Well, as we return again to the book of Deuteronomy, as we work our way through these chapters, in this 21st and 22nd chapter, we're continuing Moses's explanation and application of the sixth commandment, you shall not kill. As I've said a number of times before, I believe that the book of Deuteronomy is structured around the Ten Commandments. And so as we work through what Moses communicates to the second generation of Israelites just before they enter the Promised Land, he's explaining to them how the Ten Commandments will be worked out in their lives in the new land. It's not an exhaustive, explanation. It's not a complete, rule-by-rule, step-by-step guide to how each law should be applied in every aspect of life. But rather it provides them case studies, examples of how the principles of the Ten Commandments should be lived out in life. And we've spent a couple of weeks looking at the Sixth Commandment, the commandment, you shall not kill. And in these chapters that we're looking at this evening, chapter 21 through the first half of chapter 22, it's not easy to see how this passage is an exposition of the Sixth Commandment. Some paragraphs are more obvious than others. Some seem to be better understood in the context of the 7th commandment, you shall not commit adultery, while still others of these instructions have no obvious relation to one another or to either the 6th or the 7th commandment. So I'm approaching this with a kind of a broad theme that I think does run through all of these instructions that are given in this section. And my theme is to consider the value of life. I'm saying that chapter 21 and the first half of chapter 22, in general terms, tells us that life is valuable. Life is valuable. That's the big idea, as it were, and that's really the idea in the Sixth Amendment, isn't it? Life is valuable. So you don't take a life irresponsibly and carelessly. You shall not kill because life is valuable. Man is made in the image of God. And so we have this commandment given to us, and the outworking of it then, as we saw in the first study, was that life is valuable, therefore the murderer, the one who takes the life of another, forfeits his own. We saw in the second study that while life is valuable, and we are not to kill, In warfare, it is legitimate to do so, but the war must be a just war. And now we're taking a broader scope and we're saying that in general terms, because of the Sixth Commandment, we can say life is valuable, therefore life must be respected. Life must be respected. Well, there's lots that these paragraphs say to us and it begins in the first nine verses with the atonement for unsolved murders. The people of Israel enter the land. They're settled into the land. One day someone is out walking down the lane and they discover that a body is lying in the open country. And it's obvious that this person hasn't simply fallen over and bumped their head and died there. This person has been killed. The wounds give evidence to this fact. But who's the murderer? they cannot be discovered but life has been lost and so in this paragraph we see that life must be respected and guilt atoned for even when the guilty party is not known even when the avenger of blood cannot seek satisfaction from the life of the murderer Still atonement must be made for a life has been taken and when the guilty party cannot be found guilt is as it were imputed to the community. And so the elders of the cities nearby are told to measure the distance, find out which is the closest city, and then the leaders of that city bear responsibility for a ritual that provides atonement for Israel. It is symbolic of the guilt that has been incurred through the taking of a life. The value of that life must be satisfied. And so they're to take this heifer that has never been worked and they're to kill it in a field that remains unplowed and unplanted. And there they are to go through this ritual to honour the life that has been lost and make atonement for it before God so that guilt does not is not counted against the nation of Israel and God's judgment come upon it. You shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord. Well, they could have said it's none of our business. None of us killed this man. We don't know who did it. We didn't see it happen. Well, these are the very words that the elders are to speak, isn't it? We do not know who took this man's life. We did not see it happen. Accept atonement, O Lord, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed. Do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for. Life must be respected. Guilt must be atoned. In the second place, we have this strange paragraph that doesn't really fit, does it? The application of the sixth commandment, you shall not kill. Well, maybe it does though. In the broader scheme of things, thinking about the value of life. the soldiers have gone out and they've won a victory against their enemies. Obviously this is after they've settled in the land, so the nations who had occupied the land have presumably at this point all been destroyed. So whoever these enemies are, they're not the enemies that were to be totally devoted to destruction as God's just punishment of them because of their sin these are ones whose lives could have been spared and what would most likely happen is that they would either be allowed to carry on living in their own towns and cities but would have to pay tribute to Israel and that happened a lot particularly during the reigns of King David and King Solomon or they would be taken captive and they would basically be enslaved they would be servants to the people of Israel and Moses says if under these circumstances you see a beautiful woman and you desire to take her as your wife these things must be done she needs to be ceremonially separated from her nation. Her hair is to be shaved, her nails are to be paired, her clothes in which she was to be captured are to be taken away. She's to be, in a sense, she's to be brought into your home as a new creature. And she can then, after a month of mourning, which was typical in that time, she may become your wife and you her husband. And then he goes on to say, but if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. You shall not sell her for money. She could have been a slave. She could have been bought and sold. That was normal and common in the culture of that day. But this woman must not be treated that way anymore because she's been brought away from slavery to be, as it were, a citizen of the country. To be a wife of