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Love the Lord Your God and Walk in His Ways
Love the Lord Your God and Walk in His Ways Deuteronomy 19:1-21 Key Verse: 19:9 “…because you carefully follow all these laws I command you today—to love the LORD your God and to walk always in obedience to him—then you are to set aside three more cities.” Many people think that as Christians, we don’t need to spend a lot of time studying the Old Testament. But each week, as I study the book of Deuteronomy, God’s opens my eyes more and more to see just how untrue this really is. The entire Bible is God’s revealed word to us, and all of it leads us to Him. This passage is no different. On the surface, it looks as if this passage has nothing to do with our Christian life today. However, if you look closely the passage reveals one major characteristic of God and one major characteristic of fallen man. This passage is just as relevant for Christians today as for the people Moses was speaking to some four thousand years ago. May God bless our study of this passage and help us to have a correct view of who He is and who we are as His chosen people in this generation. First, God reveals that He is a god of justice through the cities of refuge (1-14) The first part of our passage really doesn’t seem to be relevant to us at all. In it we see words like “the avenger of blood,” which doesn’t seem to make sense to us. In spite of this, this part of the passage reveals on very important aspect of the character of God. It clearly shows that He is a God of justice and is deeply concerned about justice among his people. It also reveals other things about God and about us, so we should not simply overlook it because it doesn’t seem to be relevant to us today. Let’s look at verses 1 & 2. “When the Lord your God has destroyed the nations whose land he is giving you, and when you have driven them out and settled in their towns and houses, 2 then set aside for yourselves three cities in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess.” Verse one is interesting because of who was speaking and when he was speaking. Remember these words were spoken by Moses before the Israelites even set one foot in the promised land and Moses himself knew that he was not going to do so in his physical life. And yet Moses speaks to the Israelites with absolute certainty about things that were yet to come. Look at verse 1a again, “When the Lord your God has destroyed the nation whose land He is giving you…” The verb tenses are very important here. The first verb has destroyed is in the present perfect tense. There are several reasons why a person might use this tense, but in this case it is to indicate to the Israelites that the action of destroying the nations the Israelites were driving out has already been completed by the Lord. It is not if they will drive them out, it is just a matter of when they have completed it. It is also very important to note that it is not the Israelites who drive the people out of the land, it is the Lord. The second verb, is giving, is in the present progressive tense. This means that God is already in the process of giving the land to the Israelites, even though they have not entered it. These two verses show us that God does not see things as we do. The bible tells us that God sees the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). This means that God already knew that the Israelites would successfully drive out the people living in the land of Canaan and possess the land. This meant that Moses could speak to the Israelites very confidently, because he knew that He was speaking in the name of the Lord and a prophet who does this can know for sure that what he says will happen will happen. As Christians, we must know that God is in sovereign control of history and that in all things He works for the good of those who love Him. (Romans 8:28) We must realize that our present situation is not all that important in the grand scheme of things. God is in absolute control and He will see that His chosen people win the victory in spite of anything this world may put in our way. The Israelites were not in a good situation when Moses spoke these words to them. They were about to cross the Jordan River to settle themselves in a land that people were already living in. Those people had been living there for a long time. They had walled cities and armies with weapons, chariots and horses. The Israelites, on the other hand, had nothing. And yet God knew what the outcome was going to be. He had already arranged it and was carrying out His promise. Verse 2 talks about three cities that were centrally located that the Israelites were to set apart. These cities were to be called cities of refuge and they were places that a man or a woman could run to if they had accidentally killed someone else. It may seem strange to us that such cities would be necessary in what was supposed to be a just society. After all, in a just society wouldn’t a person be allowed to live until their guilt or innocence was established in a court of law. Well, yes that is true, but we cannot compare the Israelite society of four thousand years ago with our modern society. For one thing, there was no such thing as a police force. If you look closely at the law, you will see that there are provisions for setting up a court system, but none for setting