Lesson 45 - Protocols for Dealing with the Destruction & Execution of Life

Deuteronomy Lesson 45

Protocols for Dealing with the Destruction & Execution of Life

Deuteronomy 21:1–9, 22–23

Fellowship Chapel
15 February 2011
Charles Clough
© Charles A. Clough 2011
www.BibleFrameworkApplied.org

We are about ready to start. Turn to Deuteronomy 21; and we’ll finish this three-chapter section that we’re going through. If you look at the handout tonight, you’ll see that section from 19:1 to 21:23 that I’ve encountered the protocols for implementing true social justice. The common denominator of those three chapters basically deals with lethal force exercised by the state to protect life. This is always a controversy, particularly in our time when we have such a not-thought-through idea of what civil government is all about. All three of these chapters deal with the civil state power during the time of the theocracy.

So what you have here is what it looked like when God ruled the nation. How did He set up the civil power? So remember in chapter 19 we have the protocols for justice that was the laws of evidence, the protection of testimony. So that was the control. Obviously if you’re going to use lethal force, you have to be very careful how you apply lethal force. So that’s why there were these protocols having to do with judicial proceedings.

Then we said last week the issue of military war: war policies or rules of engagement or the strategies used. The Bible has that because they had war. So God had to issue policies that controlled the rules of engagement and defined the two kinds of war: just war and holy war.

Now tonight we’re going to come to chapter 21 and once again we’re dealing with lethal force. In the outline you’ll see that again I review the 4th divine institution.

Remember, the first divine institution (DI) is human responsibility—dominion, labor. That’s man’s choice. God has invested us with a chooser so He holds us responsible to use it. That’s DI #1. DI #2 is marriage. It did not start with the state because in history if you think about the sequence. This is the framework approach. Think about the chronology of revelation. Marriage was given in the Garden of Eden. There was no civil state there at that time. So marriage isn’t the function of the state. So the state can play rhetoric games redefining marriage however they want to do it; but that doesn’t change the institution. The institution is a divine institution started in Eden and cannot be changed by man even though they want to change laws and so on.

Then the third divine institution, which is crucial to society is the family. Then finally the fourth divine institution which is the civil state, civil power. That is a post fall institution. So divine institution #4 is different from divine institution #1, divine institution #2, divine institution #3. It comes after the fall. That means you have to view it as something that’s caused basically by sin.

Now during antediluvian civilization prior to the giving of the commandment of capital punishment and installation of lethal force - prior to that there wasn’t any civil government. We know that that first civilization ended in anarchy and violence. So violence didn’t start with the innovation of the civil power. It started before the installation of civil power. You had social violence. That’s something we need to understand. This doesn’t mean there weren’t leaders - community leaders, family leaders in that first civilization. Obviously leadership leads by inspiration, not by force. It leads by carrots, not by sticks. So you could have had leadership (community leadership, elders functioning) prior to the installation of civil government.

Civil government the way the Scripture views it is the giving over to man, to his authority, the responsibility to exercise some of God’s judgments. I’m careful how I phrase that. It’s giving over to man some of God’s judgments. Notice it is not social vindictiveness. It’s not vengeance; it’s not man trying to get at somebody else. The proper biblical view of civil authority is that it is the functioning under God’s law of restraint against sin. He is the author of it. Yes, it is misapplied. Of course it is because it’s an institution that dates after the fall. There are going to be misapplications of lethal force. But the biblical answer to that complaint is if you didn’t have the civil power or the use of lethal, you’d have anarchy. You’d have violence. You’d have the end of order. You could not have civilization in the fallen human race without forcible restraint against sin.

So that’s why on the outline I said either you have limited use of lethal force against evil or you have anarchy. Those are the choices. You do not have any other choice.

Then I deal social sentimentalist that eschew all violence and then support violent street demonstrations. Did you ever notice that? The people during the Vietnam era, all the peaceniks, were out there violently stopping traffic, violently blocking railroads, trains and so forth. I mean talk about violence. These guys are the most violent you ever saw. So it’s a little hypocritical for them to complain about civil power and violence when it’s applied by the civil government and then turn around and have violent street demonstrations. Just had one in Copenhagen over the climate thing. So they acted like street thugs, all the while talking about peace and against violence. So in the outline I point out it’s hypocrisy that exposes the inevitability of personal violence in a fallen civilization. That’s the outworking of the sin nature. It’s always going be there. It will be there until Jesus comes back and we deal with the final end of history - the inevitability of personal violence in a fallen civilization.

Now people, when you articulate that in a serious conversation, and I say a serious conversation because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to have serious conversations in our culture today because everybody is into these sound bites to see how cute they can be by calling you hateful because you have a moral position. Because you have a moral position that disagrees with their licentiousness that somehow you hate them. It’s just a manipulation word. It’s like if you don’t like somebody today a good way of attacking him is by calling him a racist. This term is so overused it’s meaningless. So that’s sophism. That’s rhetoric. That is not a truthful statement. But if you’re going to have a serious conversation, then this is the way to handle it. We’re talking about a fallen human race.

Then I give you Luke 22:36 which is a very overlooked verse in the New Testament. It’s this verse that shows you very definitely that Jesus authorized armed force for His disciples. That comes across as a shock to some people. The reason it comes across as a shock is because within 3 or 4 verses Peter takes out his sword and cuts off the ear of one of the servants coming up from the temple to arrest Jesus. Jesus says, “Put away your sword,” and so forth and so on. He repudiates that.

