Deuteronomy 22

Deuteronomy 22 contains a number of laws and rules for conduct.  We see God’s heart again as He tells the people how to live through Moses.  He begins with the relationship between brothers.  Bottom line – we are our brothers keeper.  If something belonging to your brother goes “astray” we are not allowed to “ignore them”.  In fact, we are required to “take them back…..restore it to him” even if it means caring for it until you see him again.  We are charged with caring for that which belongs to our brother.  God puts lots of requirements in place around family and our relationships.

Moses goes on to give lots of instruction around how we are to live as homeowners, farmers, and then he gets to the topic of marriage and men and women.  There is no question that God has a strong feeling about sex and marriage.  He invented them both.  They are His idea and plan.  And man has a way of truly messing things up.

He talks about those ways with much clarity.  Adultery and premarital sex is not ok with God.  Sex is designed to be within the bounds of marriage plain and simple.  And there is no plan B.  In fact, at this time in history God’s rules called for those who violated His law around sex and marriage to be stoned to death in order to “purge the evil”.  “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man….If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her….you shall stone them to death with stones”.  If you ever wondered what God really thinks about the sanctity of marriage and sex – well it is enough He believed that those who violated it were evil and needed to be killed.

Moses covers rape and premarital sex as well.  The rules are pretty simple.  Sex belongs inside the bonds of marriage…..period…..end of discussion.  There is NO other acceptable place for any kind of sexual activity.  Not while you are engaged.  Not while you are separated.  Not before you walk down the aisle of matrimony.  Only with your bride or groom after you say I do.  Society today has accepted living together.  It has accepted extra-marital affairs.  It has turned its head on pornography and other sexual junk.  God hasn’t turned His head.  All that makes Him very mad.  Sex belongs inside marriage between a man and woman.  There are no other acceptable interactions.  Are you living God’s way with your sexuality?

Deuteronomy 21

Deuteronomy 21 has some rather strong instruction on how the leadership was to deal with some difficult situations as they got ready to move into the Promised Land.  Moses is giving them the details on how to lead and rule.  We can learn about God from the instruction given.  It doesn’t apply to us today as it did then, but the character of God has not changed.  He still is very much in control and is the same today as He was many generations ago.

God was focused on how the leaders could be freed from the guilt of innocent blood – death that occurred on their turf that they did not know the responsible party.  There is a mechanism to be set free through sacrifice.  God loves life.  He creates life and is a protector of it.  God does not want us to ignore how valuable life is nor take it lightly.  He expects us to protect it and live it fully.

We also see that He is a protector of wives.  There is instruction on taking a wife from a conquered land, and God is not ok with them being abused or taken advantage of.  He wants marriage to be filled with love.  He wants husbands to lead and love well.  And if that is not the case, to treat the women with respect and as protected by Him.  God has a requirement for us as husbands in how we love and lead.  It is not something we can take for granted.  God also is big on order and the rights of the firstborn, no matter who the mother is.  We can’t just ignore God’s plan for order.

He also is very clear about how we are to parent.  The last part of the chapter talks about a “stubborn and rebellious son”.  This is serious stuff.  In Moses’ time, a rebellious son was to be taken outside the city to be stoned so they could “purge the evil” and not contaminate the rest.  We can learn a lot from this example.  Sin infests what it comes into contact with.  We need to get rid of the things in our life that cause us to sin.  We need to put them off, and get rid of stuff that pulls us away from God and obedience to Him.  We aren’t to kill rebellious kids today, but we are to note how important it is to control our contact with evil and keep away from it all we can.

Deuteronomy 20

Deuteronomy 20 talks about the reality of going to war.  As the Children of Israel are ready to enter the Promised Land – there is going to be resistance – and a lot of it.  God warns them that there will be “an army larger than your own”.  How are they to act?  “You shall not be afraid of them”.  Ok, why not?  “The Lord your God is with you…. brought you up out of the land of Egypt”.

As they approached the battle, there were two people that were to speak to them.  “The priest shall come forward and speak….do not fear or panic or be in dread of them….Lord your God….goes with you to fight for you”.  This is God’s battle. Too often we want to fight the enemy in the power of our own hands rather than allowing God to do battle for us.  We need to know what God is up to and join Him, not fight it on our own.  God is the victor and in Him we can have the victory.

