The God of the Law, pt.3 (Deuteronomy 21:1 - 22:12)", Will DuVal | 5/10/26
Deuteronomy 21:1 - 22:12 | 5/10/26 | Will DuVal
INTRO: Did you know that it’s illegal in Thailand to step on the currency, because it contains the king’s image?
Did you know that it’s effectively illegal in Afghanistan for women to drive or vote?
That in 17th c Russia, men had to pay a “beard tax” in order to wear facial hair.
And that still TODAY in Alabama, it’s illegal to wear a fake mustache in CHURCH if it causes others to LAUGH.
This morning we’re continuing our mini- “series within the sermon series” through the book of Deuteronomy, explicating and exalting the “God of the Law”, in pt. THREE now, under the premise that laws not ONLY seek to govern peoples’ behavior, they ALSO serve to reveal the character and values of the law-MAKER HIMSELF.
For instance, from the restrictions I just READ you, we can deduce that:
-the king of Thailand is probably pretty VAIN and INSECURE, to take offense at people stepping on his picture on their money…
-the Taliban who now run Afghanistan are oppressively misogynistic…
-Peter the Great REALLY wanted to Russia to MODERNIZE, and dress like the West; and speaking of facial hair…
-Alabamans (God love ‘em) really take their worship services SERIOUSLY! After last week’s “bear-wrestling” law, I decided to REDEEM Alabama; good on them - no fake mustaches in church!
This is why we study the book of Deuteronomy, even though the laws we FIND here - about ‘marrying female prisoners of war’, executing a rebellious CHILD, wearing clothes made of mixed FIBERS - they are ALL now “obsolete” (Heb 8:13), Jesus has FULFILLED the OT Law for us… and yet, these laws still show us something of God’s HEART - His desires, His DEMANDS, even His divine disposition.
So as we look once again at God’s LAW together this morning, let me REMIND us once again not to get too hung up on the particulars of the passe precepts here, but rather, to focus on the personal pertinence and practicality of the underlying PRINCIPLES we find here, and especially, on the pointers to PERSONALITY we find; “What does each of these laws tell us about its law-MAKER… about GOD?” That’s our driving question again this morning, and this passage offers us THREE answers, three things we learn about God here, in Deuteronomy chs 21, and the first half of 22.
If you want to turn there with me now in your Bibles, and I invite you to STAND with me... Deut 21:1 - 22:12… Hear the word of the Lord:
“If in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess someone is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him, 2 then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure the distance to the surrounding cities. 3 And the elders of the city that is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer that has never been worked and that has not pulled in a yoke. 4 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 heifer's neck there in the valley. 5 Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the Lord your God has chosen them 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. 6 And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, 7 and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. 8 Accept atonement, O 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.’ 9 So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord.
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, 11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, 12 and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. 13 And 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. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.
15 “If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him children, and if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved,[a] 16 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, 17 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.
18 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 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.
22 “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, 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.
Ch22, v1: “You shall not see your brother's ox or his sheep going astray and ignore them. You shall take them back to your brother. 2 And if he does not live near you and you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it. Then you shall restore it to him. 3 And you shall do the same with his donkey or with his garment, or with any lost thing of your brother's, which he loses and you find; you may not ignore it. 4 You shall not see your brother's donkey or his ox fallen down by the way and ignore them. You shall help him to lift them up again.
5 “A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.
6 “If you come across a bird's nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. 7 You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long.
8 “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.
9 “You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited,[b] the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard. 10 You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. 11 You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.
12 “You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself.” This is the word of God…
We learn, or more precisely, we are REMINDED here of THREE things that God REQUIRES of His people; I think the verb I used in last week’s bulletin was “God DESIRES”, but this week I decided to STRENGTHEN it to “God REQUIRES”, because as I mentioned last week, these aren’t merely “SUGGESTIONS”; they are COMMANDMENTS. So they reveal not ONLY what God “desires” from us but what He DEMANDS of us… THREE things:
#1- God requires ATONEMENT. (21:1-9)
What is “ATONEMENT”? Actually, let’s ask it a different way, because while our ESV Bibles translate v8 as “Accept atonement”, the Hebrew actually uses the VERB form of “kaphar”, and an IMPERATIVE verb at that; as a matter of fact, this is the ONLY imperative use of the verb kaphar I could find anywhere in the Bible, where someone is PLEADING with God, “O Lord, ATONE!”