Well then what are they saying? They’re saying that Jesus must contradict Himself. Here in one verse He’s telling about the disciples to arm themselves with a sword, which is a lethal weapon; then 3 or 4 verse later you’re saying that He’s repudiating the very command that He gave 4 verses before. Now either Jesus is contradictory or the Apostle Luke doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s writing. We have to give these guys common sense. So you have to interpret verse 36 of Luke 22 in the larger light. Think about it for a minute. In the context of Luke 22:36 Jesus is telling the disciples what is going to happen when He leaves.

“Now you guys,” He says, “you went out peaceful. But the time is coming when you’re going to be on your own. You’re going to be carrying large sums of money around because they’re giving welfare.” That’s how welfare was distributed. They had thieves and robbers on the highways. Roman soldiers couldn’t control every street. So they were going to face robbery. They were going to face people that would attack them. So they were authorized. So disciples carried weapons with them. Come on, they weren’t walking around with moneybags in the ancient world without armed force to protect the money. There’s the precedent, right there, for lethal weaponry in self-defense. It’s given right there. The point Jesus was making when Peter uses it is that you don’t use armed force to propagate or defend the gospel. That was the issue. He was defending Jesus against temple police situations and that wasn’t the case of a robber. So come on, in 4 verses you don’t have a conflict between one and the other. So Luke 22:36 ought to be sent to the NRA actually. They would enjoy that verse because that basically supports the position that we have the right to carry.

Then I make a comment. I agree with much of what the libertarians are doing like Ron Paul, but in one area this guy is really naïve because he follows a policy of isolationism. Isolationism is a nice ideal. It would be very nice if we could isolate ourselves from the world; but it doesn’t work that way when somebody flies planes into New York City with the guys on it that got on it in other places. So where you have intrusions from other nations, of course you have a military that is going to attack them. You don’t wait until the enemy comes to your ground. You go get them on his ground.

Well, let’s go to the next slide because we want to review some of these things that we did earlier just to make Deuteronomy 21 - get oriented to the text here. Remember this slide? Here is the chiasm of the Ten Commandments. You remember when we went through the Ten Commandments that you have the first commandment – the first and second one really where God wants worship and service to Him. He has the primary worship and service. He is the authority.

Then the last commandment is: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 5:21 ‘ You shall not covet’ … which means I am looking for someone other than God to supply my needs. So the first two plus the tenth are dealing kind of with the same thing.

Then we went through accuracy of language. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 5:11 “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain ...”

^NKJ Deuteronomy 5:20 “You shall not bear false witness.” Both of these have to do with language.

Then you remember we dealt with the management of labor. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 5:13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work … That deals with labor and property - wealth.

In 19 it says: “You shall not steal.” It deals with property and wealth. Then you come down and it says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 5:18 You shall not commit adultery. That protects the marriage and family. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 5:16 Honor your father and your mother … Both have to do with marriage and family. That’s the second and third divine institution in there. Actually if you look at these (the first two) – there’s the first divine institution functioning. Then you come in verse 17 of chapter 5 to – life is to be respected. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 5:17 You shall not murder.

We said it looks like with that chiastic structure that the Holy Spirit set up the text to show you that all these institutions and social structures cohere in order to protect life. So then what we did is we took that chart and stuck it on its end and came up with this design for society. We said here we have heart allegiance to God versus to self. The choice on the left is the godly side and the sinful side is on the right in this chart.

Then we have the integrity of communication. It consistently states the truth or we just use language as a tool of manipulation which is going on largely today in our society. You have to have integrity of language, that’s the first step. If you don’t have that you don’t have marriage, you don’t have family, you don’t have labor, you don’t have business. So integrity of language is essential.

Then you come up the next step, labor and property. That’s production. You can’t have a family and marriage if you don’t have property and wealth. Family is not just a romantic institution. It’s a business. Raising children takes hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can’t have a marriage, you can’t have a family if you don’t have the right and the freedom to labor and accumulate wealth. Then you have marriage and family. Finally marriage and family produces life and that’s the next generation. That’s sort of the sense of this chiastic structure that’s sort of built into the Ten Commandments.

Now when we come to chapter 21 we are face-to-face with a structure that Moses uses that we’ve seen before.

Before we get to that structure I wanted you to notice on the outline about the superficial critics including liberal Protestant ministers and liberal Roman Catholics laugh at what they say is a contradiction now between the 6^th commandment (Thou shalt not kill) and the rest: the use of lethal force. It’s very common. You’ll run into this in your own family. You’ll run into this in the school. You’ll run into this in the media. You’ll run into this in your neighbors. They say there’s an inherent conflict between respect for life and the use of lethal force. If you look at the argument and break it down, their first proposition – you’ve got to learn to analyze the logic of these kinds of statements— is that all life must be protected. So they start off with that proposition – all life must be protected. Do we agree with that? Yes.

Number 2, any use of lethal force is thereby prohibited and two seems to flow from one. So this is why people get hung up here. How can you support life and then at the same time lethal force destroys life? Well, the answer is that proposition number 1 has to be supported in order for it to function. How do you support the fact that all life must be protected against people who want to take life? You’ve got to defend proposition 1 and you need lethal force to defend proposition number 1 against those who would take life. It seems to be that it’s pretty obvious that there’s a fault in the logic of the first proposition.