The second person to speak was the officer.  He asked if there were any there who had:

–       “built a new house

–       planted a vineyard

–       betrothed a wife

–       fearful and fainthearted”

These four buckets of people were sent home to take care of these situations.  The officers couldn’t afford to have someone not focused on victory.  So it was far better to send them home than force them into battle when their minds were elsewhere.

The bottom line was that “God gives it into your hand”.  The battle is His.  He is the one that makes sure it all works out.  God had these expectations though.  When they entered into a city of the enemy, they were to “offer terms of peace….if it makes no peace….besiege it”.  God intended for his people to take territory and enter the Promised Land,  And He did not want them to mix with the enemy that “they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices”. God has some rules for conquest that are expressed clearly.  The battle is His.  All He wants is for His people to join Him and do things His way.

Deuteronomy 19

Deuteronomy 19 deals with the law regarding the slaying of a man.  It provides that they will set up three cities for folks to go when the death was unintentional and be safe from retaliation until a judge can hear the case.  If it is intentional, the elders are to hand him over to the avenger to be killed.  It sounds gruesome, and it actually is, but the law of that day was an eye for an eye and a life for a life.  This was a way to make sure that justice was served.

The bottom line here is that God wants to root out the evil from among His people.  “You shall purge evil from your midst”.  It was pretty simple.  Scripture makes it very plain in this chapter as it tells us “It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot”.  Of course Jesus changed the rules and taught forgiveness, grace and mercy.  This law was replaced with the concept of forgiving 70 times 7.  So a big part of scripture is understanding the audience and the custom of the day.

The thing that hasn’t changed is God’s take on evil.  He wants to purge it from us today just as badly as He did during the closing of Moses leadership.  Evil does not fit into God’s plan in any way.  He wants it gone from our lives.  He wants us to pure and holy and live a life pleasing to Him.  God is in the anti evil mode all the time.  We must be careful not to allow evil to slip in and take root.  It will derail our relationship with the Father.  We don’t lose the relationship – once a son always a son – but we can lose the benefits of that relationship and miss out on many of the blessings that God would love to bestow on us.  He is a gracious God – one who loves to pour His love out on us.  Living in obedience and following His path is key to receiving all those things.

Deuteronomy 18

Deuteronomy 18 talks about the Levitical priests – those men from the tribe of Levi who did the work of the ministry and handled the temple and all the interaction with God.  They were not going to receive any land – their spoil was to be the Lord’s offering.  “They shall eat the Lord’s food offerings as their inheritance….the Lord is their inheritance”.  The reality is that these priests were totally dependent on the people giving as they were required.  They did not have a place of their own – no way to create food or wealth – except as it was given.

They had a very important task as they were “ministers in the name of the Lord God”.  The role today is held by pastors and priests and is the same – to be messengers of truth that help us live life as God desires.  It isn’t an occupation you enter to get wealthy, and while they often now own their own home or other property, the reality is that they are mostly at the mercy of their congregations.  We need to take care of those who serve us – probably a lot better than we do.  They need to be cared for physically, emotionally and spiritually.  It is a very lonely job, and often a thankless job.  We need to make sure to thank them for their faithful service.  Have you done that recently?

So what are they charged to do?  God lays out his expectations this way: “You shall be blameless before the Lord your God”.  Not much wiggle room here.  We are to be blameless – that is without blame – no room for any failure if we are to please God.  Can we do it?  Sure, it is possible.  Will we do it?  Not likely at all.  So that is why grace matters and is so important.  When we fail to be blameless, we have the blood of Jesus to cover our sin.  He is worthy to take our blame and clear that from our backs.  He can set us free from the bonds and penalty of sin.  Jesus is our way, truth and life.

God also warns us about folks who claim to have God’s truth.  “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers – it is to him you shall listen….when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken”.  This is true for any and all of us.  If we claim to be a Christ Follower – our life should line up and be filled with truth and God’s truth will flow thru us and be evident. Our lives will flow with the fruit of the Spirit.  We will exhibit God living in us.  Can you see God’s word coming to pass in your life?  Is it real and evident?  If not, time to look in the mirror to see if God is really inside.  We can’t contain Him if He truly is.  He will leak and ooze all over the place!