up a police system. Later on the Levites, in their role of temple guards to on many of these duties, but at the time of Moses there was no such thing. So, how was justice carried out? Look at verse 6. “Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue him in a rage, overtake him if the distance is too great, and kill him even though he is not deserving of death, since he did it to his neighbor without malice aforethought.” This verse follows an example of someone killing someone unintentionally while chopping wood. It talks about “the avenger of blood.” Who was this person. The Hebrew word for this, “go’el”, meant next of kin and they were responsible for two main things: “1) avenging the blood of a murdered kinsman—in this capacity the more specific term "go'el ha-dam" (blood-avenger) was generally used—and 2) redeeming the property or the person of a relative that had fallen into debt.” (Jewishencyclopedia.com). In this case, the avenger of blood was the next of kin who was responsible for seeing that the person who killed their kin was brought to justice. The avenger of Blood had to be a relative of the person murdered, it could not be just a close friend or associate. It may not seem like a good system to us today, but it provided an orderly way to see that justice was carried out. When a loved one dies as a result of what someone else did, it is natural for one to feel that the person whose action caused the death should be punished. But this is not always the case. Sometimes someone may do something expecting a completely different result and through no fault of their own end up killing someone else. The example in verse 5 is a good case in point. The guy chopping wood had no intention of killing the person with him. He may have even been intending to help that person by chopping wood for them. So why should the person chopping wood have to pay the price for killing another human being – that price being his own death. God knew that things like this would happen, so he gave the Israelites a way of dealing with this. The person who accidentally killed another person was to run to one of these three cities of refuge where he would receive protection from the avenger of blood. If the avenger of blood killed the person while they were in that city, the avenger of blood would be guilty of murder. If, however, the man left the city of refuge before the death of the high priest serving at the time, the avenger of blood was permitted to kill that individual. I don’t want to get into all the details of the law, but I do want to point out that this provision of the cities of refuge shows us one of God’s essential characteristics; that is, it shows us that God is a God of justice. Many people think of justice as being about punishing wrongdoers, but that is only half of the full meaning of justice. The other half involves making sure the innocent are not punished. In this case, God is protecting the very life of an innocent person. God did not want to see innocent people being killed in the society of His chosen people. In other societies this probably happened all the time because they didn’t have these special cities set aside. But God’s society was to be different, set aside and reflecting the character of God; that is reflecting His sense of justice. God’s sense of just calls for acquitting the innocent as well as punishing the guilty. Now let’s get to our key verse. First, we need to take a careful look at verse 8. “If the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he promised on oath to your ancestors, and gives you the whole land he promised them.” First of all, we need to understand what Moses was talking about when he says that God would enlarge their territory and give them all the land He promised to Abraham. Most people think that just the land of Canaan that we generally think of as Israel is all the land God promised to Abraham, but it is not. Genesis 15:18 says, “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi[e] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.” The wadi of Egypt is the eastern most part of the Sinai, which is indeed the southern border of Israel, but the northern border of what we think of Israel is just north of the Sea of Galilee and South of Damascus. The Euphrates River is far north of Damascus. The area that the Israelites conquered under Joshua’s rule was about the size of the area of Israel in Jesus time. Far smaller than what God had promised to Abraham Another interesting thing to note is that here, Moses uses the word “if” which is very different from what we saw in verse 1 when Moses used the word “when.” Why did Moses change? The answer is simple, in verse 1 Moses was speaking about what God did and was doing, verse 8 is dependent upon the actions of man. As I’ve said before, God’s ultimate plan is to bless His people and see that they live abundant lives. But He will only do this if His people love Him and obey Him. Now let’s look at our key verse. “because you carefully follow all these laws I command you today—to love the Lord your God and to walk always in obedience to him—then you are to set aside three more cities.” More than anything, God wants His people to love Him and walk in obedience to Him. God promised the Israelites that if they did this he would enlarge their land all the way north to the Euphrates river. It is very