Difficult Laws Concerning the Land

There will be mercy to whoever stole my hymnal, if you'll just return it. I was actually doing the look at the very strongest part of my glasses over Pastor Fry's shoulder, read his hymnal-type thing there for a while, until he moved it all the way over here, and then I was lost.

So I did my best. That second hymn, I've never heard of it before in my life, so I just sort of sat there and smiled at everybody else. That's how we did it. Please turn with me to Deuteronomy, chapter 25.

The Levirate Law and the Preservation of Family Land

Deuteronomy, chapter 25. And I will warn you ahead of time, you need to get a deep seat in the saddle. Whatever other terminology you want to come up with, make sure your safety belt is securely tightened, whatever, I don't know.

But we have some difficult material to deal with. I assume this will probably be the last section like this that we deal with. And then to wrap up this study, we will look at the blessings and cursings passages.

Now, of course, the cursings passages are almost as difficult in many ways. But this last section, I've seen it coming for a long time. And but thankfully, in consideration and preparation, just this afternoon, I saw how something fit together.

So hopefully, might be able to come up with something that is useful to everyone. But once again, you might say, well, why not just skip it? Why not just, well, because obviously, one of the desires that I have is that when those of you who are here regularly, when you engage in conversation, when you seek to give a reason for the hopes within you, I want you to have a certain level of confidence that comes from the fact that we didn't dodge the tough stuff.

We met it head on. We've already dealt with some very difficult passages before. This is sort of one of the last ones. And so you've run into it. You've heard it. And you can look at someone honestly and say, well, you know, we've preached on that passage in our church.

Because I can guarantee you, though the first section may have gotten preached on a few times, I didn't bother looking on sermon audio. But I just get a feeling I wouldn't find much in the way of sermons on the second section of what we're going to look at this evening.

But what do I have in mind? Well, Deuteronomy chapter 25, beginning at verse 5. When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man.

Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.

But if the man does not desire to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, my husband's brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel.

He is not willing to perform the duty of a husband's brother to me. Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak to him. And if he persists and says, I do not desire to take her, then his brother's wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face.

And she shall declare, thus it is done to the man who does not build up his brother's house. In Israel, his name shall be called the house of him whose sandal is removed.". Now, this text is not overly unfamiliar to us because it reminds us, brings us back to this issue of the Leveret Law, the concept that goes back to other texts we've looked at.

And that is that the continuation of family lines was extremely important for what reason? Well, the land of Israel was attached to families. One of the great sins of Israel under the prophets would be the destruction of this way in which the land was supposed to be passed down in families.

And so what would happen, and we even see this in some instances in some of the historical works, people would improperly purchase land. They would take advantage of death situations and things like this.

And they would start to gather together land and control that land. And if you're willing to do that to others, then obviously many of those same people who are gathering this land together would probably not be the ones who would be overly generous.

They would be the ones who would be reaping out of the corners of their fields. And the whole system that was designed, again, to be based upon the people of God acting as covenant members, seeking the best of others before themselves, that system would be undercut.

And so it was very important for the families to continue. And so if there was a marriage and a man dies without a child, then the law indicated that the brother was to provide an offspring. In fact, that he would assume the name of his dead brother.

It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel. So the idea was that this would provide the continuation of the family and would keep the land appropriately divided amongst the people of Israel.

Now, we know of an instance in relationship to this in the New Testament. We know that the Sadducees came to Jesus in Matthew chapter 22. And they presented the story of the woman and the seven brothers.

And if you'd never read Deuteronomy 25 before, you might have wondered about that story. Most of the time when a preacher will preach on that particular story in Matthew, they'll give some background to the Levirate law and stuff like that.

But when you think about it, very rarely does someone point out that it was considered a great shame amongst the people of Israel to not fulfill your duty in this way. Because I've often said, looking at that story as it was presented to Jesus of the seven brothers, each one dying, by the time you got to brother three or four, man, I'm out of town.

I'm leaving. This is not looking good. But there is a reason why that wasn't the case. And it can be seen here. And that is, if the brother does not wish to do this, then the woman goes to the elders at the gate of the city.

And he is, in essence, shamed. And in fact, specifically, in Israel, his name shall be called the house of him whose sandal is removed. So in other words, there was an abiding dishonor to an individual who was not willing to undertake his duty in raising up seed to his brother there in ancient Israel in regards to the land and so on and so forth.

And so that sort of does shed a little bit of light on what was going on in that story in the gospel as well. Now, when we consider this law and what we have done as we have sought to examine the Old Testament law, we've wanted to ask the question, well, what kind of application can we make today?

And I will have to confess that as I ponder this particular law, certainly only on a very general level, can we consider the duties of families. But again, even then, it was families within the ancient theocracy of Israel, specifically in regards to continuation of the possession of the land.