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Kaphar literally means “to COVER”, as in “Make an ark of gopher wood… and [KAPHAR] it.. with pitch,” that’s the very FIRST use of the verb in Genesis 6, God’s instructions to NOAH. But the most COMMON use of this word kaphar is in reference to SIN, as in the elders’ prayer HERE: “Lord, kaphar the “BLOOD GUILT” of your people Israel”.
You say, “ISRAEL’s guilt? I thought this was a case of some UKNOWN killer; what’s all this about the ELDERS and PRIESTS of the nearest city, and “the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of [ALL the] people of Israel”?!
It’s a difficult truth for us to swallow, living in such an individualistic society as we do, but God views His people as one collective unit. That’s why in the New Testament, the Church is called Christ’s BODY, singular. It’s why throughout Deuteronomy, Moses almost always addresses Israel as a singular entity, “If in the land God is giving YOU” - not “Y’ALL”; but “YOU”, it’s SINGULAR. So for better or worse, God often BLESSES or PUNISHES His people COLLECTIVELY. Like when MOSES interceded on behalf of Israel, after they’d built the Golden Calf, he said, “You have sinned a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can atone [there it is] for your sin” (Ex 32:30), and he DOES; one man’s action ATONES for the peoples’ collective guilt. On the other hand, consider a story like ‘Achan’s disobedience’ in Joshua 7, where we hear “the anger of the Lord burned against the [entire] people of Israel” because of just ONE man, ACHAN’s, SIN. We read that and think, “Well THAT’s not fair,” because we espouse the wrong ANSWER to Cain’s question in Genesis 4: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (v9). Remember that? Cain, the first MURDERER, kills his brother ABEL; God CONFRONTS him, “Hey, where’s your brother Abel?” And Cain’s REPLY is, “How should I know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And God’s response makes His answer clear: YES! You ARE! God says, “The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground… When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength…” - in OTHER words, “Cain, not ONLY is YOUR life so interconnected with your BROTHER’S that “YES!”, you ARE in fact RESPONSIBLE for him, but your life is even interconnected with Creation ITSELF, such that YOUR sin, just like your FATHER’S, Adam’s sin, has the power to curse even the GROUND itself. Isaiah 26:21 “the Lord is coming… to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,
and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it,
and will no more COVER its slain.”
God WILL right EVERY wrong. Even when justice is IMPOSSIBLE on THIS side of eternity, we can take heart: GOD’s got a whole OTHER side of eternity to make UP for it.
…UNLESS that sin is ATONED for, and the guilt is “COVERED”. That is the priests’ PRAYER here: “ATONE, O Lord… for OUR hands did NOT shed this blood…”; does that part of the ritual REMIND you of any other Bible stories? “the elders… shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken…”; by the way, this is the ONLY time in the Bible that ATONEMENT is made WITHOUT the shedding of blood, did you notice that? Hebrews 9:22 says, “under the law almost everything is purified with blood”. He had to say “ALMOST” because of THIS law; every other time there’s ATONEMENT, the focus was on the animal’s BLOOD, which MADE the atonement: “For the life of the [animal] is in its blood, and I have given it for you [God says in Leviticus] on the altar to make atonement for your souls” (17:11). But HERE in Deuteronomy 21, the focus is on the fact that the elders, acting as representatives on behalf of the people, all Israel, they do NOT have blood on their hands, literally OR figuratively.
“We ACKNOWLEDGE, O Lord, that we ARE called to ‘be our brothers’ keepers’, and yet, that PRINCIPLE must have its practical LIMITATIONS. We’re TRYING to watch out for each other, but we can’t have eyes EVERYWHERE”; interestingly, this law only applies to unsolved murders “out in the open country” (v1). Otherwise, God expects the “neighborhood watch” to remain vigilant.
