Deuteronomy 24:17–26:19 - Remember & Be Content
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Tonight we are looking at a section of Deuteronomy that discusses various ways that God’s people might break the tenth commandment.
The tenth commandment says in Deuteronomy 5:21…
21 ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field or his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.’
As we’ll see, there were many ways to break this commandment—there were many ways to covet.
We start with Deuteronomy 24:17 and a section that deals with how the people in ancient Israel might have coveted what belonged to their most needy neighbors…
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
{24:17-18}
{24:17-18}
17 “You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan, nor take a widow’s garment in pledge. 18 “But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing.
[EXP] The alien, the orphan, and the widow were in large measure defenseless in the ancient world.
The alien because he had no family in the land in which he lived.
The orphan because he had no family to depend on.
The widow because she was without husbands or sons to call on in a male dominated society.
It would’ve been very easy to take advantage of these disadvantaged people, but God’s people were forbidden from doing so.
Instead of taking advantage of the disadvantaged, God’s people were to be compassionate.
One example of that compassion was not taking a widow’s garment in pledge for a loan.
The widow was borrowing because she was needy. The lender wasn’t to make her neediness worse by coveting her garment and keeping it until she repaid the loan.
The poor widow used that cloak for warmth as she slept.
Israel could be compassionate and let her keep it even if she borrowed money.
The motivation for Israel’s compassion is found in Israel’s history in Egypt.
Egypt coveted the labor of the Hebrew people. Egypt’s covetousness led to the abuse of the Hebrew people. The specific form of which was enslavement.
In the same way, covetousness in Israelite society may lead to the abuse of the needy—the sojourner, the orphan, and the widow.
Israel wasn’t to do such a thing because of what they experienced in Egypt.
They had been in the position of need.
Therefore they were to protect the needy rather than prey upon them by coveting what little they had.
{24:19-22}
{24:19-22}
19 “When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. 20 “When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. 21 “When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not go over it again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. 22 “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing.
[EXP] As with vv. 17-18, the idea in these verses is caring for the poor and needy. Farmers could reap their crops of grain, olives, and grapes once but they could not go over the crops a second because whatever was not gathered the first time was to be left for the poor. To go over the crop a second time would be to covet what was meant for the poor.
Rather than coveting, Israelite society was to be generous, sharing in the blessing of the Promised Land with whoever had need.
[ILLUS] Last year we started a Christmas tradition in our family. We read Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol together, and then we watch a different version of A Christmas Carol every night the week leading up to Christmas .
One thing comes through in every version: Ebenezer Scrooge is a very wealthy but very stingy man.
Some guys stop by his office looking to collect money for the poor and needy, but Scrooge is very stingy and refuses to give.
His employee, poor Bob Cratchett, wants to put another lump of coal in the over to warm the office of up, but Scrooge says no because coal costs money and Scrooge, who is very stingy, doesn’t want to part with even a small amount of his money.
When poor Cratchett has the audacity to ask for Christmas day off, well, Scrooge is very stingy indeed not wanting to give Cratchett the day off. He surely didn’t want to pay Cratchett for Christmas day if he was going to be off, no matter how much Cratchett and his family needed the money.
I have said that Scrooge is stingy but God’s law would call him covetous.
Scrooge wasn’t coveting what didn’t belong to him. He was coveting what God had given to him for the purpose of helping the poor.
[APP] As one writer put it in his commentary on this passage…
A Study Commentary on Deuteronomy Application
Often when we think of coveting we have in mind a person who has nothing, and who craves to possess something that belongs to another. The present text in Deuteronomy gives a different twist to the matter of coveting. Here are people who have a lot (farmers in the land) and they are commanded not to be selfish in what has been given to them. They have plenty and they are not to be miserly with it: they are to share what they have with the downtrodden.
[TS] …
(25:1-3)
(25:1-3)
1 “If there is a dispute between men and they go to court, and the judges decide their case, and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked, 2 then it shall be if the wicked man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall then make him lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of stripes according to his guilt. 3 “He may beat him forty times but no more, so that he does not beat him with many more stripes than these and your brother is not degraded in your eyes.
[EXP] Two men go to trial. One is declared guilty or wicked, worthy of a beating. In this case, the beating looks like a lashing, but there is a strict limit set on the number of lashes he could receive. The guilty party could receive 40 and no more.
Anything more than this would degrade the guilty party, and even the dignity of the guilty had to be protected.
One who desired to beat the guilty more than this wasn’t desiring justice but coveting vengeance, which belongs to the Lord.
[ILLUS] When I was a little boy I had an uncle that threw some fireworks near my foot. The sound scared me more than anything, but when I finished crying my uncle said, “Do you want to throw some fireworks at me?” I said no. Then he knelt down and said, “Ok. I tell you what, you can get even by slapping me in the face.”
I looked at my mom and dad, and they nodded giving me the go ahead.
So, I slapped my uncle across the face and then backhanded him across the face in the other direction.
You see, I didn’t want justice.
I coveted vengeance.
[EXP] To prevent themselves from doing this sort of thing with the punishment of lashes, they made up a rule that stopped the number of lashes at 39.
Thus, the Apostle Paul would say, “Five times I have received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes,” (2 Cor. 11:24).
(25:4)
(25:4)
4 “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.