Deuteronomy 17

Deuteronomy 17 has some very harsh instructions designed to “purge the evil from your midst”.  The bottom line was that if people were not living in obedience to God’s instruction – if they were doing “what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, in transgressing his covenant” – they were to “stone that man or woman to death…on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses”.  Don’t tell me that God is not interested in obedience.  I am certainly not implying that this is to be the way we live today.  If we kill everyone who has any evil in their life – we will be without any life here on earth pretty quickly.

What we can learn though is that God takes sin seriously.  He does not and can not tolerate it.  Jesus went to the Cross to give us a way to deal with the evil in our life.  That is what grace is all about.  But that doesn’t make it any less of a problem – it just means God has given us a way to deal with it through faith and a personal relationship with the Savior.  We have to deal with sin.  If we don’t we will spend eternity separated from God.  He cannot just look the other way.

The other key learning is the importance of listening to God’s words through his servants – priests and ministers.  “The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest….shall die”.  Don’t think the words from the platform matter?  God uses His servants to bring truth to us.  Again, I am not saying if we don’t do what we hear in the Sunday morning sermon we will fall over dead.  But I do think we need to realize that God uses His servants to share truth and that truth is often a message from God we need to hear and heed.

But the real nugget here is how we should handle God’s truth.  “He shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them”.  Did you catch the list here:

–       “read

–       Learn

–       Keep

–       Do”

We need to be in God’s Word learning what He says so we can keep it and do it all the time.  If we don’t know it, we can’t live it.  It was a requirement for the priests of the Levitical order in Old Testament times, but applies to use as well.  The study and learning of God’s Word will change our heart – that is what God wants to do in us.  We need to know His commandments, see His direction, and follow it completely.  It is His desire and expectation.

Deuteronomy 16

Deuteronomy 16 talks about celebrations and particularly remembering.  Moses tells the people they need to live like this: “that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt”.  We are to be God aware.  How often we go through life and miss the fact that God is not only around, but doing great and mighty things in our midst.  We go through life and ignore His presence and power in our lives.  We think things just happen, or we overlook what He is up to.  God is alive and well and doing stuff all the time.  He led the people out of the Egypt.  Now Moses wants to make sure they remember.

Why does that matter?  Because that is how we honor and glorify God.  We recall the goodness He has done for us.  We praise Him for His many blessings.  We put Him where He belongs – on the throne of our life and His Kingdom.  We put God first and foremost when we remember.  Too often we totally space Him off.  We allow self to take the throne and think we actually make some things happen.  How wrong that is.  So Moses is telling the people not to make that mistake.  They are to remember God and keep His name holy.

To that end Moses gives a list of though shalls, and though shall nots.  They are like commandments and define how the people were to obey.  We can learn much from this list about what God expects.  Check it out:

You shall:

–       ”you shall offer

–       You shall do no work

–       you shall keep

–       you shall rejoice

–       You shall remember

–       You shall appoint

–       you shall follow

–       you shall make”

You shall not

–       “shall not appear

–       You shall not pervert justice

–       You shall not show partiality

–       you shall not accept a bribe

–       You shall not plant

–       you shall not set up a pillar”

Being a Christ Follower is much more than a list of do’s and don’ts.  But these commandments and shall’s and shall nots really do help us know the heart of God.  Grace has set us free from the penalty of sin if we receive it, but obedience is still God’s desire and we can learn much studying what He expected of His people long ago.  Are you living God’s way?  If not, now is the time to make that change!

Deuteronomy 15

Deuteronomy 15 talks about how we view the things we have.  In a nutshell – we have to remember that none of it is ours – it all belongs to God.  What is the test of whether we have that right?  We can simply see how we hold our hands.  Do you hold on to things with open hands – willing and ready to give whatever you have away as God leads, or do you clinch tightly to what you have as yours for your own benefit unwilling to share or give?  That is the question we need to wrestle with.  Check out what Moses teaches the people.