What relevance does any of this have for US, TODAY? Well, we’re going to come BACK to this idea of “atonement” at the very END of the message today, and consider its most IMPORTANT relevance and application for us, personally. But before we move on, I think we need to feel the weight of this principle of “collective guilt”. Hopefully we appreciate its impact on our life together as a CHURCH; the apostle Paul instructed the church in Corinth to “remove” a man guilty of egregious, public, unrepentant sin - “deliver this man to Satan”, he exhorted, and “Purge the evil person from among you,” he quoted Deuteronomy 21 here, because, Paul explained, “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” (1 Cor 5:1-7). Sin is like leaven, yeast - it’s a BACTERIA, a VIRUS, a CANCER! - that when left unchecked, has a way of spreading like WILDFIRE, and ravaging the entire COMMUNITY, the CHURCH. The sin that one generation TOLERATES, the next generation VALIDATES, and the third generation begins to CELEBRATE. We see it all around us, even INSIDE the Church, sadly: with HOMOSEXUALITY, with ABORTION - what the “Builders” and “Boomers TOLERATED, during the “Sexual Revolution" of the 60s and 70s (e.g., Roe v Wade), “Gen X” and “Millennials” began to VALIDATE and normalize by the early 2000s (e.g., “International SAFE ABORTION Day” was founded to try and destigmatize and LEGALIZE abortion EVERYWHERE), culminating in NOW, Gen Z and Alpha being expected to CELEBRATE the sin (e.g., “SHOUT your abortion!”).
And here’s the principle: it’s not enough for the CHURCH to sit back and ask, “Well, are WE our brothers’ (and sisters’) KEEPERS?”, because God’s ANSWER is CLEAR: “if my people [SINGULAR] who [IS] called by my name [“CHRISTIANS” will] humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways [their COMPLACENCY, and therefore their CULPABILITY - we CANNOT simply “wash our hands” of these sins, that got voted into LAW on OUR watch, in a country that was supposedly 87% Christian back in 1973 when Roe v Wade got passed, and is STILL supposedly 68% Christian, and yet we stand idly by while Mifepristone gets shipped unrestricted to EVERY state in the country, killing more babies than BEFORE Roe v Wade was overturned - their blood is on OUR hands, Church! And yet HERE is God’s gracious invitation to us: “HUMBLE yourselves” - ADMIT your guilt - and PRAY, and SEEK MY FACE once again; TURN from your sin - REPENT! - turn BACK to me, and…], then I will hear [you] from heaven and I will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
It’s a good transition to requirement #2; God’s calling in Proverbs 31:8 to “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are [passing away]”; that’s a call to COMPASSION in ACTION for those who are most VULNERABLE. In other words….
#2- God requires KINDNESS. (21:10-17; 22:1-4, 6-8)
Specifically, in Israel’s context, kindness toward:
Prisoner-of-war WIVES (21:10-14)
One’s children from UNLOVED wives (vv15-17)
Neighbors who LOSE stuff, (22:1-3)
Their LIVESTOCK, in particular (v4)
Nesting BIRDS (vv5-7), and finally…
ANYONE who may hang out on your ROOF one day (v8)
Why these very specific examples, RECIPIENTS of kindness? Hard to say. Perhaps a combination of the MOST vulnerable in society (women from enemy nations, children of unloved wives, cute little BIRDIES…) combined with those most COMMONLY in need of help - no one put FENCES around their land back then, so I imagine sheep and ox and donkeys were CONSTANTLY wandering off into other peoples’ property. And the way their HOUSES were built, on top of the ROOF was often the COOLEST place to lounge or even SLEEP. My wife puts inflatable BUMPERS around our kids’ beds - even though there’s already a wooden GUARDRAIL around the bed - cuz she’s afraid they’ll roll and get stuck in the 2-inch gap BETWEEN the mattress and the guardrail – she is EXTREMELY “kind”; I, on the other hand, wanted to take the GUARDRAILS off; I believe kids need to roll onto a couple FLOORS in life so they can learn how to sleep in PLACE; I think we’re DOOMING our kids’ future SPOUSES - they’ll NEVER sleep! Bo and Elijah’ll be rolling all OVER their wives!
But I digress - my wife is KIND, to put “parapets” around their beds; if we lived in ancient Israel, I am confident: our roof’s parapets would put yours to SHAME. Who needs a view of the sunset; it won’t do BO any good if he can scale the parapet and fall off the roof and DIE, cuz if there’s a WAY to, he’s gonna find it.
But I digress AGAIN; let me offer you a brief explanation for these SIX specific “kindness” laws, just enough to understand what’s going on here, WHY God commanded each, but I wanna make sure we ESPECIALLY get to how we might apply the underlying PRINCIPLES here in our OWN lives.