Certainly, it would be better for the people as a whole that you would not have the ability that, unfortunately, did take place later of people being able to start gathering land together and you end up with the very rich and the very poor and the very things that the law was intending to try to avoid ended up taking place.

And so the prophets were often condemning Israel for falling into these things. That type of stuff did happen. But it's a very, very general thing because we simply don't have, in the modern world, anything that would be a direct corollary to the idea of the connectedness between the families and the land.

Just in what we just read in Judges, for example, we saw it there. Remember, the woman asks for a blessing from her father, and she wants some springs. So she's given specific areas, specific plots, that now become a part of that family.

And the well-being of that family then becomes connected with their continuation and being able to continue to have that land. And so I guess, in a general sense, what we could say is there is, in the background, a general equity, an idea of putting the good of the nation first.

But in reality, as far as any formal application, the connection doesn't exist today because we simply don't have the same type of concept of land ownership and the connection of families to land that took place at this particular time.

And you can certainly see how, later on, when Israel really fell into a state of tremendous disrepair, that so many of the things that the law did provide to help people ceased to exist. And that was one of the reasons that there was so many dark times in Israel's history, was because they had forgotten his covenant.

And God said, from the beginning, as we'll see the next time, there are blessings and there are curses. And these are what some of the curses are going to be. And so here you have this rather odd to us, to our experience, law that was directly connected to the continuation of families in regards to the land.

Now, how difficult is that? Well, it's not difficult. It certainly reminds us of the fact that we're dealing with an ancient context here that would not have a whole lot of connection to where we are today.

The Violent Hand and the Logic of Context

But what does that have to do with the next section, which is the really tough section? Well, I had made the mistake, and I'll read it here in a moment, but I had made the mistake of, sometimes you can get used to reading through this section of Deuteronomy and sundry laws, that in your own mind you start disconnecting the text when, actually, this only makes sense when you keep the text together.

And that's where I had missed it until just recently and then sort of figured it out. Notice the next section beginning in verse 11. If two men, a man and his countrymen, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand.

You shall not show pity. Well, you say, you could have skipped that one. No, because I have seen it used on the internet. I have seen it appear in articles concerning the barbarism of the Old Testament, so on and so forth.

And certainly, if you isolate it, it's really difficult to even begin to understand what's behind all of this. But it's when you don't isolate it that it actually ends up making some kind of sense. Because once you see it as the negative or the reverse of what we just saw in regards to raising up seed, then it starts to make sense as to what's going on here.

Because specifically, if in the preceding section there is a moral obligation to raise up seed to maintain the connection to the land, then what makes this woman's actions specifically evil, and that obviously, if this happened even once, it would be remembered down through the history of the people of Israel.

And you'll notice there's no recording of it ever happening, at least not to my knowledge. But if it happened even once, then anyone who would get that idea would probably think twice before engaging in that activity again.

And what makes it so bad is that it is connected to what we saw in the previous section. And it involves, obviously, then the ending of that relationship, really creating a situation artificially, just like what happened in the preceding section, where you can no longer have the raising up of seed and the continuing connection to the land.

And so it is a prohibition because of the fact that it would result in the very same disruption that led to the shaming of the man, the removing of the sandal, the spitting in his face. He is not raising up seed.

Now, here is a woman in this situation doing something that could result in not being able to raise up seed for that man as well. And so it makes sense when the two are put together. If the two were not put together, if you didn't have the preceding section, I don't know how I would be able to make any sense out of it.

But since the two of them are together, then both of them, it would seem to me, are directly related to the maintenance of the families and their possession of the land in the nation of Israel. Obviously, when this is raised on the internet, on fake book, I have to remember that one.

Hadn't heard that one before. But wherever else it might be, it will normally be isolated. Now, I would hope that most Christians, when faced with the text of scripture, the very first thing you do is to read the context.

Read the whole paragraph before and the whole paragraph following just simply to have some kind of idea that if there is a context at all. But my concern is if people don't understand how the land was passed down, they might not see what the connection between these two sections really is.

And I didn't spend much time looking for anything, but I can't, off the top of my head, recall any overly relevant discussion that I've ever seen of the connectedness of these two passages, the relationship to the land, and hence, some kind of a discussion of how we might be prepared for when someone says, hey, look.

This is sexist. This is brutal. This is wrong, et cetera, et cetera. When people raise that up, one of two things going to happen. Either we're going to have the confidence to be able to say, well, did you notice what came before?

Did you understand this background? In my experience, when you start saying that to someone, when you start saying, well, have you read what came before? 99 of them will have to say no. And then when you ask, well, you understand why the shaming took place in the section before, the relationship to the land, and what resulted from that when the people didn't do it?