an Israelite. and in that sense she has been humiliated because she's been cut off from her own people and has been brought into this situation effectively as an Israelite and now you're pushing her out and you can't treat her then as one of those of her own people. She must not be treated in that way. Her life must be respected. It's not to be used, abused and discarded. That's what this paragraph essentially is saying in that broader scope of the application of the Sixth Commandment, the value of life. Here is a person whose life is valuable. It's not a commodity. She's a real human being and her life must be respected. Then Moses goes on to speak of two situations, the relationship of a father to his son and the relationship of a son to his father. That's perhaps a simplification of these two next paragraphs. Here's a man who has two wives, The one is loved and the other is unloved. Well, we have a prime example of that from Israel's own history, don't we? Of Jacob himself. And what we're told is that he can't favor the sons of the wife he loves over above the sons of the wife he does not love. and to treat the ones with favor over the others, but rather that the law and the cultural demands of that time must be applied fairly, regardless of whose son the firstborn is. The right of the firstborn is his. So the principle is that life must be respected. and due regard must be given to the natural rights of unloved or loved alike. In the next paragraph we have the case of a son who is rebellious. against his parents, will not listen to their voice, will not obey their instructions. He's living a reckless life. He's described as being a glutton and a drunkard. He does not honour his father and his mother. And Moses is saying their lives must be respected. They're not to be dishonored. And because of the dishonor of this son, his life is forfeit. So life is valuable. The life of the son is valuable. It's not to be disregarded just because he's the son of an unloved wife. The life of parents is to be respected. It is not to be dishonored and disobeyed. then continuing on in a paragraph that seems totally unconnected though given the fact that the son was put to death for his rebellion and his lack of regard for his parents, it may be that there is a connection here. If a man has committed a crime punishable by death, well here's someone who has, and he's put to death and you hang him on a tree, why would they hang him on a tree? Well the main reason that this would be done would be as an example to others. So they would be hung up in a public place to put fear into others who would perhaps have been tempted to behave in a similar way. And this will confront them with the possible outcome of such behavior and perhaps turn them from going down the same track. Well, if this is done, and he's hung upon a tree, he is not to remain there all night, but he is to be buried the same day. For, we're told, a hanged man is cursed by God. to have him remain there would be to bring the disfavor of God upon the nation. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. Life must be respected, we're saying. It is not to be treated with contempt. The life of an executed criminal is a life lost still, isn't it? It's not something to rejoice over. Even the life of an executed criminal, even one who has been justly condemned to death, that life has been lost. It's been lost in more ways than one. That life of recklessness was a life lost, wasn't it? That brought upon him the justice of God's law and the execution of it. And so, a life lost is a cause for sorrow, not rejoicing, even when it is the just execution of a criminal. It is something to be treated with fear and loathsomeness, not rejoicing. Life must be respected. And then chapter 22 and those first 12 verses of the chapter before Moses changes his focus from the sixth commandment to the seventh commandment in verse 13. Here are a variety of instructions that are given. That all, when we put them together, tell us, once again, that life must be respected. It mustn't be ignored. It mustn't be cheapened. And it mustn't be confused. Let me explain a little more what I mean here. Well, he begins by talking about the loss of a brother's property. An ox, a sheep going astray, he's not to ignore them. not to say to himself, well I'm busy, I'm on this journey, I'm going off to sell my own sheep, I don't have time to go chasing after a stray sheep and secure it and look after it, I'm too busy for that. No, it must be treated with respect. It is the property of a brother and it must be secured and kept safe until he claims it. If he lives near him, if he knows who it is, he must return it. If he doesn't know who it belongs to, he must keep it safe until it is searched for and is restored to him. There's a respecting of the life of this brother in the respecting of his possessions. There's respecting of the life of animals here, too, in verses 6 and 7. Someone comes across a bird's nest in a tree and hears a mother bird sitting on the young or on its eggs. Well, the young and the eggs can be taken for food or perhaps to raise and to use later. But the mother must be left. There are similar commandments elsewhere. The command that a calf and its mother cannot be killed on the same day has a similar overtone of recognizing life and reproduction and ongoing life for years to come. Life must be respected, not cheapened. When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet. There's no intention to kill someone. but you also need to guard against accidental death, not taking enough care to ensure that the roof of your house is secured so that someone won't fall from it, or a well that has been dug isn't properly secured so that someone won't fall into it. or a dangerous animal isn't kept secured so that it doesn't gore someone or another animal. These are principles of treating life with respect, not cheapening it. And then we have these other ones that maybe cause us to scratch our head a little bit more. You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed. You shall not plough with an ox and a donkey. You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together and, if I may, I'll tie verse five in with those and say, and a woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. God made each after its kind. The seeds and the plants that bear them. the animals, each after its kind, and male and female. And these things must not be confused, must not be made indistinct by man. God is not, man is not wiser than God to reconfigure what