Kindness precept #1: v10 - when you DEFEAT your enemies, and “you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife…” Now, pause there for a moment; one IMMEDIATE question you may ask is, “Wait a minute; I thought Israel wasn’t supposed to INTERMARRY at all; Didn’t God already command them back in ch7, “You shall not intermarry with them… for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods” (vv3-4). That’s TRUE, but who was the “THEY”? Ch7 OPENED with, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land… and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations… you must devote to complete destruction” (vv1-2). But interestingly, God did NOT prohibit intermarriage with nations OUTSIDE the Promised Land, so long as they wouldn’t “turn (Israel) away from following (Him)”. And that’s what His instructions in vv12-13 are all about - “shaving her head, paring her nails, swapping her clothes” - it’s a call for this prospective wife to make a clean BREAK with her old way of life. To put it all - including, ESPECIALLY, her former GODS and GODDESSES - to put them all BEHIND her. Even her FAMILY; she was to “lament her father and her mother a full month” (v13).
You say, “Well HOW is that KINDNESS? To take her from her family, everything she’d ever KNOWN…” - I’ll give you THREE reasons:
First, any OTHER conquering army would have just raped her then KILLED her. God says, “NO! You feed her and take care of her for a “full MONTH”, and then you MARRY her - offer her LEGAL rights and protections - before you even TOUCH her.
SECOND, and related, PRACTICALLY speaking, taking her as a wife would have been more HUMANE than leaving her behind, in a village with NO potential husbands left to provide for her because your army had just KILLED all of them. You’d be leaving her VULNERABLE to the NEXT invading army who came through town.
But THIRD and MOST “kind” of all, by taking her as a wife, the Israelite gave this woman a chance to KNOW the REAL God, YAHWEH! Like RUTH, the MOABITE, who married BOAZ, and God wrote into the genealogies of BOTH King David AND King JESUS.
But even if it DIDN’T work out, consider God’s call to kindness in v14: you shall let her go FREE; you shall NOT sell her for MONEY; she’s not your SLAVE; you treat her like a WIFE. That was UNHEARD of in the ancient world.
Precept #2: v15 - “If a man has two wives…”; okay, pause again: “Does the Bible condone polygamy?” Some people read this and say, “Well, OBVIOUSLY!” But they overlook the fact that God - in His KINDNESS and FORBEARANCE - wrote a LOT of laws intended not to PROMOTE sin, but to REGULATE and RESTRICT it, to REIN it in… and yet God ACKNOWLEDGED the reality of our sin, and graciously ACCOMMODATED for it in his law. Like the laws back in ch17 concerning Israel’s KINGS; shouldn’t have even NEEDED them, cuz God said, “I’LL be your king”! And yet He KNEW that Israel was gonna REJECT Him as king, so He graciously offered guidance to their human kings. Or two chapters from now, we’ll get to a law in ch23 that stipulates “You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute…into the house of the Lord”; does that mean God approves of PROSTITUTION? NO. It means, “If you’ve already SINNED, and sold sex for MONEY, don’t make things WORSE by then TITHING the money to the TEMPLE; don’t POLLUTE God’s HOUSE.” So this law is NOT proof that God condones polygamy, cuz He DOESN’T. And every time someone TRIED it in the Bible, it was a nightmare.
But vv15-17 here concern NOT so much the man’s multiple WIVES as their CHILDREN. Basically, a father was FORBIDDEN from giving preferential treatment to a child - the “right of the firstborn” - if that child wasn’t ACTUALLY the firstborn, dad just happened to love that baby-mama MORE. Now you might ask, “Isn’t the whole ‘right of the firstborn’, his getting a DOUBLE portion of the inheritance, isn’t that unfair, preferential treatment in the first place?” But we’ve gotta realize the REASON for the firstborn’s double portion: he was expected to assume the father’s PLACE in the family - caring for his widowed MOTHER, providing for his unmarried SISTERS, working his father’s FARM. So it was as much RESPONSIBILITY as it was “right”.