The missing truth is Deuteronomy 1:17. We are not living as human beings on a planet in an impersonal, chaotic, meaningless universe. Life is not something that came from the goo. Life is something that was created by God. Now if life was created God, then God has the right to define how that life is to be protected. God gets into the picture here. We have to point out that life is a divine creation. So now here is where you get a problem. If the person is an evolutionist then the problem then comes - how does life have significance if it just evolved from the goo? Where does it get its honor? Where does it get its value? As Dr. Bonson pointed out years and years ago in a famous debate with an atheist is, what one bag of evolving protoplasm does to another bag of evolving protoplasm is ethically irrelevant. You don’t have any ethics. You can’t ethics and bring into the picture at this point if you’re an evolutionist. As a creationist, now we know that life is a divine creation.

Now we come to human life. Human life is a divine creation in God’s image. So human life has a special value because it’s made in God’s image. That’s why we have the blanks there. God owns each human life. So when one is destroyed, He has the right to demand payment. This is something beyond the comprehension of unbelievers because they’re not committed to the fact that we have a Creator creating life. If you buy into the Creator creating life, then my last statement there that He owns each human life should be obvious. It should also be obvious that when life is destroyed He has the right to demand payment because it’s His life. It’s not ours. We are derivative owners of our life, but He is the owner of life. Therefore He has the right to say what He wants to about protecting it.

So that’s why the next statement I made: all arguments against legitimate use of lethal force are based on a denial of God’s creation which alone establishes true transcendent justice.

Remember we used Justice Jackson in the Nuremberg trial in 1945 of the Nazis. What were the two words that he used? Why could the institution of the Nuremberg trials prosecute German officers? Because the defense of the German officer was—“I was just following orders so I obeyed all of German law. You cannot convict me on German law.” That’s their defense. Remember what Jackson said in that famous Nuremberg trial. He said, “If we are to try the German officers for war crimes, we’ve got to try them on a basis of the law that is not transient and not provincial.” So there had to be a transcendent standard over and above German law. Think of that example when you get into this kind of discussion. There had to be a transcendent standard. So this is why then all arguments against lethal use of force are based on the denial of God’s creation.

Now we review Deuteronomy 19. We deal with protections on the judicial processes. Why was there need for protections for say witnesses and how you dealt with truths and evidence in a courtroom? You don’t want to execute somebody who is innocent. You’re protecting life. You don’t want a sloppy application of the civil power over lethal force. That’s Deuteronomy 19.

Deuteronomy 20 is the same thing except this deals with military force. What is the legitimate use of military force? Deuteronomy 20 goes into those details

Now we come to verse 21 and now we’re going to deal with specific procedures to protect life in society. Here we come to something. Moses does this. Remember back in chapter 6 and chapter 7, we ran into this sandwich structure. He does this several places. He’s doing it here in 21 too. I don’t know why Moses did this. I think there’s a reason for it because it seems to be a discourse structure that he builds into the text. It’s something in the way he spoke, the way he organized his thinking. Here’s my theory about why he did it. Remember that’s the one about getting the Word of God in your heart and the parents’ role in raising children, parental authority. Then in chapter 7 he was dealing with holy war. If you look at the verses you’ll notice he starts out 9 verses in chapter 6. Then he goes to the last 6 verses here and he’s dealing with procedures. “You do this; you do that. Here’s how you do it.” Remember, that was the procedure. How do you do it when your son asks you, “What is Passover?” “He says when your son asks you this, here’s what I want you to teach them – boom, boom, boom. Here’s what I want you to teach your children in the house. Here’s what I want you to teach the children outside of the house.”

So those passages all deal with how-tos. But then in the middle of that – see this ends at 9 and picks up again in verse 20 so you have a gap from 6:12-19 and he’s talking about your relationship to Yahweh. So there are two things that He’s doing. We have to balance those. If you just concentrate on your relationship with the Lord and you don’t ever talk about procedures it becomes abstract to people. “Yeah, I love the Lord.” You have Christians all over the place saying, “Yeah, I follow Jesus.” You see the way they vote and you think, “Do these guys ever read the Bible, or what?” They don’t pay attention to procedures. They don’t know doctrine.

This is the Bible view of operating doctrine. They’re doctrinally stupid even though they say they love Jesus. So if you concentrate just on loving Jesus and loving the Lord and you don’t get into operating doctrine, your not really loving the Lord because you’re not dealing with the reality He has created.

On the other hand if you neglect a relationship with the Lord and you concentrate on the how-tos, your spiritual life becomes a mechanical thing. It’s like a robot. It can become very legalistic. You’ve got to have these two sides. You have to have the how-tos, and you have to have why am I doing the how-tos - because I love the Lord. So he did that again in chapter 7.

Now in chapter 21 it’s a little different. I think you’ll see something. So let’s look at Deuteronomy 21 it’s a little bit different; but if you look at verses 1-9 and then you look down to verses 22-23 I think you’ll see something. So let’s look at Deuteronomy 21 and see if we can watch the structure.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:1 “If anyone is found slain, lying in the field in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him, ² “then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the slain man to the surrounding cities.

