“The God of the Law, pt.2 (Deuteronomy 19-20)", Will DuVal | 5/3/26
Deuteronomy 19-20 | 5/3/26 | Will DuVal
Did you know that it’s illegal to sell chewing gum in Singapore?
Did you know that it’s NOT illegal to possess a small amount of ANY drug in Portland, Oregon?
That it’s illegal in Switzerland to own only ONE guinea pig?
And it’s illegal in Alabama to wrestle a BEAR?
These laws range from the lamentable to the LAUGHABLE, but in EVERY case, each law tells us something about its law-MAKER, the kind of authority that would impose such a restriction. Such that from these laws we can extrapolate that:
-Singapore values public CLEANLINESS over personal freedom.
-That PORTLAND values personal freedom over SAFETY.
-That Switzerland values animal rights (I guess guinea pigs are pretty SOCIAL animals, so owning just one is considered CRUEL)
-And Alabama values HUMAN life (since apparently so many people were getting MAULED trying to wrestle these bears that they had to pass a LAW… Alabamans have too much FREE time; I think that’s what the law REALLY tells us.)
We’ve been studying the book of Deuteronomy together this year; Deuteronomy means “second law” because this is the SECOND time now that God is reminding His OT people Israel of His OT commands. And He’s reminding them - in the Bible, repetition serves to underscore a truth’s importance - and in this case, what makes the Law so important is what it tells us about the Law-MAKER, about GOD: His values, priorities, and nature. We noted this especially back in ch4, where Moses began his retelling of the Law - and right from the outset, in part ONE of this ‘series within the sermon series’, we began exegeting and exTOLING, not just the law, but the God OF the Law; the God BEHIND it, who GAVE it to us, or rather, who gave it to ISRAEL. Because remember, the Law itself is no longer in EFFECT; Jesus came to FULFILL the Law for us (Mt 5:17-18); the NT says the OLD covenant, the LAW, is now “obsolete” (Heb 8:13). So why bother studying it?
Because it tells us something VITALLY important about GOD… AND because there are still principles for us here by which we still seek to live OUR lives.
So I invite you to STAND with me... Dt 19-20… Hear the word of the Lord:
““When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, 2 you shall set apart three cities for yourselves in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. 3 You shall measure the distances[a] and divide into three parts the area of the land that the Lord your God gives you as a possession, so that any manslayer can flee to them.
4 “This is the provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life. If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in the past— 5 as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to one of these cities and live, 6 lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue the manslayer and overtake him, because the way is long, and strike him fatally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he had not hated his neighbor in the past. 7 Therefore I command you, You shall set apart three cities. 8 And if the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land that he promised to give to your fathers— 9 provided you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I command you today, by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in his ways—then you shall add three other cities to these three, 10 lest innocent blood be shed in your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed be upon you.
11 “But if anyone hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and attacks him and strikes him fatally so that he dies, and he flees into one of these cities, 12 then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may die. 13 Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood[b] from Israel, so that it may be well with you.
14 “You shall not move your neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.
15 “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. 16 If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, 17 then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. 18 The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, 19 then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil[c] from your midst. 20 And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. 21 Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
Ch20, v1: “When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. 2 And when you draw near to the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people 3 and shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel, today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies: let not your heart faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, 4 for the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.’ 5 Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying, ‘Is there any man who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it. 6 And is there any man who has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed its fruit? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man enjoy its fruit. 7 And is there any man who has betrothed a wife and has not taken her? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man take her.’ 8 And the officers shall speak further to the people, and say, ‘Is there any man who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own.’ 9 And when the officers have finished speaking to the people, then commanders shall be appointed at the head of the people.
10 “When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. 11 And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. 12 But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword, 14 but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. 16 But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but you shall devote them to complete destruction,[d] the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, 18 that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against [YHWH] your God.
19 “When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. You may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field human, that they should be besieged by you? 20 Only the trees that you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down, that you may build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.” This is the word of God…
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FOUR IMPORTANT THINGS that we learn here - we’re REMINDED of here - about GOD, about who He is and what He values, God’s desires and really, we could say, God’s DEMANDS, because these are not “suggestions”, they are COMMANDMENTS, that reveal God’s HEART to us. Firstly, that…
1) God desires JUSTICE… (19:1-21)
Fairness, equitableness, moral RIGHT-ness. Why? Because GOD is Himself JUST; perfectly just. “Justice and righteousness are the FOUNDATION of [His] throne”, Psalm 89:14 declares; “all his ways are justice”, Deuteronomy 32:4.
