
cost if she was over 20. It also shows
you something else; it shows you that they didn’t think a girl under 20 was
worth too much. Sorry girls.
Verse 14 is there to protect the girls against his kind of a
racket. “You will not sell her at all
for money; you will not make merchandise of her,” and this is to forego any
smart guy that would get going in Israel and take advantage of the Law on this
thing, “because thou hast humbled her” means she is no longer a virgin,
therefore she has problems, as we’ll indicate later on, in the ancient world as
far as marriage is concerned. “Thou hast
humbled her” means he has married her, etc.
Now verse 15, this is another family situation. Now I want you to see something. What have we said? We’ve said in verses 10-14 we’ve had the
family unit operating. Who is being
addressed here? The head of the house,
and he has to follow certain rules. So here we have the first tip off in this
chapter about the balance between government power and the individual family.
Does the government have rights to make certain laws controlling your
family? The answer is yes it does. It does not have authority to run and destroy
the family unit but it does have authority to regulate the family and we find
this principle in verses 10-14, where the husband, the head of the house, could
or could not do certain things. A woman was not a victim of her husband. She was protected by the law of God, and
therefore the husband, though he is the head of the house, and this by the way
is going to explain something you get in the New Testament that people can’t
understand, in the New Testament when it says a man is the head of the house,
also when you teach the New Testament if you’ve ever been involved in a
teaching situation you always have to point out, because there are always
people that will pick up one word that you said, some guy says oh, I’m head of
the house and they go home and they take this thing as an authorization to
become dictator. Of course this
misapplies the Scripture. That’s not
what the Scripture says. So usually if I’m teaching the New Testament and I
haven’t got to this background you always have to add but, etc. and try to balance it.
But in the Old Testament you see this principle already operating, that
the man is head of the house, though he makes decisions, there are certain
things that he cannot do, because of the law of God. Therefore we have the government regulating
the husband’s role. The husband does not have absolute authority over the
wife. He has authority over the wife in
so far as he follows the Word of God.
We’ll get into this because in Deut. 24 we get into the touchy problem
of divorce. So just keep this in mind.
Verse 15, “If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and
they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated, and if the
first-born son be hers that was hated; [16] Then it shall be, when he makes his
sons to inherit that which he has, that he may not make the son of the beloved
first-born before the son of the hated, which is indeed the first-born, [17]
But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the first-born, by giving him
a double portion of all that he has; for he is the beginning of his strength;
the right of the first-born is his.”
Now in verse 15 here’s the problem; this is not authorizing
polygamy. This is saying if a man does
have two wives, it’s not saying go out and marry two women. It’s saying if you are in this kind of a
situation then this is what you do.
Incidentally, if this ever comes up, for example, having a missionary
come back, I’ve known missionaries that have gotten themselves in hot water
about this issue, don’t embarrass the missionary in this kind of a
situation. I went into tribe so and so
and I won the chief to the Lord Jesus Christ and the chief had 22 wives, and
usually you’ll get oh, I wonder what happened.
And you’ll have some brilliant person slip up their hand and try to
embarrass the missionary and say, “and what did you tell this person after he
accepted Christ?” Of course the
missionary is put on the spot and usually if he’s a legalistic missionary he
says well I told him he had to get rid of his wives except for one. And of course if the chief was smart he’d get
rid of all the ugly ones and keep the best one.
That’s real smart, that’s a smart solution… real smart! The Biblical solution, if this man is won to
Christ and he has 22 women, he keeps his 22 women. Reason: because these women would go into
prostitution, it would spell condemnation to them in that society for them to
be thrown out of a house. He can release
them on other grounds, of course, but basically if he’s to live as unto the
Lord, live with his 22 women, if he started in that situation, fine, just do
the best he can. Blessings on him if he
thinks he can handle 22 women.
Verse 15, “If a man have two wives,” now here he has a problem because
one wife he loves and the other one he can’t stand, one keeps the front of the
house and one keeps the back of the house, one he has a garage for, he keeps
her out in the garage along with his car.
So he has these two women, “one is beloved, and another hated, and they
have both borne him children,” now he’s got the problem. Now he’s making out his will so he goes to
his lawyer and he says hey, I’m going to drop dead soon and I want to make out
my will. The lawyer says fine, who’s
going to get your double portion of your inheritance, who is legally your
first-born son? Who are you going to
designate as your first-born son legally?
And the guy thinks for a minute, boy, it turns out this clod I’ve got
out in the garage, she had my first son and the one I have in the house, I like
her, and she’s borne me the rest of my sons, so Moses comes up and says so
sorry friend, this person out here in the garage is the one that has borne you
the first-born and her son gets it.
Therefore again you see the government interfering in the family
legitimately. Here is another legitimate
domain where the government can regulate the family. And here Moses regulated
the family. “And if the first-born son
be hers that was hated,” verse 16, “Then it shall be,” that he may not make the
son of the beloved before the son of the hated.
By the way, a footnote on this passage, watch the word “before” in that
verse 16, that is why I translated, back in the Ten Commandments, remember,
“thou shalt have none other gods before me” and I said that doesn’t mean that
there’s only one God, that’s clarified in other passage but in the Ten
Commandments it is saying “thou shalt have no other gods before me” in the
sense of loyalty. Here’s where you see the
use of that word “before.” There’s an
illustration of it in verse 16 where the Hebrew word “before” does not mean
existence, it means loyalty, position.
You “shalt not make the so of the beloved first-born before the son of
the hated,” but you will acknowledge him.
In verse 17 you have a strange statement that may not be appreciated
today but this is going to come out again and again, and that is “he is the
beginning of his strength,” this is why in the Old Testament children were such
a thing, because a family, if it did not have children what would happen to the
name? It would be destroyed. So how was their property kept? By name.
So if you didn’t have any sons, do you see where it left you? You lost, the whole family lost, it actually
went out of existence. Of course the
nearest relative would try to get hold of that property, but this was a crucial
point of why a man, when he married, had to have sons. He had to have it to protect his own property
and to keep the family name going.
Conclusion to the matter, verses 15-17, what have we learned here about
government regulations of the family. A
very important principle, and that is, don’t pass feuds from one generation
into the next one. You see, if this man
had a hated woman and a loved woman, by giving the inheritance illegally to the
son of the beloved woman, he would then set up the jealousies and antagonisms
for another generation. You find this
principle again and again in the Word of God, cut your arguments short, don’t
let controversy fester and become an aching open sore that’s going to be passed
on to the next generation. If you have
your fights with somebody, don’t pass it on to your children; they’ll have
plenty of fights themselves. Don’t pass
feuds from one generation on to the next, cut it off in your generation. That’s one of the principles we get
here. This family situation was bad, but
God tries to stop family situations that are bad, cut them off, so that the
results of that bad family situation aren’t perpetuated into the next one.
Next week we’ll finish chapter 21 and this entire section of
Deuteronomy.