 ³ “And it shall be that the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a heifer which has not been worked and which has not pulled with a yoke. ⁴ “The elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with flowing water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and they shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. ⁵ “Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to Him and to bless in the name of the LORD; by their word every controversy and every assault shall be settled. ⁶ “And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley.⁷ “Then they shall answer and say, ‘Our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it. ⁸ ‘Provide atonement, O LORD, for Your people Israel, whom You have redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood to the charge of Your people Israel.’ And atonement shall be provided on their behalf for the blood. ⁹ “So you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD.

Now if you start in with verse 10 all of a sudden it’s a totally different narrative. Then we’re talking about female captives. Then in verse 15 we’re talking about inherited properties. Then we’re talking about rebellious children in verse 18.

Then you come down to verse 22. Look at the last 2 verses in this chapter. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:22 “If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, [23] “his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.”

So now we’ve got the same kind of structure here. We’ve got a first part; then we’ve got a second part. So the first part, the first 9 verses and then the second part is verses 22 to 23.

Now tonight in the interest of time we’re going to have to concentrate on those two pieces of bread and ignore the in-between for now. We’re going to come back to that next week. For tonight we want to look at the first 9 verses and the last 2 verses. We’re doing that once again because Moses seems to bracket his subject material this way. When we get to Heaven, we can ask him why.

Let’s go to 21:1 and start going through procedures. Here are some procedures. The inside part also gives you procedures in this case but the procedures in verse 1 to 9 are very close to verses 22 and 23 because both deal with the application of lethal force. In verses 1 to 9 it’s lethal force illegitimately used—murder. Then in verses 22-23 is the legitimate use of lethal force of the state.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:1 “If anyone is found slain, lying in the field in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him …” Now notice verse 1 and look carefully at verse 1. If you look carefully at verse 23, do you notice something?

Look at verse 1 and look at verse 23. Besides murder and violence and destruction, what else is being mentioned in those 2 verses? The land. See that? The land was. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:1 “If anyone is found slain, lying in the field in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him” Then in verse 23: “his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.”

So the land figures in here. There’s something to do with the land that’s involved. Why is that? Because the land is given to Israel; that’s their dominion. That’s the area of Kingdom of God theocracy. That area is the acreage where God Himself is King and has dominion over it. Since He has dominion over it, He is concerned with what goes on in the land. So the land figures in here. You’ll see this come up again as we read through it. The key, then, is the land. If the land is God’s, the life is God’s, and He is the supreme authority.

Now we come to verses 2 and 3. This seems a little odd. Let’s see if we can reason our way through this. It’s not known. It’s an unsolved homicide – unsolved murder. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:2 “then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the slain man to the surrounding cities. [3] And it shall be that the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a heifer which has not been worked and which has not pulled with a yoke.”

Now what does this teach us about responsibility for criminal activity? Somebody has got to be held responsible for this. Even though the individual criminal cannot be found, the civil authorities in the theocracy have a responsibility because if they don’t exercise their responsibility... In one sense you can see they failed. The fact that there was a murder means that community failed. It failed to protect life. So therefore God’s procedure is make a rule that the city nearest where that body was found has responsibility for that murder and they are going to have to deal with it. You don’t ignore murder. Even if you can’t solve the murder, that’s no make any difference. The murder happened. One of God’s creatures was killed and that matters to God. It may not matter to man. It may not matter to the state. It may not even matter to these people in the city. But God says, “I want you to assume responsibility and I want you to exercise cleansing of the land.”

When murder happens in the theocracy that is considered by God environmental pollution. You see this is radically different from environmental pollution as it is viewed today. Environmental pollution today is all about nature. It’s the misuse of nature. But you see in the Bible, man is more important than nature. So when you have a murder and you have the blood of the person, it is said to contaminate the land. So murder is environmental pollution in the Scriptures because man is held to be superior to nature.

So now we have a procedure. Notice who’s involved with this; it’s the elders of the city. The people who are in charge—this would be the civil component of society—will take a heifer. Notice the requisition. The heifer has to be one that has not been worked and not pulled a yoke. I’m not sure why. I suggest, point 1 in the notes, that it’s higher value because that heifer is going to be killed which means the profits that could have been gained from that animal are gone. This is not a casual thing. So God, “I want you to get a sense of the value here.”

Somebody is going to have to sacrifice. Maybe the town chipped in and compensated the farmer for the loss of his tractor basically. This is a heifer that had not worked so it had its whole life ahead of it. So all the economic profits that would have come from the crops that this heifer helped plow, they’re gone. So there is a cost to this. There is an economic cost or a penalty for what happened. It falls on the entire community.

With this idea that the whole community is responsible for murder, what do you suppose if this law had been followed? What do you think that would do inside communities about their dealing with murder? If they know that they’re implicated, it heightens the individual conscience, doesn’t it? If they had to go through this procedure every time there is a murder, it keeps it on their minds. We’re going to see in verse 22 through 23; that’s exactly what God is doing. So He has these procedures to make people face-to-face, all the time right in their face, the pollution of murder and the value of life. It takes an expense; somebody has to pay here. This is an expensive transition for a heifer which hasn’t been worked, which hasn’t pulled a yoke. You don’t want some 14-year-old cow somewhere that’s ready to go to the grave and casually say, we’ll take her because she doesn’t value. No, you’re going to take your most expensive investment; and you’re going to use that. You’re going to sacrifice for that; and you’re going to pay for that.