And as God’s image-BEARERS, those He created to be imagers, MIRRORS, REFLECTORS of His glory and goodness, we too are called to pursue JUSTICE in all of OUR ways.
“He has told you, O [mankind], what is good,” Micah 6:8 exhorts us, “and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice…” …and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”, which we’ll return to LATER (the kindness and humble OBEDIENCE).
But for now, let’s hone in on the JUSTICE we’re called to extend firstly, to…
(1.a-) …the INNOCENT. (19:1-10, 15)
These first 10 verses of ch19 establish - or RE-establish; because again, these cities of refuge have already been authorized back in Exodus 21 (vv12-14) and especially Numbers 35 (vv9-28) - what Moses refers to as the “cities of REFUGE”. Actually, we were introduced to them already in the book of Deuteronomy, back in ch4 (vv41-43), where Moses outlined the 3 cities EAST of the Jordan River, in the land inherited by Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh - THEY needed cities of refuge too. But now he delineates three MORE cities of refuge WITHIN the Promised Land PROPER.
And even more pressing than identifying WHERE they’d be located, Moses’s concern here is identifying WHY they’re so important: essentially, to ensure for those accused of a crime the right of DUE PROCESS, the right to a fair TRIAL, not just by “a jury of their peers”, but in Israel’s case, even BETTER, by a jury of God-sanctioned JUDGES (who we heard about last week in ch17).
You’ve heard of the legal principle of “presumption of innocence”; that a person is INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty… the burden of proof is on the accuser… that foundational legal principle was established 3,400 years ago here in Deuteronomy ch19, both in the institution of these cities of refuge as WELL as what we’ll read in just a moment in v15 about God’s requirement for multiple witnesses.
But v4 here explains that the city of refuge was God’s “provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life… if [he had] killed his neighbor unintentionally”. Many ancient legal codes didn’t actually DISTINGUISH between what we would call today (THANKS to the Bible!) “involuntary manslaughter”, versus “premeditated” or “first-degree” murder; in some societies, it didn’t MATTER; murder is murder; your intention is IRRELEVANT; either way, you killed my family member, so now I have the right to kill YOU.”
But GOD says, “No you DON’T. Not if it was an ACCIDENT. Motive MATTERS.” And we can ESTABLISH motive by considering the history of the relationship - did you “HATE HIM in the past” (v4), this person you murdered - and by considering the specific facts of the case.
For instance, v5, if you’re cutting wood together in the forest and your AXE HEAD flies off and kills your poor buddy… as long as he WAS your buddy (you didn’t HATE him, and have a reason to PURPOSELY do it), you don’t return to town to apologize to his widowed WIFE… you don’t go back to pack a suitcase and say goodbye to your FAMILY; No, you were to “FLEE”, v5, to the nearest city of refuge, “lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue [you] and overtake [you], and KILL [you]”. Interestingly, the “avenger of blood”, mentioned here in verses 6 and 12: the Hebrew title is goel, elsewhere translated as “kinsman redeemer” (as in, BOAZ was Ruth’s “kinsman redeemer”). And the kinsman redeemer’s JOB was to get JUSTICE for the family. That could mean REDEEMING, buying back a family member out of slavery or debt. But it could ALSO mean AVENGING a crime committed against the family.
HOWEVER, according to GOD, the punishment must FIT the crime; that’s yet another important legal principle established here, indirectly, that of retributive justice; “the punishment must fit the crime.” It’s actually spelled out for us most directly later in v21, in the lex taliones, “an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth”. In context, that law isn’t promoting vengeance; it was assumed that there was no NEED to do THAT; the victim’s FAMILY, and the goel in particular, were going to make SURE that they got VENGEANCE; the only question was “how MUCH vengeance”. And this law, far from PROMOTING it, actually RESTRAINED, and REINED IN the vengeance they were allowed to take: you can’t take TWO eyes, if your perpetrator only took ONE of yours. If someone kills your loved one, you can’t go murder their entire FAMILY. The punishment must be proportionate.