But the PRINCIPLE here is: give your FIRSTBORN that right, no matter HOW much you love your younger kids. Interestingly, GOD chooses the younger brother OFTEN throughout Scripture: Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over HIS 11 brothers, David over his 7…
Precept #3, we’ll speed up, ch22 now: If you see your brother’s ox or sheep going astray, “you shall take them BACK to your brother.” Or take them HOME, until he comes to claim them. And do the same with his donkey, or his garment… “Finder’s keepers, losers weepers” is NOT biblical. God calls us to KINDNESS. Not only for one another’s sake, but for the poor ANIMAL as well, who is lost, or in v4, STUCK; “You shall not see your brother's donkey or ox fallen down by the way and ignore them. You shall help him”. Exodus 23 extends this kindness even to the livestock of one’s ENEMIES: “If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.” (v5)
And God extends His care and kindness NOT just to the big, important, farming animals, but to the SMALLEST of animals as well… v6: “If you come across a bird's nest… you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall let the mother go… that it may go well with you, and that you may live long.” Some commentators make a big deal of the practical implications of the conservation law here (“the mother had to have more babies, or else the whole species might go extinct and threaten their food supply…”); I don’t think that’s all that God’s saying, when he warns them “...that it may go well with you, and that you may live long”. I think He’s saying, “If YOU aren’t kind to those under YOUR care, over whom I’ve given YOU dominion, then neither will I be kind to YOU!” I want you to care for even the most INSIGNIFICANT - remember LAST week, end of ch20: “Don’t chop down your enemies fruit-bearing trees”. God’s kindness reaches even the birds and the trees.
So it CERTAINLY applies, v8 now, to our friends & family, who join us on the rooftop - keep ‘em SAFE; make a PARAPET.
How might WE live out some of these PRINCIPLES of kindness?
-We can shovel our SIDEWALKS when it’s icy out
-Demonstrate CREATION care, in the way we shop and eat
-Help our NEIGHBORS (even the ones we don’t LIKE)
-Treat our KIDS with fairness.
Colossians 3:12 exhorts us “As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, [to] put on then, kindness [and] compassionate hearts”.
But at the SAME time, God makes it CLEAR here that He ALSO - #3 - requires HOLINESS. (21:18-23; 22:5, 9-12)
“Holiness” means “set apart-ness”, unto the LORD. It means we live according to GOD’s higher standard. And we’ll try and move even QUICKER through the PRECEPTS this time, to get to the PRINCIPLES, but in ISRAEL’S case, God required:
Holiness in how they PARENTED. (21:18-21)
Holiness in how they PUNISHED. (vv22-23)
Holiness in how they DRESSED. (22:5, 11-12)
And Holiness in how they FARMED. (vv9-10)
First: PARENTING. V18: “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey… though they discipline him...”; notice, this law only applies if the parents have done their JOB, and DISCIPLINED the wayward child. But you can’t expect a child who’s never been DISCIPLINED to be anything OTHER than “stubborn and rebellious”. “Gentle parenting” isn’t BIBLICAL; “Whoever spares the rod HATES his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” - THAT’s biblical (Pr 13:24). But Deuteronomy 21 is addressing a child who GOT the rod, ALL growing up - notice v20: “he’s a GLUTTON and a DRUNKARD”; he’s not a YOUNG child anymore; he oughta KNOW better by now - but he STILL won’t listen. What do you DO?
Capital punishment: “all the men of the city shall stone him to death”. Notice: his parents don’t have the authority - they don’t have the BURDEN - of HAVING to put him to death; that power lied in the COMMUNITY. Why? Because once again, our SIN has COMMUNAL implications - “a little leaven…”. “So y’all shall purge the evil from your midst”, and it shall act as a COMMUNAL deterrent - “all Israel shall hear, and fear.”
What’s the principle for US, in OUR parenting? God’s people don’t tolerate the kind of sin from OUR children that NON-Christian parents might put up with; we call our kids to HOLINESS.
Second, and speaking of discipline, Israel was called to holiness in how they PUNISHED. V22: “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day”. This was yet ANOTHER form of public deterrent - hanging the criminal’s body out for all to see, visibly, the consequences of violating the law. And PAGAN nations would leave them there INDEFINITELY, until the birds and beasts picked the corpse clean. But God says, “No; BURY him the same day”; why? “for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land”. It’s one thing to remind people that sin has consequences; but you don’t want that SINFUL EXAMPLE, that CURSE, hanging over the community INDEFINITELY, setting the TONE, “defiling the land”.