So it goes on then. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:4 “The elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley…” It can’t be any valley. The word valley, to get the perspective in the Hebrew, it’s a wadi. If you’ve seen the Middle Eastern wadis are usually dry. Wadi was used as a sort of drainage ditch for the farm. The only time it had water in it was usually when it rained. So now this can’t be any wadi.

So now point number 2 comes up. Why do you suppose not only are there rules about the heifer, but there are rules about the wadi that they have to pick. It has to be a wadi with flowing water. Well now, what’s the significance of flowing water because what are they going to do to the heifer? They are going to sacrifice the heifer. What’s going to happen to the blood of the heifer? It’s got to be washed. So the idea of the wadi with the water moving in it is so that it washes the land clear. It’s supposed to be a physical picture of the cleansing of the land. So they had to keep going through this thing.

Then point 3, something else about the wadi. “which is neither plowed nor sown” So what goes on here? Again we kind of have to figure out what’s going on. I suggest that the reason that it can’t be an area that is cultivated is because they don’t want the blood to be part of the soil. They want it washed off and cleansed as the water flows. The whole idea here is cleansing. So, all of this is done by the elders.

Now in verse 5, look who else shows up – not just the elders. Now we have that same kind of protocol we saw before. Remember we’ve made this point several times. In the court system, the civil authorities were combined with the ecclesiastical authorities – remember the priests and the judges – priests and judges. So the priests are involved. So lo and behold in verse 5, here come the priests. So they get involved with it. So you not only have the civil authorities of the city, but you have the priests coming to deal with this.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:5 “Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to Him and to bless in the name of the LORD; …”

So in the outline I have a little review of the priests. Remember we dealt with the priests’ office. So again it is the dual role, the dual role, of ecclesiastical and civil authorities. Now you want to think about this because this is in contrast to the societies we live in. We live in a civil authority (civil state) and the ecclesiastical authorities have no say. In our country, Europe, and Africa and so forth, they’re all civil authority where the ecclesiological component is gone. It’s purely civil authority. In the theocracy that is not the case. We want to remember why.

The first point under review of the office of the priest: what did the priest do? The priest stood between man and God’s sacred space. Remember? They stood at the tabernacle. They were the people that interfaced between a holy God and a sinful people. Remember we said when we dealt with the office of the priest: there’s no need for priests in the Church Age because we have access to the throne of grace. The idea of the Roman Catholic Church and many of the liturgy churches, they brought over the priesthood from the Levitical priesthood. They’re bringing Israel into the church. It’s replacement theology’s effect. But the priests stood between.

By the way, Numbers 3:10 shows you the priests were armed. They were supposed to use lethal force to kill anybody that made unauthorized approaches to the tabernacle.

Then the central role was to bear the iniquity of their office. In other words, they are the people who deal with the problem of sin between an absolutely holy, righteous God and sinful people. Where the cleansing and collision comes is that intersection. The priests are there at that intersection. And they also were custodians of the Scriptures, as remember, in Deuteronomy 17 when the king wanted the Scriptures where did he go to get the copy of the Scriptures? He went to the priest. They were custodians of the Word of God.

Now I’ve given you a little quote here from a contemporary piece of literature from Turkey. It was the Hittite Empire at this time in history. I show you this quote. This is in Gurney’s book The Hittites. Here is how they solved their problems of justice. What do you see missing in this quote when you compare this quote with the Deuteronomy passage we’re looking at? It says:

The commander of the garrison, the mayor and the elders shall administer justice fairly and people shall bring their cases. If anyone brings a case too involved, he shall refer to the king.

Who’s missing? No priests. This is why I keep saying our modern secular nations-states perpetuate the same pagan structures that existed in the ancient Near East outside of Israel. That is they were totally secular. Whatever priests they had weren’t like the priests of Israel. They weren’t there for the sin. There were there issues. So there’s an example. There are no priests. When you see in verse 5 the priests show up, this is important. It makes clear something that we need to always clarify when you come to capital punishment. God is involved in this. It’s His life. It’s not a secular issue. It’s a theological issue. Therefore the priests get involved with this.

And notice what the text says about these priests. It says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:5 “Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to Him and to bless in the name of the LORD; by their word every controversy and every assault shall be settled.” The idea of blessing is that they speak for God in this situation. Then it says – very good statement - look at the last clause in verse 5. Notice the noun. What do you see listed as two nouns in clause? ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:5 “…by their word every controversy…” That’s the Hebrew word riv, which is the word for a lawsuit. Every court case every, lawsuit is settled by the word of the priest because it was the priests that brought the Word of God into the court. “… and every assault shall be settled.” That’s kind of funny. I had to do some research on that. The New King James has this translated assault. Actually it’s a stripe or corporal punishment. It meant every punishment. Every controversy was decided on the basis of the Word of God and every punishment was decided on the basis of the Word of God. That’s what it’s saying. The priests, the ecclesiastical component, brought that into the discussion. So that’s what their function was.

Now in verse 6 we revert back to the other people. We’ve given the priests their thing. They’re finished. Now in verse 6 we have the civil authorities. They step in. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:6 “And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley.” So now they are proclaiming the fact that as civil authorities they did not personally get involved in this murder. It happened beyond their domain so to speak. In other words they’re responsible to go through this process but they themselves weren’t part of the murder situation. In verse 8, here we have Old Testament soteriology; and it’s in contrast to the New Testament. So I want to make a point here. Where it says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:8 “Provide atonement, O LORD, for Your people Israel…” It actually means cover – provide a cover for.