Gandhi famously said, “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world BLIND”, but he was WRONG: TWO eyes for an eye may leave the world blind - when you ESCALATE the violence, you get problems. And as a matter of fact, NO eyes for an eye will ALSO eventually lead to even more blindness, because punishing crime is a crucial means of DETERRING it. If there are no repercussions to breaking the law, in the fallen, sin-filled world we live in, that only serves to DRIVE crime all the more, as vv19 & 20 here attest: “you [must] purge the evil[c] from your midst. 20 So the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil.” You can be assured: any society that’s not TOUGH on crime, better expect CRIME to be tough on THEM. (no, SOMEONE should be jotting down and after the sermon podcast question right now: well, wait a minute, what about JESUS?!… Didn’t JESUS say, “ turn the other cheek”!? I’d love to answer that for you on the podcast tomorrow, but only if someone is ASKING; we need more ENGAGED listeners with the servants… Better follow up questions for the podcast… I can’t possibly squeeze everything out of this that can be squeezed in just 45 minutes; so I’m offering you MORE than that. Take me up on it!)
But to stick with the INNOCENT for now, we see God’s justice not ONLY in His punishing of the guilty, but in His defending of the guilt-LESS as well. (Daniel Batarseh, “Deuteronomy 19” sermon)
Here’s yet ANOTHER great legal principle we see birthed in this passage: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” Look at v10; WHY does God institute these cities of refuge? “ Lest innocent blood be shed in your land… and the guilt of bloodshed be upon you.” YES it may be upsetting, regrettable, even “WRONG” that your loved one was killed unintentionally, that HIS innocent blood was accidentally shed. But if you turn around and kill his manslaughterer in retaliation, that will only be even MORE innocent blood… and THIS time, the GUILT will be upon YOU.
And actually, the “YOU” in v10 refers to all of ISRAEL; “y’all” will be guilty if you don’t set apart these 3 cities. And in vv8 and 9, God says, “Actually, if you’re REALLY pursuing justice, and OBEDIENCE to my Law, there oughta be NINE cities of refuge: three EAST of the Jordan, three INSIDE the Promised Land, and an ADDITIONAL three in the “enlarged territory” I want to give you if “you are careful to keep all [my] commandment… walking ever in [my] ways”. Now, tellingly, Israel never needed to SET APART those three additional cities; remember I told you back when we studied ch11 that God promised to give Israel “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads… Your territory shall be from the wilderness to[d] the Lebanon, and from the… river Euphrates, to the western sea” (vv24-25), an area encompassing roughly 2 million square kilometers, and yet at the HEIGHT of their kingdom, under David and Solomon, Israel occupied less than one-TENTH of that territory. They were NOT “careful to keep God’s commands”.
But let’s look at one MORE of them before we move on: v15- “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime”; it’s the “two-witness” rule. Otherwise, we digress into “he said - she said” argumentation. Again, we need to appreciate the GENIUS of God’s law here; most of this was absolutely REVOLUTIONARY in its day. In virtually every other society back then (and for MOST of human history for that matter), a MAN’s word trumped a woman’s; a FREE man’s word trumped a SLAVE’s; and a NOBLEMAN’s testimony… if you were WEALTHY, a RULER, your word might trump a whole VILLAGE’s; “might makes right”. But not with GOD. He says, “I don’t care WHO you are, HOW important you are; Lady Justice is BLIND, and you are EQUAL under the eyes of the Law. No one is ABOVE the law, and no one is BELOW it either, everyone deserves a fair trial”, a chance to prove their INNOCENCE.
But at the SAME time, God ALSO desires justice for THE GUILTY. (19:11-14, 16-21)
And He anticipates, with the establishment of these cities of refuge, that there will be OTHERS who ARE guilty of premeditated murder, who “hate [their] neighbor and lie in wait for him and attack him… fatally”, but who ALSO then escape to a city of refuge and appeal for asylum, and God is absolutely CLEAR here, about how to proceed: “the elders of his city [who have presumably by this point conducted a thorough investigation of the case; they] shall send and take him from there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may die. Your eye shall not pity him”.
Why? Because v13: “you [must] purge the guilt of innocent blood”; this hearkens all the way back to Genesis ch9, v6: ““Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”
Our lives, as image-bearers of the Almighty God, our lives are so INFINITELY, in-ESTIMABLY valuable to God, that He FORBIDS us from simply turning a blind eye when innocent blood is shed. “You MUST repay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth”. Justice MUST be satisfied, on the guilty.
That applies to MURDERERS, v12; it applies to THIEVES in v14: ““You shall not move your neighbor's landmark”; commentator Adam Clarke explains, “Before the extensive use of fences, landed property was marked out by stones or posts, set up so as to ascertain the divisions of family estates. It was easy to remove one of these landmarks, and set it in a different place; and thus the dishonest man enlarged his own estate by contracting that of his neighbour.” (Clarke in Guzik, Enduring Word).