Skipping down to ch22 now, and THREE laws governing holiness in how we DRESS; starting in v5: “A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak”. God’s people don’t CROSS-dress. PAGANS might; there’s a LOT of “gender-bending” in the zeitgeist these days, it’s become WEIRDLY popular… but WE know that from the beginning, “God created [us] in his image…
male and female he created them”, distinctly. So we don’t blur the LINES between the two, we don’t try and MINIMIZE the gender distinction; rather, we CELEBRATE our masculinity, men, or your femininity, ladies. Why does God CARE so much? “Abomination” is a STRONG word! But it’s because all of this transvestism and transgenderism CONFUSION is essentially a direct, PERSONAL affront to GOD as CREATOR. That person is effectively saying, “God: YOU made a mistake, and I know better than you; I get to decide my OWN identity, I will be my OWN creator!” It’s an abomination. And I hope some of you are already writing in “After the Sermon” questions for the podcast tomorrow about appropriate attire, and reconsidering your wardrobe…
The SECOND clothing law is v11’s “You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.” Why? Honestly, “cuz God SAID so.” That’s really the ONLY reason - it’s completely ARBITRARY. But it was SYMBOLIC of the kind of HOLINESS - the “set apart-ness” - that God called Israel to in OTHER, more IMPORTANT spheres of life, like their MARRIAGES, their WORSHIP, etc. So if you’re one of those WEIRD people who don’t like it when your different FOODS touch each, and you need a separate dish for every part of the meal, you probably LOVE this verse: “I’m just practicing HOLINESS in my DINING”. You know what, if it’s a reminder to live your LIFE as “set apart” unto the Lord, then knock yourself out. 🙂
Third, in v12: “You shall make tassels on the four corners of [your] garment”. The Israelites, and orthodox Jews still today, make 613 tassels as a wearable reminder of the 613 commandments in the OT. And we discussed this back in ch6 (and Numbers 15 last year) with the phylacteries, “BINDING God’s word “as a sign on your hand, and as frontlets between your eyes”, God’s invitation to find TANGIBLE ways to REMIND ourselves of our calling to “be HOLY as He is Holy”.
I’m gonna SKIP vv 9 & 10 and “holiness in FARMING”... not sowing your field with “two kinds of seed”; SAME principle as the CLOTHING of mixed fibers from v11 - yet another symbolic REMINDER of Israel’s “set apartness”. Same thing applies to “plowing with an ox and a donkey together” - oxen were “CLEAN” animals; donkeys were “UN-clean”. This is where the apostle Paul adapted his warning in 2 Corinthians 6 against being “unequally YOKED”, with unbelievers, in close friendships, in MARRIAGE, cuz you’re pulling in different directions.
Please DO submit your follow up questions for everything I ran out of TIME for, but HERE’S where I wanna END this morning; let’s try and put all THREE of these requirements together now, and make sure we don’t miss the forest for the trees here…
[[CONCLUSION/gospel]]: The reason God REQUIRES holiness, kindness, ATONEMENT from US… is because of who HE is; HE is holy, HE is kind. So here’s the all-important question we need to consider in concluding:
“How does God maintain HIS HOLINESS while also lavishing his KINDNESS to us? And the answer, friends, is through ATONEMENT!
Jesus Christ was the perfect “lamb of God” who came to take AWAY the sins of the world, by shedding HIS blood, to “purge the guilt of innocent blood from OUR midst”. Because the truth is, we have ALL been caught “red-handed” in our sin; NONE of us can simply “wash our hands” of the guilt, the STAIN, of our own sin. But JESUS became the required HEIFER, and laid down his life to ASSUME our guilt that he might ATONE for our sins.
Jesus hung on the TREE, the CROSS, to become a CURSE for us, Galatians 3:13 says; to BEAR the curse of our sin, in his body on the tree. He BECAME sin, though he KNEW no sin, so that in HIM, WE might become the RIGHTEOUSNESS of God, and be RECONCILED to a holy God, despite our sin, because we’ve been CLEANSED by the precious blood of CHRIST.
But the good news of the gospel gets even BETTER, because Jesus didn’t STAY on the cross, he didn’t REMAIN a curse; he ROSE from the grave on the third day that we TOO might be raised to NEWNESS of life, and share in the hope of ETERNAL life with him… forever… in PARADISE.
So I ask you this morning in closing: do you HAVE that hope? Have you accepted God’s KINDNESS and TRUSTED in Jesus as your atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of YOUR sins? If you haven’t, don’t wait a moment longer, trust in Jesus this morning and be SAVED.