In your outline here under 21:8 is the Old Testament concept of salvation – a covering but not a removal. Now I want you to see the difference, the difference between covering sin and actually removing sin. Now why couldn’t sin be removed in the Old Testament? Jesus hadn’t died. So the only thing you could get in the Old Testament was a covering contingent on the fact that someday in the future sin would be removed.

Now let’s go to a Pauline epistle and you’ll see where he picks this up. So hold the place and turn to Romans 3. Paul says: ^NKJ Romans 3:24 “being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” Verse 25, look what he says. Watch the sentence. Paul is very precise in his words. “… whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed…” He passed over the sins that were previously committed. [26] “to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

So there’s the passing over. The sins were not removed permanently in the Old Testament. They were kind of lying there being covered. The Old Testament saints knew that. This is why they had probably a loftier view of sin than we do having seen these bloody messes all the time and thinking, “You know really I know God is covering my sin; but it’s kind of still there.” That’s the mentality in the Old Testament. You don’t get the forgiveness of sins thing until after Jesus finishes His work. That’s one of our privileges that we have in our generation that they did not have in their dispensation. So the most they can ask for is a cover.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:8 “Provide atonement, O LORD, for Your people Israel, whom You have redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood to the charge of Your people Israel.’ And atonement shall be provided on their behalf for the blood.” That is a serious petition because innocent blood is the person who was murdered. That is a violation of God’s law. It’s a sin so it has to be dealt with. [9] “So you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD.” So environmental pollution was a moral pollution in the Old Testament. Can you imagine bringing this over today in our society? People start talking about environmental pollution. This is God’s view of environmental pollution. Holy mackerel, what a difference! Talk about innocent screaming up from blood streets of Baltimore. What is God hearing? Lots of unsolved crime. So anyhow this is the idea that God wanted to deal with the illegitimate lethal force.

Now in our closing time tonight I want to go to 22 and 23 because 22 and 23 deal with executions. This is a case where people get into the text. They say, “This is barbarism – how primitive.” Well, let’s look and see. You can’t dip into the Scriptures pull out a few verses so you can make Christians embarrassed and use little sophism in your rhetoric. Let’s look deeply. These were serious procedures and these procedures were carried out so we want to deal with them. In the notes it’s point B – what needs to be done when execution occurs?

So what is the operating doctrine? Let’s look at verse 22. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:22 “If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree…” He’s dead so this isn’t crucifixion. Crucifixion didn’t come until the Roman times. What it is after the person was killed either by decapitation or by stoning; in either case his body was not going to look very nice. It’s supposed to be hung on a tree.

Now let’s think about this. Why do you suppose God would take a body of one who has been executed and hang him on a tree right out there in public? Deterrence? To show people? Obviously he’s out there for show. What is being shown however? Now deterrence yes, but there’s something else that’s being shown here. We want to think carefully now. Justice that we are looking at is God’s justice. It’s not the justice of a secular state. So when you see the body of someone who has been executed under God’s system, it’s more than just deterrence. It will probably produce deterrence but there’s something central to this whole demonstration here. It is a picture (a bloody, awful picture) of the wages of sin is death. It’s a principle throughout the universe. What God wants us to understand is, “that person has been judged by Me and I want all of you to see.” We do all our executions inside so nobody sees the body. It takes 15 years and 85 lawyers and $5 million to go through the process. But in those days that wasn’t the way not done. That’s not the way God wanted it done.

First of all remember capital punishment was rarely ever used. What were the rules of evidence? You had to have two eyewitnesses. So capital punishment probably was not used that much. When it was it was a solemn procedure in the face of the entire community. Everybody saw this. This is like putting it out in a billboard today. “So you will hang him on a tree”. Now hold the place. I want to show you how this was done. This was actually done. Turn to Joshua 8. We’re going to see that they did do this. This is finally when they conquered Ai.

^NKJ Joshua 8:28 “So Joshua burned Ai and made it a heap forever, a desolation to this day.” Archeology has dealt with Ai. Ai is a hard archeological site to determine because it’s a heap. [29] “And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until evening. And as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his corpse down from the tree, cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raise over it a great heap of stones that remains to this day.”

By the way, remains of this day, remains of this day, remains of this day. Where have you seen that before in the Deuteronomic text? Remember King Og? His bed is over there and remains today. Why are those notices in the text? Evidence! This is not a little religious story. This is actual history. Go over there and look at it. It’s right there. There are the rocks. So it’s open to evidence. So here Joshua takes care of it. Joshua does it again.

^NKJ Joshua 10:24 So it was, when they brought out those kings to Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the captains of the men of war who went with him, “Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings.” And they drew near and put their feet on their necks. ²⁵ Then Joshua said to them, “Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed; be strong and of good courage, for thus the LORD will do to all your enemies against whom you fight.” ²⁶ And afterward Joshua struck them and killed them, and hanged them on five trees; and they were hanging on the trees until evening.” So here’s the procedure. It was carried out.

So now let’s go back to Deuteronomy. Verse 22 says to hang them on the tree. Verse 23 is a restriction however. You can’t leave the corpse on the tree as you saw in Joshua. It has to be taken down at sunset. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 21:23 “his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.” Here we come again just like we did in the first 9 verses. There is a concern of God not to pollute this land. It says you will not defile the land. That’s talking about pollution of the land.