[EXP] Threshing separates grain from its stalks. One way to do that in the ancient world was to have an animal—in this case an ox—pull a sledge over the stalks or just trample the stalks on the threshing floor.
As the ox did so, it was to be allowed to eat of the grain.
This made practical sense because the grain would give energy to the ox as he threshed out the grain.
The Israelite farmer could covet the grain eaten by the ox and so muzzle ox’s mouth while he was threshing.
But if the Israelite farmer did that, not only would his covetousness be hurting the ox. His covetousness would be hurting himself in the long run as well.
[ILLUS] A friend of mine once help another friend of mine move from around Hattiesburg, Mississippi to New Orleans, Louisiana. There wasn’t a lot of furniture to move, but even so the job took more than half the day.
The friend who helped was getting hungry and asked, “Do you think we could get something to eat?”
The friend being helped said something like, “We can but I’m not paying for it.”
The friend who helped said, “You mean to tell me that I’ve helped you move stuff from one state to the next today and you won’t buy me a hamburger?”
The friend being helped said, “Nope.”
[APP] Paul talked to the Corinthian church who was tempted to do something similar with him as their minister. In 1 Corinthians 9:9-11, he draws on this verse in Deuteronomy saying…
9 For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.” God is not concerned about oxen, is He? 10 Or is He speaking altogether for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written, because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops. 11 If we sowed spiritual things in you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?
He goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 9:13-14…
13 Do you not know that those who perform sacred services eat the food of the temple, and those who attend regularly to the altar have their share from the altar? 14 So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel.
Sometimes its the covetousness of a people like those in Corinth than prevents a proclaimer of the gospel from getting his living from the gospel.
Because they covet, they muzzle the ox while he is threshing.
[TS]…
(25:5-10)
(25:5-10)
5 “When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. 6 “It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel. 7 “But if the man does not desire to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.’ 8 “Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak to him. And if he persists and says, ‘I do not desire to take her,’ 9 then his brother’s wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face; and she shall declare, ‘Thus it is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.’ 10 “In Israel his name shall be called, ‘The house of him whose sandal is removed.’
[EXP] In these verses an Israelite wife loses her husband. According to the law of levirate marriage, which is given in vv. 5-6, the widowed woman is to then marry her brother-in-law rather than be given to a stranger.
This would protect the deceased brother’s property and ensure that the wife he left behind still got the use of it.
This would also ensure that the widowed woman—who had left her family to be joined to her husband’s family—would not be left alone in the world without anyone to fall back on.
All of this is wrapped up in levirate marriage, which ensured that the deceased brother’s name was not blotted out from Israel.
But perhaps the brother of the deceased man didn’t want to take his sister-in-law as his wife; what then?
Well, the problem would be brought to the elders of the city who would speak to the man.
Presumably they would try to convince him to fulfill his responsibility.
If the man still refused, then the widowed woman would come to him in the sight of the elders and do three things:
She would pull his sandal off his foot, which was a great insult in the ancient world.
She would spit in his face.
And she would declare, “Thus it is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.”
The man’s house would then be known in Israel as, “The house of him whose sandal is removed.”
This was a public shaming that could have been avoided if the living brother had not been covetous.
Just as the farmers were covetous if they didn’t leave anything for the poor, this man was covetous because he did not leave himself for his brother’s widow.
[TS]…
Conclusion
Conclusion
When we think about all the ways to covet, we quickly see that we are all guilty of breaking the tenth commandment— “Do not covet.”
We not only break this command by coveting what doesn’t belong to us, we also break this command by coveting what God would give through us to the disadvantaged, the poor and needy.
This is a problem because no covetous person will enter the Kingdom of Christ.
10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
5 For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
Ephesians 5:5 is an important verse on covetousness because it identifies the cause of covetousness as idolatry.
Those who covet material things do so because they have made idols of those material things.
Those who covet vengeance do so because they have made an idol of not only getting even but also getting over on others.
The man who refused to take his brother’s widow as his wife to continue his brother’s name made, I think, an idol out of his freedom or independence.
In any event, to be covetous is to engage in idolatry.
Therefore, coveting not only breaks the tenth commandment but also the first—“You shall have no other gods before me.”
The only way we will be broken of covetousness or idolatry is through faith in Jesus Christ.
If you read the laws in Deuteronomy, gain some new insight on how we might covet, and then commit to not coveting in those ways so that you will be right with God, well that’s not going to happen.
You see, you have not ever and will not you ever perfectly obey any of God’s commands.
In fact, Paul says that, although the law is holy, righteous, and good, sin in us stirs up the desire to disobey the law when we hear it. He says it like this…
7 What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead.
So, if sin uses the law to stir up our disobedience to God, what are we to do? This is what Paul gets to in Romans 7:24-25…
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.
It is only through Jesus that we can be saved from our sin against God.
It is only through Jesus that we can be saved from all our covetousness and idolatry.
Jesus took all our covetousness and idolatry upon Himself on the cross and paid the price for it in full by way of His death and resurrection.
If we have trusted in Him as Savior and surrendered to Him as Lord, we have the power to resist all temptation to covet.
And we fail and find ourselves coveting once again, the promise of 1 John 1:9 is…
9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
There are many ways to covet.
But Jesus delivers us from them all.