God says, “Don’t DO it. If you DO, you get PUNISHED.”
By the way, quick plug for legal conservatism here, with v14’s regard for “landmarks, which the men of old have set”; what you find with a lot of progressivism - this idea that we must CONSTANTLY be improving upon the previous generations’ morality and laws - a lot of that really just boils down to HUBRIS. It’s pretty ARROGANT to think that you know better than EVERYONE who came before you; that’s how cities end up decriminalizing EVERY deadly drug out there, how countries end up doing away with the death penalty. When it comes to MORAL issues, it’s how we end up accepting and NORMALIZING as a society premarital sex, homosexuality, abortion, “no fault divorce”, and the list goes on. We ignore the “landmarks which men of OLD have set” to our own PERIL.
But those who did so in the LITERAL sense, and STOLE land from their neighbors, were to be held ACCOUNTABLE. As were those who LIE, or more specifically, vv16-21 now, those who PERJURE, lie under OATH, in connection to a trial; if they give false TESTIMONY, and “accuse [their] brother falsely”, not just mistakenly but maliciously, then the false ACCUSER would suffer whatever punishment he had SOUGHT to bring on his fellow ISRAELITE. If I try to get you STONED to death for BLASPHEMY, and it turns out I just don’t LIKE you so I made the whole thing up, then I get the same death penalty I was seeking for you instead. You can just IMAGINE how much of a deterrent THIS would have been from bringing trumped-up, false charges against someone. We call it “punitive damages” today, and they’re almost NEVER awarded anymore, which is why we live in just about the most litigious society in all of history, because Americans can seemingly just SUE each other with impunity. This is yet ANOTHER of the Bible’s wise “landmarks” we would do well to respect and not MOVE.
We really need to move on, but let’s briefly consider how we might APPLY these principles (if not the precepts). Most of us are not CONGRESSMEN, or JUDGES, we do have a few LAWYERS here, but most of us have little to no influence over our legal system; so why should we CARE about these laws, beyond just appreciating their genius? How might we actually IMPLEMENT them in our OWN lives?
Well, take for instance a principle like “innocent until proven guilty” - how ought that to deter US from, say… GOSSIP. Spreading rumors we haven’t even confirmed the validity of.
How might it deter us from attributing motive, ill-intent, from assuming the worst of others. We can be quick to assume murder, when they’re really guilty of manslaughter; it’s still upsetting, but it’s different, isn’t it? Motive matters. Years ago, I got so frustrated with Polly every time she’d drive my car, she would leave the seat all the way forward, and sometimes I wouldn’t realize it until I tried to get in and I’d BANG my knees on the steering wheel. So I asked her (not very nicely either, cuz our marriage was rough back then), “Hey, stop doing that.” A week later, I BANGED my knees again. And I thought, “This is MURDER! She is purposely trying to MESS with me, now that she KNOWS it gets under my skin!” So I confronted her about it (again, not very nicely; “How DARE you…!”), and she said, “Have you considered that perhaps I just FORGOT to move the seat back? Do you actually think I would PURPOSELY…”, and guess what: I DID think that, because it’s the kind of thing I would have done to HER back then. We’re always fighting, and she’s resorting to some kind of guerilla warfare tactics now; “Oh no - TWO can play at THAT game!”; I started leaving HER seat in HER car all the way BACK, on PURPOSE, to get BACK at her; that slow, automatic seat **[[moves seat forward]]** “It’ll take her 15 whole seconds before she’ll be able to drive anywhere; THAT’ll teach her…” - But she didn’t notice or CARE, probably never even knew I use to DO that until now, this admission this morning, because what kind of PSYCHOPATH thinks and acts that way?
One who has murder in his OWN heart. Jesus said, ‘Everyone who is ANGRY with his brother (or his WIFE), is guilty of MURDER in his HEART.’ (Mt 5:22) That’s why Deuteronomy 19:4 said it’s important that the two men chopping wood together didn’t HATE each other in the past, so we can assume the BEST about the motive, or lack thereof. Are you starting to see how these principles aren’t just for ancient courtrooms; they’re for US!
Romans 12: “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to… God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord, “I will repay”” (vv17-19). Forget manslaughter and the “avenger of blood” for a minute; that might be the best MARRIAGE advice you’ve received in a long time! You can just “insert last argument / conflict you had with your spouse HERE”:
*DON’T repay evil for evil…
*DO consider how to OUTDO your spouse in “showing them honor”...
