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Love Your Neighbor as Yourself
Love Your Neighbor as Yourself Deuteronomy 22:1-30 Key Verse: 22:3 “Do the same if you find their donkey or cloak or anything else they have lost. Do not ignore it.” For the past two weeks, we have taken time out of our study of Deuteronomy to think about the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Last week we celebrated Jesus’ glorious victory over sin, death and the power of Satan. May God help us to keep this Easter message in our hearts day by day. May we also always remember the great commission that Jesus gave us along with the greatest promise He has given to His church; i.e. to be with us always even to the end of the age. Today we will turn back to our study of the book of Deuteronomy and look at the twenty-second chapter of this book. In this chapter, we find various laws that God gave His people to set them apart from the other nations as His chosen people. Some of these laws seems very small and trivial, but we must remember that these laws come from God Himself, so there can be nothing trivial about them at all. God’s purpose is greater than everything, therefore we must not simply overlook the things in His law that we think are unimportant. Rather we must look at them from God’s point of view and try to figure out why He gave His people laws like these. Beginning with the first one and going through until the last, there seems to be one overriding theme; i.e. love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said this was the second greatest command, therefore we should see that these seemingly insignificant laws are central to our belief in and desire to follow Jesus. May God bless our study of this passage and open our spiritual eyes and ears to see His great command in these various laws. First, do not ignore your neighbor, but do to him as you would have him do to you. (1-4). These first four verses are really based on what Jesus said was the second greatest commandment which is to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus also said that this commandment was like the greatest commandment which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind all your strength. (Mark 12:30) Because the foundation of these laws is the greatest of God’s law it is important that we take a careful look at them even though we are unlikely to find one of our neighbor’s sheep or ox wandering around the streets of Seoul. Let’s look at verses 1 & 2. “If you see your fellow Israelite’s ox or sheep straying, do not ignore it but be sure to take it back to its owner. If they do not live near you or if you do not know who owns it, take it home with you and keep it until they come looking for it. Then give it back.” At that time, a person’s wealth was measured in large part by the number of livestock he owned. To see this, you can go to Job 1:3 and see what made him the “greatest man among all the people of the East” – it was his large number of sheep, oxen, donkeys, camels and servants. This means that if a person found person found an ox or a sheep wandering around lost, there might be a great temptation for that person simply to take the animal home and add it to his own herds. At the same time, it might be a considerable loss for the person to whom that animal belonged. No one wants to suffer loss, especially if that loss results as no fault of their own. Therefore, God wants the person finding that ox or sheep to put themselves in the place of the one who lost the ox or sheep. What would the finder want the other person to do if the roles had been reversed? Naturally, anyone would want their neighbor to return their livestock if they found it wandering around. However, God knows that this is not how sinful human beings think. We are selfish and we put our own wants and desires ahead of others – even when it comes to their property. Because of this, God put this provision into His law to make His people different from those around them. It is interesting to note that this law did not only apply to the Israelite neighbors that one liked, but it also was to apply to one’s enemies. Exodus 23:4-5 says, “If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.” From God’s point of view even our enemies are our neighbors. Notice that in verse 1 it says that the finder should take it back to the owner if it was known who the owner was and in verse 2 it says that the finder was to take the animal home and keep it until the owner came looking for it if the owner was unknown. Both of these procedures put a burden on the person who finds the ox or sheep. In the first case, the finder must go out of his way to take the animal back to original owner. It would probably be much easier to send word to the owner that the animal had been found and to tell the owner to come and get it himself. In the second case, the finder had to pay for the food and lodging of the animal up to the time the owner came looking for it. When the owner did show up, the finder was simply to turn the animal over – the law says nothing about receiving money for the expenses involved in keeping the animal. Here again, we can see God instructing the finder to think of the other person’s position first. If the roles had been reversed, wouldn’t the finder want the other person to bring his animal back or take care of it free of charge until he could go and get his own animal? Of course he would! This is all about loving your neighbor as yourself. Verse 3 takes this idea of returning lost sheep or ox to the