It’s sad; but we have Christians in the environmental movement that go in the Old Testament and see the word defile. They think they’re throwing coke bottles out or something. Come on guys, read the text. Read the context. It’s not talking about coke bottles and garbage here. It’s talking about religious and spiritual defilement of the land. That’s what God’s worried about. So again it’s not saying be sloppy with the land but there is a little higher level. “… so that you do not defile the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.”

Now here’s the key. If you’ll look in the notes under the hanged one, the hanged one is cursed of God. Deuteronomy 1:17 the judgment is God’s. There’s a blank there in your handout. The use of lethal force is a delegated function from God to reveal to us something of His absolute justice – absolute justice.

Now the last clause of the last sentence: “for he who is hanged is accursed of God”. That’s the message of the corpses on the trees. It’s not vengeance. It is not to say ha, ha. It’s a sad day. It’s a sobering day. When people saw that body on the tree that was the judgment of God. It reminded everybody that there’s a universal rule: the wages of sin is death. God means what He says. He isn’t like a parent in the supermarket: threaten a kid 42 times before anything is done. Here, is something done? God puts it there; and it’s in public and everybody sees it. In other words they walk away from this. You know what, God means business. That’s the message.

Now Paul picks this up and this probably along with Genesis 15 is where Paul probably led by the Holy Spirit developed the Doctrine of Imputation of Sin. So hold the place and turn to Galatians 3. Here’s where knowing the Old Testament makes the New Testament spring alive. You can read Galatians 3:13-4 and if you can haven’t known the Old Testament text like we’ve done it tonight, you read right through it and don’t get the force of what Paul is saying here.

Look at ^NKJ Galatians 3:13: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”).”

Now let’s just stop there a moment. What is he saying about Christ when He was on a tree on the cross? What was true in the Old Testament of everybody hung on a tree? It was person judged of God. Now what does that say about Jesus? It says He must have borne the sins and He was cursed of God. You’ve got a very dramatic picture here of the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. It says He became sin. See what Paul is doing? He goes back to Deuteronomy; he goes back to that revelation. That’s why these procedures in the Old Testament aren’t random things great for Sunday school class some time. These are procedures of a real nation, real history and real space-time existence so that we have a revelation. Now in the New Testament we see Jesus and we go back to the Old Testament and we see Jesus hanging on the cross.

Paul says, “You know what? This judgment on the cross was God’s judgment because He thought the way you would have thought in Deuteronomy. Namely that this is not the state putting a criminal to death. This is the state and the priesthood putting someone to death because they are standing in the place of God to remove sin. The wages of sin is death. Paul says, “This is a great picture of the crucifixion of our Lord.”

Now let’s do a little exercise here. It will just take a minute. Put yourself back in the first century. You’re a believer; and we are all part of the Jewish community that knew Deuteronomy. We are going around trying to win our fellow Jews to Christ by telling them that our Messiah is Jesus who hung on a tree. Is that hard or not? What is going to be the community’s basic response to us when we tell them our candidate for Messiah was hung on a tree? How could a messiah be hung on a tree? That means the Messiah was sin in God’s sight.

It’s interesting that it was the Apostle Paul that picked up on this. You know why? I think he had to battle it through. Remember Paul fought the Christian community as heretics. On the Damascus Road of course the Lord appeared to Paul – a blinding light. Remember Paul took years of study of the Word of God before he went out and had his ministry. He was prepared. Part of his preparation was he had to read the Bible. There was no New Testament when Paul became a Christian. It was all Old Testament. So he had to wade through all these Old Testament passages and out of those as the Lord taught him, he came to these powerful doctrinal conclusions.

One of these great conclusions he came to was the Doctrine of the Imputation of Sin. What that means is he had from Genesis 15 and the Abrahamic Covenant, God imputing righteousness to Abraham. Now with Deuteronomy 21 he can say there is another side of imputation.

Not only does God impute His righteousness to our account, but He takes our sin and He imputes it to His account. You talk about getting the basic gospel core here. This is it. It all comes out of a criminal procedure that God required of His people in the Old Testament. That’s the two pieces of bread in the sandwich of Deuteronomy 21.

Next week we’ll deal with the in-between part. You’ll notice in the conclusion that we’ve said and again want to make our point that we’re dealing again with an awesome thing: God’s judgment. Life is a divine creation. Human life is a divine creation in His image so that destruction is a crime in His sight – not in the eyes of the state. It is in the eyes of God. There’s the difference between the theocratic approach and the secular approach. He owns each human life so when one is destroyed He has the right to demand payment. All arguments against the legitimate use of lethal force are based on a denial of God’s creation. It’s not about vengeance. It’s not about victim closure although those things will follow. Deterrence may follow; but that’s not the real center of it. It’s about God’s valuation of life destroyed and the revelation of His justice. That’s the issue. This view of justice is far from what passes today as social sentimentalism as social justice— totally different view.

If you have any questions, we’ll be down in front here for a few minutes.

