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Deal Honestly with Others
Deal Honestly with Others Deuteronomy 25:1-19 Key Verse: 25:15 “You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” For the past several weeks we have been looking at various laws found in the Law that God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai. Many of these laws seem to be outdated and they don’t seem to have anything to do with us today. However, these were the laws that God gave His people to set them apart from the people around them and to make them a kingdom of priest and a holy nation for Him. His people were to be different from those living around them so that they could reveal God’s glory to the people of the Earth. Although these laws seem to be outdated today and they don’t seem to be relevant to us today, they are God’s truth which can never change, so we must look at them and try to determine what God is trying to tell us today as we live as His chosen possession in this generation. In today’s passage, we have laws concerning punishment, marriage, and most importantly laws concerning dealing honestly with other people. One key factor about God’s people is that they must live in a just society. God is a perfectly just God, and His people must live in a society that reflects this – the guilty must be punished, the rights and inheritance of the people must be protected and preserved, and people must deal honestly with one another. Once again, we will see that some of these laws don’t seem to apply to us in today’s world. However, if we look closely at these laws, we can see the spirit behind them and how they do indeed apply to us. May God bless our study of this passage and help us to see how His entire law reflects His glory to the people around us. First, disputes among God’s people and punishment for wrong doers. (1-3). Look at verse 1. “When people have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty.” Even in a Godly society there will be disagreements among people because of our fallen nature. Each of us thinks that our way of living is the correct way, and when someone disagrees with us disputes may arise. In a perfect world these disputes would all be settled calmly and rationally, but in this fallen world, they often lead to heated arguments and sometimes even to violence. These disputes must not be ignored. They must be dealt with. Often times this will require a third party – an impartial judge to determine who is in the right and who is violating another’s rights. At first, when God first brought the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt, Moses alone was acting as the judge for all of the people. If you look back at Exodus 18, you will see that Moses would take his seat to sit as judge for the people, and all the people would crowd around him from morning to evening bringing all of their complaints. Moses didn’t have time to do anything, but sit as judge all day long. Moses father-in-law, Jethro, saw this and he told Moses that what he was doing was not good. Then Jethro, gave Moses a plan to set up a judicial system. In this system, Moses was to be the head judge, but more than this, he was to be the teacher for other judges who were to be place over thousands, hundreds, fifties or tens of people. They were to hear all of the cases and to decide the simple ones. If one was too difficult to decide among all those judges, then the case was to be brought to Moses for a final decision. In this way, a justice system was set up for God’s chosen people. In this passage, we have are given the responsibilities of those judges. They were to decide the guilt or innocence of the people and to make sure that justice was carried. Unlike today’s system, the justice was to be carried out quickly and in the presence of the Judge. If the crime the guilty person was convicted of was not punishable by death, the guilty person was to be beaten. However, care had to be taken that the guilty person was not to be beaten so severely that he/she was degraded in the sight of their fellow Israelites. In order to ensure this, God restricted the lashes to forty stripes (3). The Jews later reduced this by one just to make sure they didn’t exceed the forty stroke limit. Because God is just, His people must also be just. Guilty people must be punished. The same is true for us today, and every society has a justice system set up. Many of these systems are a far cry from what God envisioned for His people, none-the-less, every society has some type of justice system. These systems are designed to ensure the stability of the society. However, what sinful man often overlooks is real crime that all of us are guilty of. It is actually not just one crime, it is all manner of crimes that our justice systems just don’t deal with. Those crimes are our sins. Some of those sins fall under the laws of the societies that we live in and are people are punished for committing those sins. However, a majority of our sins simply don’t fall under the laws of the state that we live in and therefore they go unpunished. However, a just God, cannot let these sins go unpunished. Regardless of how severe we think our sins are, the Bible tells us that the wages of all sin is death. We are all guilty of sinning and, therefore, according to the Bible we deserve death. The really bad news for sinners is that we simply cannot escape God’s judgement. He sees everything and He knows even our most secret sins, all of which will bring