And about that point, they start looking for an exit. Not necessarily out of the room, but an exit from the conversation, or to move on to some other point. Because their knowledge of this text is almost always just, well, I read it on the internet, and then that sounded really good.

And I've used it to shut up a whole lot of Christians. And they're not expecting to run into someone who might go, well, actually, let's look at the context to see if we can figure out what's really going on here.

So it can be helpful to connect it to what comes before. It can also be helpful, though there is not a direct connection, to point out the next section, beginning in verse 13. You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small.

You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. You shall have a full and just weight. You shall have a full and just measure, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you.

For everyone who does these things, everyone acts unjustly, is an abomination to the Lord your God. Now, we mentioned this as a part of the general equity sections before. But the point is that you can look at this.

And obviously, what's being talked about, it's not something that we consider ourselves with too much today. I would imagine if you have recently had to fill up your gas tank, which all of us get to do, that if you've ever been bored while standing there, watching that number go very, very quickly by, and feeling your wallet getting smaller and smaller at a tremendous rate of speed, if you've ever looked at the pump, you will notice various stickers on it.

And those stickers are from agencies of the government that do tests. And what are they testing? Well, you assume, you may be wrong, but you assume when it tells you that you've put a gallon of gas in there, and it costs you 209 or 223, depending on which QT you stopped at today.

I noticed both prices on the way here. But you assume that when it says you got a gallon, they really got a gallon. Now, how do you know that? Well, somewhere in the back of your mind, you knew that there was some governmental agency that once in a while tests those things and certifies, yep, this pump gives you a gallon when it says it gives you a gallon.

But there has to be, there's a Department of Weights and Measures. And down through human history, things have been purchased on the basis of weight or volume. And obviously, everybody knows that the easiest way to make a little extra money was to have two sets of weights.

And maybe in your scales, a little sleight of hand, you put a little extra something under the one side, or something along those lines. Or if you're measuring things by volume, one's a little bit thicker than the other.

So they look alike, but you're actually getting a little bit more for your money, or maybe not giving as much for your money. This was a very, very, very common problem in the ancient world. And it's recognized here.

And God says to his people, no, you shall not have differing weights. You shall not have differing measures. Even in your house, not to hide these things, there is to be justice in how you engage in commerce.

Now, why in the world would I mention this? Well, as we mentioned this morning, we dare not underemphasize the fact that many of these texts that people will attack. Remember when we were back in the Holiness Code itself?

Remember when we were in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20? That sandwiched right in between was Leviticus chapter 19. And what does it say in Leviticus chapter 19? You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

You shall honor your parents. You shall care for the poor. There's all this stuff that many people will say they believe in. But the reality is, when you look at the Old Testament law, they want to dismiss it as some type of ancient barbaric thing.

And yet, at the same time, within one verse, the very next line can be the kind of exhortation that they must admit remains absolutely valid to this day. And they haven't done the work to figure out, well, the one had a connection to the ancient situation that Israel was in that's absolutely unique to the historical people of Israel.

But this next section obviously has application to all peoples at all time, as long as there's any kind of buying and selling going on. And I can't think of a single culture where that's not central. These are abiding and valid exhortations.

They want to get rid of the one. And in my experience, if you are familiar with these things, if you know what the context is, bring these things forward. Very frequently, what will happen is not only will you stop a person from making their objection, you will also normally find a door opened to where you can, if you're looking to do so, walk through that door for further proclamation.

How would I do this here? Well, if I went to this section, and I talked about, and did you notice, wouldn't you agree that justice and equity is an important exhortation here that you had not seen here in Deuteronomy?

Well, yeah. And now the opportunities opened up for me to possibly give consideration to, well, you know, the real thrust of the Old Testament law is to reveal to us the holiness of God and our own sinfulness.

And you and I, we know, if you're really honest, you know your heart, you know you have lied, you know you've lusted after your neighbor's wife, you know that you've, and you can go directly into an application to them of what they know their own experience to be, and from there, into a presentation of Jesus Christ and the necessity of his atoning sacrifice for us to have a relationship with God and have peace with him.

And so many of us get into a mindset where, okay, someone's attacking, they're raising a difficult text of scripture, but what you need to do is to view that as a, well, when Kelly and I went up to Flagstaff on Thursday, as we were going up the hill out of Black Canyon City, you know, the hill you gotta turn your air conditioning off so you can get to the top without overheating, right at the top of the hill, evidently coming down, there had been an accident.

And so for the next, all the way back to Cordis Junction, the southbound I -17 was a parking lot. I mean, it was just moving along, just inching along. And there isn't much you can do about that. I mean, you know, I've got a GPS thing, you got Google and stuff like that.

Those are electronic things, Pastor Fred, don't worry about it. And they'll tell you, you know, they'll show you the red line, you know, exactly where the blockage is. Now it happened, if you know that area, there ain't much you can do about it.