rightful owner and extends it to anything you might find that belongs to someone else. Verse 3 also brings in an additional idea of not ignoring it. This idea of not ignoring the problems of others is repeated in verse 4 when the law talks about and ox or donkey fallen down in the road. The animal probably fell down because the load it was carrying or pulling was too heavy for it to bear. In that case, it would be very tempting simply to ignore the animal and the owner, because in order to help the animal up you would first have to unburden it, help it up and then put the burden back on the animal. This would require a lot of work. Why go through all that for someone you may not even know? We should do it because God loves each and every one of us, and He never ignores any of us. He sees our burdens and he wants to help us with them. As God’s chosen people in this generation, He has commanded us not to ignore the difficulties and hardships of others, but to help them to overcome them as if those difficulties and hardships were our own. This is not easy. It often requires that we give up our own desire to live a comfortable life and sacrifice our time effort and money for those in need. We can do this only when we remember God’s first and second greatest commands. The first command is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” If we remember this command then we must follow the second greatest command to “Love our neighbor as yourself,” because God loves them. Second, other laws that may not seem so important. (5-12) In verses 5-12 we see seven laws, which at first sight may not seem to have anything to do with us at all. In fact, many Christians might not ever take the time to consider these laws at all, because they think that they no longer apply to us and they are trivial. Yet they were important enough to God that He included them for His chosen people to help set them apart from everyone else. Let’s take a look at them one by one and see what God may be trying to tell us. The first one is about men and women not wearing each other’s clothes. There are two possibilities why God may have given His people this law. It may have been that other cultures at that time worshipped their gods by have the women dress up as men and the men dress up as women. We know that this was the case with the worship Venus; it was the custom for women to dress up in the armor of men while men would dress up in women’s clothing in order to worship Venus. It is likely that this custom was also done in other cultures in Moses time. However, I think there might be another reason that we can still see happening among us today. That is, sinful human beings intentionally try to blur the role of the sexes that God created in order to satisfy their own lusts. If men dress as women and women dress as men the identity of the two sexes becomes unclear and sinful men and women begin to break God’s law further by lusting after people of their own sex. In America this is even openly celebrated at gay pride parades around the country every year. The Bible says this is detestable in God’s sight, yet many Christians in America see these parades as a celebration of a person’s uniqueness in God’s site. It doesn’t matter, if it is in America or elsewhere, this is a huge problem in God’s sight, and if we see it, we must not ignore it and pretend that it is not a problem. We must confront the person and try to help that person to see that what they are doing is a great sin in God’s eyes. The second law seems to be the most trivial of all and yet obedience to it come with the same blessing found after the fifth commandment; i.e. “that it may go well with you and you may have a long life.” It is about finding a mother bird and her young in a nest. The Israelites were forbidden to take both the mother and the young – they were permitted to take only the young, they must let the mother go free. It seems odd that God would go into such great detail when giving His law to set His people apart. What could this possible have to do with living a holy life? It tells us that God is very concerned with even the smallest details of the lives of His chosen people. It also shows us that He is also concerned for the rest of the creatures in His creation. Jesus says in Luke 12:6, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.” If the mother is let go free, she is free to mate again and have more young, ensuring that those types of birds will continue on in God’s creation. Finally, to tie this back into the main theme of this passage, if God is so concerned about these insignificant birds how much more should we be concerned about the life of our neighbors. Again, Jesus said in Matthew 6:26, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Next, we are given a law about building a short wall around the edge of a roof. Again, we can see the incredible detail that God gives in His law. In those times, almost all the houses had flat roofs that people could walk on. We can see numerous places in scripture where people were doing things on the roofs of their houses: Rahab hid the spies, David saw Bathsheba bathing, Peter was praying, etc. The roof of a house was a place you could go and enjoy the cool of the day, were you could go to pray, where you could store things, do some work or even sleep if it was too hot inside the house. The point is God knew that His people would be spending a lot of time on the roofs of their houses so He made provisions for them to avoid unnecessary loss of life. This shows us the tremendous