*As much as it’s in your power to do so, PURSUE PEACE…
*And leave all the VENGEANCE and vindication to the LORD; trust in HIS justice. My wife doesn’t have to answer to ME for her sins, even the ones against ME; “against YOU and you ONLY have I sinned” (Ps 51:4), David confessed to the Lord. My wife’s gonna answer to HIM one day, for every seat she accidentally left forward… as will I, for all the seats I PURPOSELY left back.
And we will answer for every “landmark we moved”; I am chronically LATE; everywhere I go, I show up 3 to 5 minutes late. If I say, “Let’s meet at NOON for lunch”, I’m showing up at 12:05. Didn’t I, in a sense, STEAL those 5 minutes from you? I ‘moved the landmark’ on you.
God desires JUSTICE for the INNOCENT… AND for the guilty.
#2- God desires FAITH. (20:1-9)
We shift GEARS a bit in ch20, where Moses now introduces some “laws concerning WARFARE”. The first of which is God’s PROTOCOL for how He instructed Israel to enter INTO their battles; it was a three-step process: the priestly charge, the officers’ pruning, and the picking of the commanders. Priest, prune, pick. And every step is about FAITH.
First, the priest’s job was to BOLSTER the army’s faith. Moses acknowledges in v1, “Sure, your enemies may have ‘horses and chariots and an army larger than yours’, but ‘you shall not be afraid of them, [because YOU - Israel - have the most powerful weapon of ALL:] the Lord your God is with you’. And you’ve SEEN what HE can do! How He ‘brought you up (MIRACULOUSLY) out of the land of Egypt.’” So Moses says, “The PRIEST’s job is to REMIND you of it, every time you go out to battle. “The priest… shall say to them, ‘...let not your heart faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, 4 for the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.’”
Can you imagine how differently we’d fight, if we really believed that? If we fought with that kind of confidence? The kind of GIANTS we could slay - GOD would slay - if we’d just trust Him to?
Then after the priest was the PRUNING, the paring down: “Then the officers shall speak to the [army], saying, ‘Is there any man here who has built a new house and has not yet dedicated it? Let him go back to his house… Or any man who has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed its fruit? Let him go back… Or any man engaged to a wife and has not taken [and enjoyed] her? Let him go back…” - what’s God DOING here? He’s getting RID of the double-minded. The soldiers who may be here physically, but not MENTALLY; their MIND and HEART are still back at HOME. And if they can’t be FULLY present, God says, “Go on home, then; the battlefield is NO place for a divided heart.” Now, just because a soldier HAD a valid exemption, doesn’t mean he had to TAKE it. He might realize, “What good is my HOUSE, my VINEYARD, my FIANCE gonna be to me, if we lose to this invading army, and they come plunder our town ANYWAY? NO! I’m gonna stay and FIGHT!” But God’s at least gonna give them the OPTION of bowing out. In v8, the officers cut through all the other excuses and get down to the HEART of it: “‘Is there any man who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go back… lest he make the heart of his fellow [soldiers] melt like his own.’” God can do more with a favorable HEART than with favorable NUMBERS. (Batarseh) Remember the story of Gideon? He assembled Israel for battle against a Midianite army of 135,000 troops; Gideon only had 32,000 men; God said, “It’s too MANY… Not THEIR army, but YOURS, Gideon. Cuz it’s theoretically possible for 32,000 well-trained, experienced soldiers to defeat an army of 135,000, and God said, “I don’t want there to be ANY confusion about who won THIS victory! I’M gonna get the glory,” God says. So he has Gideon announce, “‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home”, and 22,000 men left. Eventually God pares Israel’s army all the way down to just 300 soldiers, and He says, “Not THIS I can WORK with. These are ‘David vs Goliath’ odds; no confusion anymore!”
So the priest bolstered the army’s faith, the officers pruned out the FEAR-ful, any who were faith-LESS, and then lastly, v9: they picked commanders who were REWARDED for their faith.
Let’s make it personal: Do you realize we’re at WAR, Church? There is a spiritual battle raging all around us, and every DAY souls are being WON to God’s kingdom… and souls are being eternally LOST. So we gather here on Sundays for my priestly PEP-talk, these gospel reminders, “Yeah, their chariots may be fancier and their ARMY may be BIGGER” - the world’s got “sex, drugs & rock-n-roll,” money, power, and all the rest, but WE’VE got the LORD! Who brought us out of EGYPT, our SLAVERY to SIN…” - but then we go out to battle, Monday to Saturday, and we put it to the test. And we find out what’s winning the battle in our OWN hearts: fear or FAITH.