His judgement upon us. We are all guilty and we all deserve punishment. If this were the end of the story, life would indeed be nothing more than a tragedy for all people. But by God’s one sided grace, this is not the end of the story. God so loved the world that He sent His one and only son into the world, that whoever believes in Him shall not be condemned but shall have eternal life. Jesus paid the price for our sins, so when we accept His sacrifice for ourselves, we are pronounced not guilty by God. However, we simply cannot stop there. God’s law is still God’s law. If we continue on in our sins, it means that we really haven’t accepted Jesus life and sacrifice for us. Jesus teaches us how to live a life that is pleasing to God. If we don’t listen to Jesus words and put them into practice in our life, then what do we mean by saying that we accept Jesus and what He has done for us? We must remember, that without Jesus we are all still subject to God’s judgement for our sins. Second, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”(4) This is a very short verse, that really seems to have no practical application to us today. Nobody, at least in most modern societies, use oxen to tread out grain anymore. However, both Jesus and Paul refer to this verse when they speak of the Christian church. Those who give their life to do the work of God and spread the good news of the gospel, should be in need of food or clothing. God wants His people to take care of those dedicate their life to preaching the gospel. Therefore, we must take care of those who take care of God’s flock. Third, laws concerning a childless widow. (5-10) Here again, we seem to have laws concerning things that don’t seem to apply to us today, yet we still need to take some time to consider why God would put this into His law. The Israelites were going in to take possession of the land that God had promised on oath to give to their ancestors. This land was to be divided up among the Israelites so that each family had their own possession of it that they could pass on as their family inheritance. If a man died before he had children with his wife, his family inheritance would simply disappear from Israel. It would be as if that man never existed. God didn’t want this to be the case, so He made a provision for that man’s widow to keep the family inheritance. The widow was not permitted to marry outside of her husbands family, so that his family inheritance would not be passed onto another family. Instead, if she was to remarry, she had to first go to that man’s brother. If he refused to marry her and have children with her who would then inherit the dead man’s portion of the land, he would be doing a disgraceful thing in Israel – he would not be fulfilling the role of a brother. His punishment seems a little funny today, but it would have brought great shame on him and his entire family at that time, because he was not honoring the family inheritance that God had given him. Today, we don’t have family inheritances as the Israelites of Moses’ time did, yet we should still honor our families that God has given us. I don’t think it means that we have to marry our brother’s wife if he dies without having children, but we should take good care of the families. I am struggling with this very topic right now. My family back in the United States is going through some difficult times right now, and, because I am over here, there is not much I can do to help them right now. Last night, I called my younger brother and had a conversation about the things that were going on, but one again was faced with my inability to help him out in anyway. I told him that I would do whatever I could. The only thing that I can do is pray for them, so that is exactly what I will do. It may not seem like much, but I believe it is the best possible thing any of my family can do in this situation. Fourth, punishment for a woman who acts rashly (11-12) Verses 11 and 12 deal with a woman who steps in a tries to help her husband when he is in a physical fight with another man. If, while she is trying to help her husband, she reaches out and seizes his private parts, she is to be punished most severely. This may seem like the punishment doesn’t really fit the crime, but I think it does for a few reasons. First of all, in verses 1-3, God gave the Israelites clear directions for how disputes were to be handled. They were to be handled by a judge who was to acquit the innocent and punish the guilty. In this case, the woman is placing herself as the judge and the punisher, neither of which were her roles to fulfil. Second, she obviously could not be an impartial judge. Clearly, she would be biased toward her husband even if he was the guilty party in this dispute. The final reason I think her punishment is just is because her method of punishing the other man is not allowed for in the law. By taking the punishment into her own hands, she is risking destroying that man’s ability to have a family. As was mentioned before, a man’s family ensured that their inheritance in the land would never be taken away. By doing what she did, she was risking the inheritance promised to that man’s family. That inheritance was given by God and should not be taken away by man. The punishment that she gets is harsh, but given the possible consequences of her behavior, it is fare from God’s point of view. Like this woman, we must not be quick to take punishment into our own hands. God has established authorities