detailed love that God has for each of His people. The next three laws all have to do with mixing different types of things. These also seem trivial to us, but God put them there for a reason. God’s people were to be pure and holy. In order for them to be like this for God, they could not mix their culture with the culture of the people around them. Perhaps these laws help remind them of that. The law about yoking different animals together, might have also shown God’s care for His other creatures as well. Yoking an ox and a donkey together is yoking to unequal animals and it might result in injury to one or both of the animals. It also illustrates that God’s chosen people should not be unequally yoke with unbelievers. The final “trivial” law concerned the tassels the Jews were to make on their clothing. This was not trivial at all. By doing this the Israelites would clearly be setting themselves apart as different from the people around them. This would be a symbol of their national identity as God’s chosen people. It would also be a constant reminder for them of this law. Every time they looked at the tassels on themselves or on their fellow Jews, they would be reminded of who they were and what God required of them. Do you have something that reminds you that you are God’s chosen people today? Third, laws related to the seventh commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.” (13-30) In these verses we have several laws concerning the conduct between men and women. In the first case, we have a man who has married a woman and has already consummated the marriage. After sleeping with the woman, the man begins to dislike her and wants to send her away to get another wife. In chapter 24 we will see that Moses gave them a law to do this legally in a way that would protect both the man and the woman. However, in this case, the man chooses not to use the provision of divorce, but instead slanders his wife by saying that she was not a virgin when he married her. In a situation like this, there are two possible outcomes. The first outcome is that the man is simply lying. They had a legally binding way of determining whether the man was lying or not, but I don’t want to get into that here. The point is that he simply didn’t like his wife and for whatever reason he didn’t want to legally divorce her, he wanted to humiliate her and even get her killed. This shows great hatred on his part. If his guilt was determined, he faced a very heavy punishment. He would be beaten or lashed 39 times, he had to pay about 1.2 kilograms of silver to the woman’s father, and he had to support that young lady as his wife all his life – he was not allowed to divorce her. This was a very heavy punishment, but it was far better for him to be caught in his lie than for the women if her virginity could not be proven. In that case, the woman was to be stoned to death at the door of her father’s house. Some scholars believe that she would only be put to death for this crime if the sexual act took place after she was engaged to marry the man – in this case it would be the same as technical term of committing adultery. However, the point was to ensure the purity of the young Israelite women. The stern warning to purge the evil from among you is given immediately following the sentence of death. The next law deals with outright adultery – a man sleeping with the wife of another man. In this case both the man and the woman are to be put to death by stoning in order to purge the evil from among Israel. The next three cases deal with rape. The first of these is a man raping a woman pledge to be married in a town. In this case, both of the participants are to be stoned since the woman did not cry out for help, which indicated her consent. In the second situation, the rape of a woman pledged to be married took place in the country where there was no one to help even if the woman did cry out. In this instance, the woman’s innocence is assumed and only the man is stoned to death. In the final case, a woman not pledge to be married is raped and neither of them is to be put to death. Instead, the man is fined 575 grams of silver and made to marry the woman for life – he could never divorce her. In all of these sexual sins, there is a breakdown of what Jesus calls the second greatest commandment. Instead of loving one’s neighbor as themselves, the men and women caught in these situations are loving and thinking only themselves. They don’t care how their actions will affect their neighbor, they are only concerned with satisfying their own sinful desires. In today’s passage, we thought about some of the Old Testament laws that God gave His chosen people to set them apart as a holy people and a kingdom of priest. These are laws that as Christians we might overlook today because they seem so small and unimportant. However, they were important enough for God to include them in the law. If it is important to God it should also be important to us. Therefore, we need to take to the time to meditate on them and understand what God is trying to say to us. Today, we able to just scratch the surface of the meaning of these laws. Having studied them and prayed about them, I think these laws lead us back to what Jesus calls the two greatest commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.” If we love God, we will realize just how much He loves everyone (and, in fact, all of His creation) in great detail. May God help us to love our neighbor’s as ourselves. |
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