“At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release….every creditor shall release what he has lent….your hand shall release”.  See the pattern that is being set up here.  At the end of each seven years – debts were to be forgiven and slaves set free.  The reason – it was time to set people free.  This not only helps the ones who were indebted, it also teaches those who were the lender or owner how to give.  A little later Moses instructs the people to “open your hand”.  We are to live with our hands wide open – realizing that all we have is God’s anyway – willing to give and allow Him to have control of what is already His.

That isn’t what the world tells us.  We are told to make a big pile of stuff that we can call ours.  The bigger the pile, the more successful we are.  He with the most stuff wins.  That is not true.  God is not impressed by our stuff.  In fact, it is a hindrance to our walk with Him if we hold on tightly to it.  God tells us that “there will be no poor among you”.  We’re missing the mark there as over half the world lives on less than $2 a day.  So what does He mean?  That the stuff He had provided was to be used to take care of the people in the patch.  We are to love one another.  God’s blessing depends on that.  He says “if only you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all this commandment”.  Obedience brings blessing. God has some requirements for how we use what He has entrusted to us.

One area where that is true is around how we handle our stuff, particularly our money.  “Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart….your heart shall not be grudging when you give…. to the needy and to the poor”.  Note that the heart is the key here.  It isn’t about the amount – it is about the condition of the heart.  We have to be careful not to become obsessed with our stuff.  We have to be willing to give it away.  It all begins with our mind and heart – realizing it is not ours – and willingly following God’s direction in giving it away.  God wants us to live with open hands.  It is His way!

Deuteronomy 14

Deuteronomy 14 contains a couple key truths.  First is the standing of the people of Israel with God.  “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession”.  Have you considered just how God looks at us – His people.  Yes these verses were written to the children of Israel at the time Moses was leading them, but God loves us in the same way today.  We are holy and special in His sight.  We are a treasured possession.  We need to act like it.

God has called us to be special and we are precious in His sight.  We are not just existing here – we are selected to be His very own as Christ Followers.  He loves us and will remain close to us if we do the same with Him.

Moses also reminds folks to “not neglect the Levite”, or the preachers or priests or ministers.  How often do you even remember to thank your minister?  How often do you help make sure they are taken care of?  How often do you give a gift or write a note of gratitude.  Pastors live a very lonely and often unnoticed life.  God wants us to remember them and show gratitude and be sure they are cared for.  They are special in His sight and are essential in helping us do the work of the ministry.  We must not take them for granted.

Deuteronomy 13

Deuteronomy 13 talks about how we need to guard our relationship with God very deeply.  Moses warns that there will be people that will come along and pull us from God.  They may do signs and wonders and miracles – but if they darw us to self or anything other than God Himself – we must not just walk, we must run from that.  “You shall not listen” to anything that leads you from God. There is no other – lots of false stuff will show up and try to drag us away – but we can’t be pulled that way.

God wants to “know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul”.  Have you thought about what that means?  Well, Moses goes ahead and spells it out for us:

-“ walk after the Lord

–  fear him

–  keep his commandments

–  obey his voice

–  serve him

–  hold fast to him”

That’s the definition of knowing God with all your heart and soul – He is the one we cherish time with and follow and obey.

How serious is this?  God tells us we must “purge the evil” from our midst so we are not “drawn away” from God.  When we see evil that is pulling us from God we need to get rid of it.  That can show itself in a whole lot of different ways.  It could be music we have, TV we watch, books, the computer, or people.  There are many things that can lead us from God.  So what should we do?  It is pretty clear what Moses told the people: “burn the city and all its spoil”.  Don’t just try and not let it affect you – get rid of it.  Get it completely out of the picture.  God calls us to holiness and that may mean we need to clean up the stuff in our patch or the people we hang out with.  We need to purge.

Bottom line – God wants us to “obey the voice….keeping all his commandments….doing what is right in the sight of the Lord your God”.  It really isn’t rocket science.  God’s expectation is relationship that is lived around knowing Him and living in obedience to His commandments.  If we can get that right, life will go well.  That means we have to change what we listen to and what is in our patch in some cases – but we can live His way and have a fantastic life with Him at the helm!