for this and we must seek the judgement of those authorities when we had disputes with others. If everyone were simply to take revenge on their neighbor as they saw fit, society would quickly dissolve into anarchy and justice would be not be found. Paul speaks of this when he encourages the Romans, to submit to the authorities God has place over them. Fifth, deal honestly with one another (13-16). In verses 13-16 we have our key verse, and the message that seems to permeate this entire chapter. This chapter is mainly about justice and these verses are at the heart of justice. Justice is all about treating other people fairly. If we are to live as God’s people, we must treat one another fairly. Look at verse 13 and 14. “Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light.14 Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small.” Some of you may be wondering what weights and measures have to do with anything. In ancient times, money was determined by weight. A gerah, a sheckel and a talent were all terms for money, but in reality they were the weights by which money was weighed out. Things were sold by the measure of them, by the ephah for grain or the hin or bath for liquids. Today we still sell and buy things according to the measure, but our money is no longer associated with weight. What God was instructing the Israelites to do here is to simply be honest in their business dealings with one another. They shouldn’t have one set of weights and measures when they were selling something and another set when they were buying something. Now let’s look at our key verse. “You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” Once again, we see at the end of this verse, God’s desire to bless His people and give them a long life in the promised land if they listen to Him and live in the way that He prescribes. In any society, honesty and dealing with people fairly is of utmost importance. Without basic honestly people can’t trust each other and the basic rules of a just society will break down. This should be obvious to people, but dealing with others honestly is a huge problem in most societies. We can see this clearly with the corruption scandal that has recently gone on here in Korea. Big cabals have been using their money to buy the influence of politicians. They aren’t dealing with their competitors honestly, their cheating and trying to tip the playing field to their favor. This has a ripple affect down through society. People get mad at and lose trust in their government officials. Businesses begin to fight among themselves because the bigger ones seem to have all the advantages. And the common people don’t know who to buy products from because of all the turmoil. All this chaos comes about simply because people don’t treat each other fairly. As Christians we must go even further than this. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus, didn’t just treat us fairly, he gave His life so that we might find ours. We need to imitate Jesus and give our lives so that others might find theirs. This means that we need to treat them more than fairly, we need to give our lives for them. Freely we have received God’s grace, so we must freely give it out to others without expecting to get anything in return. This seems like a losing principle in this world, but it is a winning principle in God’s sight. If we live like this, especially among our fellow brother and sister Christians, we can form a truly just society that will reflect God’s love and justice to the rest of the world. Yet, this is very hard to do. Problems, arguments and even lawsuits arise between Christians because we don’t even treat each other fairly. This is nothing new. It has been happening since Moses time and it continued on through Jesus time, into the early Christian church and is still common today. But someone may ask, why should we live honestly when others don’t? How will we get by in this world? Well the simple answer to the first question can be found in verse 16. “For the LORD your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly.” If we love God surely we will want Him to love us, but if we treat our neighbor dishonestly God will detest us. The answer to the second question is found at the end of our key verse. God will bless us and He will see that will live long and well in the Promised Land He has given us. Finally, remember the Amalekites and wipe them out. (17-19) We know that God is a God of love, so why does He give the Israelites instructions like this found in these verses? It was because God had determined to bless the Israelites, and instead of welcoming them as they came out to attack them and they even tried to curse them. They acted like the enemies of God, so God treated them as such. We must not simply ignore the enemies of God, we must actively fight against them in this world. It is often very tempting just to turn our heads away when we see evil, but God commands us to not forget the evil we see in the world, but to attack it. Today, we learned that God wants to establish justice among His people. He wants the innocent acquitted and the guilty to be punished. However, the punishment of the guilty should not go so far as to humiliate the guilty, but just far enough to help them repent and turn back to God. The key to God’s justice is treating others fairly, so may God help us to treat others fairly and establish a just society in this generation. |
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