God has put together and stated is very good. There's a principle here that life, life as God has made it, should be respected and not confused. so all of these all of these paragraphs which we haven't gone into in any depth I agree and you may have questions about some aspects of it but generally speaking these paragraphs are speaking to us of the value of life that life must be respected and that final verse that we haven't touched on yet well it's simply an echo of Numbers chapter 15 and verses 37 to 41 which really gives us the explanation for what this verse means when it says you shall make for yourself tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself. How does that tell us that life must be respected? Well, here's what tassels on the garments meant in Numbers chapter 37, when the Lord spoke through Moses to the first generation of Israelites. Speak to the people of Israel and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a cord of blue on the tassels of each garment. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after. So you shall remember and do all my commandments and be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God. So these tassels on the garment were simply a reminder, a reminder to them that God has given them laws. God has given them instructions that they are to obey. that their lives are not to be lived according to their own wisdom and insight and sense of, oh, this is good and I feel like this would be a nice thing to do. No, God's law is to govern their lives and these are simply a little reminder to them every day when they put on their garment and they see the tassels and the corners of their garment. It reminds them today. I must live my life in the light of God's law. Now there are, as we draw to a conclusion this evening, there are two unavoidable points of connection between this passage and the New Testament. The most obvious one, I suppose, are the last two verses of chapter 21. If a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. Paul writes to the church in Galatia, in Galatians chapter 3 and verse 13, and he says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, and he quotes from this passage, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. So Christ's death on the cross brought upon him the curse of God. It was the curse of God that we deserved. We deserved to die. because of our rebellion against God. We deserve to die because of our failure to keep the law of God perfectly. We deserve to die because we did not, as it were, take note of the tassels. We did not remember the law of God. We did not walk in its light. We lived according to our own choices. We deserved to die. and to bear the curse of God for eternity. But Christ intervened. Christ came into this world to redeem us from the curse of the law. He became a curse for us by giving his own body as a sacrifice to take atonement for our guilt and to reconcile us to God. But there's a second connection between Deuteronomy 21 and 22 and the New Testament. We have that description of a rebellious son who would not heed the words of his parents and who became a glutton and a drunkard. He deserved to die. He was to be stoned by the elders. His life was forfeit through his rebellion. And Jesus told a very similar story, well, of a very similar young man at least. a young man who wanted his father's inheritance and begged it from him until at last he received it and as soon as he received it he went off into a far country where he squandered it in gluttony and drunkenness. He was a young man who according to the law deserved to die. His life was forfeit due to his lack of respect for the life and words of his father. But that's not how that story ends, is it? It doesn't end with stones being thrown to batter a body to death and it being perhaps hung upon a tree and perhaps cast into a grave. But that story ends on a happier note. For that young man comes to his senses. That young man understands the depravity to which his life has sunk and he acknowledges it. and it becomes abhorrent to him the way that he's behaved and the disrespect that he's shown to his father. He's deeply grieved by what he has done and he determines to go back to his father and to acknowledge his fault and to seek his forgiveness and to be a servant in his father's house. And as he approaches The home reciting the words that he would say to his father. His father is already waiting, looking with longing for his son to return. And he runs to meet him in the way and he embraces him. And he clothes him not in the uniform of a servant, but in rich garments. And he puts his own ring upon his finger. And he kills the fatted calf reserved for special guests. And he celebrates the return of his son, who he said once was dead, but now is alive again. And the story conveys to us the mercy of God toward the prodigal son, a rebellious, wayward, disrespectful son. And it teaches us that while we deserve to die, while we deserve the wrath of God and the judgment of God, God is full of mercy. And to those who acknowledge their waywardness and repent of their sin and rebellion, he offers forgiveness and reconciliation. Not just a place as a servant in his house, but he takes us as sons and heirs, joint heirs with Jesus Christ, our Savior. These are rich and wonderful truths to those who recognize how far short they have fallen of the glories of God's law and who are willing to acknowledge them to him, to bow the knee, to confess and take Jesus as their representative, as their substitute, as their saviour, to be cursed in their place that they may be freed. May we take seriously the law of God, for it is the law of God that teaches us our guilt, and it shows us our need, and it points us to Jesus Christ who alone is a saviour of sinners. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that you would cause these truths to sink deeply into our hearts as we meditate upon them. We pray that we would understand the value of life, that we would respect it, That we would not abuse it, dishonor it, disregard it, mistreat it, ignore it, cheapen it, or confuse it, but that we would see it as you see it. Life in your image for your glory. And as we do that, as we consider life to be of such immense value that it shows forth your goodness and greatness and glory, may we repent of our failure to reflect your life. May we turn to you, seeking mercy and find forgiveness. through the Lord Jesus Christ who became a curse for us. We ask that he may be glorified in us and we in him. In his name. Amen.