interesting that the Israelites control of the land all the way to the Euphrates River did indeed happen. It happened during the reign of Solomon, the Son of David who was a man after God’s own heart. The kingdom of Israel expanded greatly under David and even more under the reign of Solomon who began his reign as king under God’s blessing because he had ask God for wisdom in ruling God’s people. The end of Solomon’s reign didn’t go as well, but that is the topic of another message. Anyway, God’s desire is to bless His people who love and obey Him. I think that this is a message that is lost on many Christians today. We all like the idea that we are saved by faith and faith alone. And it is true that our salvation has nothing to do with what we have done. By ourselves and in ourselves we are incapable of doing anything to benefit God, not to mention pay off the price of our sins. The only way that we can obtain salvation is through Christ alone – by believing in Him and in what He did for us. Jesus paid off our sins and Jesus gave us the right to be children of God. However, life does not stop there. In fact, a new life is to begin there. A life of obedient love. If you don’t obey God how can you say that you love God. But many people who claim that they are Christians continue to live just as worldly people live. This is not right. If we love Jesus we will do our best to live as Jesus lived and do the things that He taught us to do. This has nothing to do with earning more of salvation or some type of better salvation. Jesus has already given us all the salvation we need. Loving Him and being obedient to Him is about showing our thankfulness for what He has done for us. According to our key verse, Loving God and walking in His ways will enable Him to pour out His blessings upon us and enlarge our territory. The key to living under God’s blessing is to love Him and walk in obedience to Him. Second, false witnesses reveal the heart of fallen man (15-21). In the first part of this passage we learned that God is a God of justice who wants to bless His people who love Him and walk in obedience to His word. In this section, we can see the heart of fallen man. Verse 15 tells us that no one is to be convicted of a crime on the testimony of just one man, but it doesn’t tell us why. However, I think most of us can figure out that reason without much difficulty. One witness might simply lie about what someone else did to get that person punished. God knows that fallen man is like this, so He added this requirement to the law. Look at verses 16-19. “If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse someone of a crime, 17 the two people involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the Lord before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. 18 The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against a fellow Israelite, 19 then do to the false witness as that witness intended to do to the other party. You must purge the evil from among you.” When I read these verses, I immediately thought about the heart of fallen man. The word malicious jumped out at me. According to the Oxford English dictionary the word malicious means “Characterized by malice; intending or intended to do harm.” To me this describes fallen man. Before a person is saved, that person is malicious towards others because all they care about is what is good for them. Jesus was just the opposite. Jesus lived His whole life for others. Jesus came to give His life so that we might find life. Jesus came, not to give false testimony about us, but to give true testimony and to forgive us anyway. Let’s think about what Jesus said for a moment. In Luke 6:31 said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” And in Matthew 22:39 Jesus said, “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” Being a malicious witness is exactly the opposite of what Jesus is saying here. Yet fallen man live like this. The world is full of people giving false testimony about others in order to make the other person look bad and be held up to judgement by others. As Christians we must live according to Jesus words – we must walk in obedience to them. We must treat others as we would want them to treat us. It is not easy, because most people don’t treat us the way that we would like them to treat us. Most people simply don’t live like Jesus because they don’t believe that they have to follow Jesus example in this life. Fallen man’s heart is exactly opposite of Jesus. The punishment that God describes for these malicious witnesses once again shows God’s justice. The malicious witness is to receive exactly the punishment he or she was trying to inflict on the other person. They were to do this without mercy or pity for that false witness. It was to be done to purge evil from among them and so that other people would hear of this and not do it themselves. As I’ve said over and over, bad influence can corrupt an entire society and God’s people cannot live corrupted lives if they are to reveal God’s glory. Today we learned about God’s character – He is a just God who wants to enlarge the territory of those who love Him and walk in His ways. We also learned that fallen man’s heart is exactly the opposite of the Heart of God. May God help us to live as His chosen people in this generation. |
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