My wife said that I should ask after the class that did I fill in all the blanks. Did I miss any? Did everybody get them all tonight? Some of the other lessons if you don’t have the blanks filled in, they will be on the handout. If you go to bibleframework.com and look under other lessons. The Deuteronomy is there; you’ll see the handouts. Before I load those to the web people I always fill in in brackets the blanks. So they’re there. The problem is the website right now is running about 4 or 5 lessons behind— about a month or so behind— due to logistic problems with it’s how loaded. I tried for a while to send the lessons every week, but it didn’t work out right now— the way it’s loaded. It’s a month behind. If you can handle that, it’s all there in the site.

Any questions?

Question

The question then is - is it a local contamination or national contamination. I think the sense there is that it’s a local contamination; but it’s something God doesn’t want in His nation. It’s more like the violation of a national standard. Whether it occurs in city A, B or C; it’s still His kingdom. The whole nation is his kingdom. As the holy king, He doesn’t want that inside of His kingdom. I guess maybe what it does— I think it focuses attention on the fact that these people say in city B who happened to be closest—it reminds them that they are part of the bigger whole. They are doing this not just because of city B; but they are doing it because King Yahweh reigns this whole kingdom.

Question

Well, what’s God’s view of our nation? I think when you see these passages of Scripture; it’s pretty scary because I think what it shows you is this is the way—if we are to ascribe that this Scripture really is revelation—it’s not just a Sunday school story; it’s not just Jewish autobiography but this is real historic revelation of a time in history when God ruled as a laboratory example so we can look back in history and see what it would look like to see the Kingdom of God. He’s offended by an unsolved murder in one city somewhere. We think about the murders that go on in our country today. This is why we don’t live in the Kingdom of God - far from it. You know, God judges nations. We’re due for it. We’ve been exposed to the Light in this country as no other country has. We considered Him a big joke. We are sticking things in His face. We can’t get much more explicit than what we’re doing in our country. These passages are very sobering. We are dealing with a holy God here. He’s the one that finally is the Judge. So that’s why I think the Old Testament is an important document. Where else do you see such graphic illustrations of God’s holiness in a human society?

Question

That’s a good point – how Judas wound up. The Bible picks up. If any of you have read the book of Acts recently, have you ever noticed what happens to one of the Herods about half way through the book? The Herod family was a mess. The old man, Herod the Great, he is the guy that set up the Temple. He was a tyrant. Then you have his son and grandson. There are 3 generations of the Herod family that were horrible people.

It’s interesting that here you have Luke under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit talking about this incident that happened in the coliseum where Herod come in and everybody is commemorating him as god. All of a sudden an angel kills him. God deals with ceremonial arrogance. You wonder - is He still around doing that today?

Question

Yeah, he was eaten by worms. Of course, you know who wrote that was a doctor. I mean who but a doctor that God picked out to write the book of Luke and Acts. Luke is full of those little things. He must have gone around and checked.

“Why did he die? What was going on?”

He picked up on those. Luke is the only one who deals with the pregnancy of Jesus. Why is that? He went back to Mary and he asked her. It took a doctor to do that. The fisherman Peter and Matthew the tax collector; they aren’t worried about pregnancies. But Luke was. That’s why God used different people to write Scripture. It’s kind of neat how He did that.

Any other questions?

This is an argument against capital punishment. How can you be for capital punishment because there is always a risk of innocent life being lost? There’s always a risk. Yes, there is a risk; but nevertheless God in His omniscience must have known that. It’s striking – and I use this argument. Wasn’t His own Son wrongly executed? Knowing that didn’t God go ahead and authorize it?

So it seems to me that God is basically saying, “Yeah, it risks that.”

The problem in modern times— the reason that has come up more and more is because frankly the legal system is so ineffective. It’s a circus in Maryland as well as a lot of the other states. They can’t even figure out how to kill somebody. They have a problem with lethal injections. That’s because the guys aren’t trained in lethal injections. Come on. Can’t we figure out how to put someone down? We do it to our cats and dogs. We do it to human fetuses. For some reason we have a technical problem. I’m not talking just about the ethical problem. I’m talking about the medical problem. That was the thing in the Baltimore Sun – that the people that administer whatever the super anesthetic is that they use for needle injections; they weren’t trained in it. It was a sloppy execution. Gosh. How technically hard is this? Then of course you have the problem - you have appeal after appeal after appeal. It gets to be very extravagant and costly. That’s why the people of Maryland say to forget it. It’s too much of a problem. You’ve got legal expenses. The taxpayers wind up paying millions of dollars to do this. After a while you throw up your hands.

But it’s kind of an indictment that here we are a modern state with well-educated people and we can’t figure out how to execute people.

Yes, one more.

Well, Arizona case is a wonderful illustration. There is no question biblically that he would be executed. In Utah they execute people. They shoot them by firing squad. Frankly if I were going to be convicted of murder I’d lot rather be executed than be on an animal farm for 40 years. I don’t know why people are so upset about being executed. We have a policeman in the congregation that once said some people deserve to be shot. There’s always what we call the Twinkies defense. This is a famous case in California where one murder went in and blasted away a bunch of people. His lawyers defended him because he had a little blood sugar. That was called a Twinkies defense. So these are the absurdities that you have. You don’t see a Twinkies defense in the text of Scripture. The reason you don’t is because the emphasis here – and I think you can see the emphasis is not on what kind of psychological problems the person had. The emphasis is on the death of the murdered victim. That’s the center of concern – not whether he fell on his head or ate sugar for breakfast. It’s the person whose life was lost. That is what offends God.

Well, our time is up folks. We’ll try to finish up chapter 21 next time.