You can try to go through Verde and Clarkdale and up Drome and down through Prescott. I don't know that it would really get you much of an advantage, but there's not much you can do. But very often, especially here in the Valley, you'll look at these, the Garmin GPS, whatever, and I'll see that, oh, there's red right along there.

I'm going to take a different route. I'm going to reroute myself, but I'm still trying to get to the same place. Very often in a situation witnessing, when someone throws out one of these things, say they quote the section, you know, in regards to cutting off the woman's hand, okay, now you've got a red line, you've got a blockage.

You can either give up and run, or the better thing to do is to view it as a barrier in the road. You take the exit ramp. You have to deal with that issue as an exit ramp, but you're always looking to get back to what you were trying to present in the first place.

Look at it not as a barrier where you're going to have to stop and run, but look at it as something that you can work your way around and probably to the surprise of the individual to whom you're speaking, use it as a means of actually getting around to explaining what the gospel is.

Is that always possible to do? No. I recognize that there are certain people, no matter how hard you try, they've got one thing, they're just going to stay focused on it, but obviously I'm referring only to those situations where, well, we all know we have to depend upon the Holy Spirit of God to open anyone's mind.

And if you've been praying for this opportunity or something like that, there is a means here by which we can get around the barrier and to move on from there. So consider that and hopefully it will be useful to you.

Blessings, Curses, and the New Covenant

Now, as we prepare to wrap up this study by looking at the blessings and the cursings, let me exhort you to encourage you, normally don't do something like this, but I believe at the end of July when I have the opportunity of speaking again, that's the next time, it would be very difficult for me to read those lengthy passages.

There's a number of chapters. And so if you make notes, if you do any type of preparation, I would exhort you to read through the blessing and cursing texts. We read through them from the pulpit only a matter of months ago and they were difficult.

They were hard. They're not necessarily enjoyable. The blessing part is, but don't just read the blessing part. That's what we tend to do. Recognize that the cursing part's much longer. And it's not just because it seems like it's longer, it really is.

And there is a reason for that. And I would encourage you to give serious consideration to what it is that God is attempting to do in providing to the people those blessings and curses. They're gonna come up many other times in the course of the Old Testament.

And when we see some of the horrific things that happens to Israel, when we see cities besieged by the enemies of Israel, so that mothers are eating their own children in the starvation that results. So often we are repulsed by these things and we ask why, and then you go back to the cursings and that's exactly what God said was gonna happen.

Exactly what God said was gonna happen. And if we don't understand the privilege that comes from being the covenant people of God and having knowledge of him, that then brings responsibilities, we'll never really understand the history of Israel at all.

It will just be a disjointed mess that we might find a place to do a sermon over here or a sermon over there, but it's only those crazed reformed Baptists that actually preach through almost any of those books.

And we'll just try to avoid it. But if we understand that what we see in the blessings and the cursings is how serious God takes his own law and then with New Testament eyes, we look at the history of Israel, we can learn something.

We can learn what happens when you have the fullness of God's law and yet you have so many that do not have a changed heart. What happens? What happens? That allows us to have the discussion of the new covenant, what the superiority and betterness of the new covenant actually is.

All of that feeds into having a solid understanding of these things, but sometimes because of the unpleasantness of the topic, we skip over those things and hence our full understanding of the import of the law is lessened because we don't want to spend the time considering some otherwise difficult texts and hard and challenging words from God.

So if you make a note sometime over the course of this next month, read through the blessings and cursing sections in Deuteronomy 28, 29, that particular section and be considering what it is that we can learn from this that will help us to summarize, to wrap up what we have done over literally many months of study here in the subject of God's law.

So with that, let's close the word. Our Grace Heavenly Father, once again, we have come to your word and we confess that there are difficult texts, there are texts that require us to think back, to consider the full context of your dealings with your people and yet those very texts were maintained by your people down through the ages.

They were read amongst your people regularly. Our Lord and his apostles knew them and knew them well and valued them as the word of God. And so Lord, we would pray that you would protect us from ever adopting the spirit of this present age.

Lord, that we would love all of your word and that we would want to follow in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles and their view of scripture itself. But Lord, we also do not want to be silent Christians.

We live in a land where your law is frequently mocked by unbelievers. We don't always have an opportunity to respond. Many of your people live in lands where they dare not respond, they cannot, they don't have the freedom at all.

But Lord, when you give us that freedom, may we be a people who have taken the time to know your word well enough and to love it fully enough to give an answer and that you would use that answer to draw your people into yourself.

Use us as instruments in your... And so we thank you for this evening. We thank you for your word. We ask that you would make us better servants of Jesus Christ. You would give us opportunities even in this coming week to bring honor and glory to his name.

We pray in his name, amen.