Thursday morning, I held the hand of a man who MANY would say had finally LOST his 15-year battle to cancer. But I say they’re WRONG. Bryan West didn’t lose; he stared death in the face and he didn’t BLINK. And he looked ME in the eyes and said, as calmly and as confidently as ever, “I’ll see you on the other side, brother.”
That’s a man who “let not his heart faint. He did not fear or panic or dread even in DEATH, 4 for Bryan KNEW that the Lord his God with him to fight for him and to give him the victory.’”
Do you have a faith like that? I PRAY you do. I pray we would ALL know that kind of peace and blessed assurance, that comes ONLY from knowing CHRIST JESUS.
For sake of time, I’m actually gonna SKIP point #3- God desires PURITY. (20:12-18) We’ve discussed this quite a bit in previous weeks, and Moses will return to it again later in Deuteronomy, this charge to devote the “Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, etc.” to “complete destruction” (v17). But he reminds us of the primary reason there in v18: “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods [child sacrifice, ritual prostitution], and so you sin against the Lord your God.”
Yes, God is REALLY that HOLY, and Yes, He really calls His PEOPLE to that kind of radical PURITY.
Which makes point #4 all the more powerful: God’s MERCY.
(#4-) God desires MERCY, from us. (20:10-11; 19-20)
He instructs Israel BEFORE fighting against a city to FIRST it “terms of peace” (v10). God’s so merciful, look at v19: ““When you besiege a city… you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them… Are the trees in the field human, that they should be besieged by you?”.
First of all, “Does God care more about TREES than PEOPLE?”
No - God cares about JUSTICE for the INNOCENT. The trees didn’t hurt anybody… unlike US! We humans hurt each other all the TIME. And we hurt GOD in the process; “against you and you only, have I sinned.”
And yet God is so KIND and CARING, He’s even CONCERNED about the trees; you know the LAST thing that would be on your mind if you were besieging a city? Their TREES! But not GOD. According to Jesus, He cares so much that He feeds the birds, He clothes the lilies… this law reminds me of the very end of the book of JONAH, where Jonah gets MAD at God for showing MERCY to the repentant Ninevites, and NOT “devoting them to complete destruction”, and you remember God’s RESPONSE? “Should I NOT pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons… [and here it is] and also much cattle?”” Jonah’s like, “...CATTLE? What are we even TALKING about here, God?!” But God is so merciful, he even considers the COWS, the TREES, the birds, the lilies.
But now let’s bring it all together: how does a God that MERCIFUL, but also that PURE and HOLY, enter into relationship with SINNERS like us, without DENYING his JUSTICE?! Because remember, God says, the GUILTY MUST be punished.
And the answer, friends, is the CROSS of Christ. “For there, where justice and mercy meet, He saved me on that cross” (CityAlight, “There is One Gospel”). Jesus bore our guilt and punishment, in our place, that we might receive forgiveness and MERCY instead.
And how do we RECEIVE it? We FLEE to JESUS; He is our better “city of refuge”, Hebrew 6:18 says. Think about all the parallels; commentator David Guzik points out:
-The cities had to be within EASY REACH of the needy person. Friends, the gospel is not DIFFICULT to grasp; “You SIN, Jesus SAVES” - that’s IT! Say “YES” to Jesus, and be RESCUED (David Guzik, Enduring Word)
-The cities of refuge were open to EVERYONE, according to Numbers 35; NO ONE (not even foreigners) could be turned away in their time of need. So too, JESUS accepts ALL who come to him in humble, needy faith.
-But the city of refuge was also one’s ONLY hope of protection. You couldn’t be SAVED any other way. So too with CHRIST; Acts 4:12 “there is salvation in no one else”.
-And you didn’t just run to the city to VISIT; you had to REMAIN in it for protection. So too with Christ. “I am the vine; you are the branches. …Abide in me” (Jn 15:5)
-But LASTLY, friends, there is one CRUCIAL way in which Jesus is NOT like the cities of refuge: “they ONLY helped the INNOCENT. But even the GUILTY can come to JESUS and find refuge.”
And that’s really good news for guilty sinners like you and me. Friends, won’t you run to JESUS today, and be saved?
Let’s pray…