The Grace of Life
Deuteronomy: Changing Times and Our Unchanging God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 42:57
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A Respect for Human Beings
A Respect for Human Beings
Our passage this morning is a short passage: Deuteronomy 21:10-14.
“When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive,
and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife,
and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails.
And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.
This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray.
We have before us a short but difficult passage. In fact, most commentators disagree as to what this law actually means. Having read through various sources and the conclusions they reached, I believe there are two ways of reading this. First, you can read it in light of a distrust of God and the Jewish people, casting them into adultery, or Secondly, you can read it in light of a holy and just God who establishes this law in order to uphold the dignity of life and the sanctity of marriage. I believe the second option is more consistent with the rest of scripture and is the better reading of the two, but I did want to make the various interpretations known to you as we move along.
So let’s briefly walk through this together beginning with verse 10.
“When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive,
The first verse, is tying us back to the concept presented in chapter 20 regarding war that is waged by Israel against the surrounding nations. Remember, women were allowed to be taken as part of the plunder, and all the fighting males were to be put to the sword. That would leave a lot of women without a provider, without a protector, with no means to purchase a house or land in their society. Killing the husband not only meant the end of a romantic relationship, but an end to one’s own livelihood. Often, women who lived in conquered cities were taken into captivity to be sold into slavery or lived as prostitutes to make ends meet. War, an evil that is caused because of man’s sin, creates victims which are often stripped of their personhood and leads to further violations of God’s law. This is a problem which the Lord sees and does not want to remain unaddressed. He wants to maintain the dignity of life and the sanctity of marriage, and so he institutes a ritual.
Whereas most cultures build up a system of hate toward their enemies, often casting webs of propaganda or hate, building up their enemies to the point where they are less than human and because of that it is much easier to subject others to sinful passions and murderous intent …Israel was to be markedly different in their treatment of their enemies as expressed in how they treat women who were taken captive.
and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife,
and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails.
And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
Why, in verse 12, would God instruct the woman to shave her head and to pare her nails?
You could read this and tie the shaving of the head back to one of the purification rituals God established for the Israelites, symbolizing the putting off of the former life and taking on of the new. You could also read this in light of mourning, that this was a common practice of those who mourned. While both of those interpretations can work and have valuable insights, I believe the Lord is instituting something uniquely different here. And I think that because of the context of what’s going on.
Imagine, if you will, a young man who is out at war, who just fought off his enemies and has killed them, and who has rushed in to plunder the city to seize what valuables there are and to find the most beautiful woman there to call his wife. One might think that in the heat of the moment, the young man could be lead by the passions of lust and the desires of the heart, leading to sexual immorality and violation of that woman against her wishes, as it has for many conquering cultures around the world. Yet, Israel was to be a holy nation, the light of God set on display to the surrounding nations to show God’s glory to mankind. Rather than immediately ravishing oneself in lustful desire, the man was to be tempered according to the law of the Lord, bringing the woman home, giving her time to mourn, making sure his marriage is built to last and is not based solely on physical attraction. In fact, some of the women would arraign themselves in beautiful garments so that they might be taken to be wives. If you think about the rights and privileges women had in this period of time, you would know that it’s much better off for them to have husbands and someone to protect and provide for them, especially if the pool of selection had just become drastically narrowed. I believe that’s what verse 13 is referring to when it says “she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured”.
The Israelite male was to not base his marriage and the consummation of his marriage solely upon physical attraction, through fancy clothes or beautiful and elegant hair or long nails.
Physical attraction is not the sole basis for marriage.
Physical attraction is not the sole basis for marriage.
Note, God does not diminish physical attraction, but has instilled it within man. Yet this attraction is to be tempered according to his holy law and is checked so that it is not a wanton lust. Some commentators have suggested here that the act of shaving her head and paring her nails is an act which removes the outward beauty of an individual. In doing this, the Israelite man would be tempered to see the woman as more than just a token of victory to be used as spoil, but to appreciate her for her humanity.
Too often our world judges solely by looks and not by the image of God innate within each human being. While the Lord does gift some with physical attractiveness, the greater care and concern of his is the character of the heart. Remember the instruction given to the women of the church by Peter?
Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—
but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.
The women of the church are called to seek the beauty of the heart, which is wondrous in the eyes of God. All of these verses point toward a building of character.
Husbands, too, were to remember the dignity which women possess and not merely look at the outward adorning of a woman:
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
The key here for men to remember when addressing women, is first and foremost who God made them to be: co-heirs of the grace of life, image-bearers who share in the divine gift of how God made us.
And yet, what threatens the nature by which man is made? Is it not sin, selfishness, vanity, lust, and the like? Behold, God pronounced the curse of sin to Adam and Eve. To Eve he said, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, and he shall rule over you.” One of the results of sin entering the world is a disruption in how men and women treat each other. Men domineering over women, often through physical violence and aggression, and women living contrary to the headship and leadership of the man.
In the absence of a fear of God and the respect for human life comes conflict between man and woman, husband and wife.
In the absence of a fear of God and the respect for human life also comes those who are quick to judge by what they see on the outside, not on what lies in the heart.
It is no little wonder why so many marriages in our day and age are failing, and that the definition of marriage itself is increasingly unraveled. The world looks at the young, the beautiful, with a vivacity and promise. But as soon as someone has lost their sheen, has been worn by the decades or disfigured because of life’s troubles, they become outcasts to be tossed aside in search for someone more desirable, with the strength and beauty of youth. They forget the value of human beings, as those who have a strength and a beauty innate to how the Lord has created them to be. Losing sight of this gives grounds for mistreatment, dehumanization, humiliation.
But not so with the Lord. Christ’s call for the church and for husbands and wives was to be of one mind, to not let sin drive a wedge to make a husband’s or wife’s desires contrary to the other, but to live together of one accord, sharing the same purpose and mission. That includes remembering the value of a human life in the eyes of God: an image-bearer, dearly loved, wonderfully crafted, whom God has given the gift of life to. From the beginning, God has valued the life of both the man and the woman. He has created them male and female, different in their roles yet equal in standing, called to the same mission. And he loves each person more than you will ever know. Such is the intrinsic nature of who a human being is in the sight of God.
All of this is to say, that in our passage when the Lord instructs an Israelite male who takes a female captive home whom he has found attractive, and she is then required to shave her head and pare her nails, the man was to not become distracted by the outer beauty, which the world judges upon alone, but by the inner beauty of the spirit, which the Lord has instilled within each and every person.
The humanity is further expressed through the opportunity given to the woman to grieve her father and mother.
And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
I can hardly imagine what it must be like to be in the shoes of a woman in this estate. Whereas most women who were taken captive had no time to process grief or their emotions before being seized by the man and made into a wife, the women who were taken to be wives by the Israelites were treated with much more dignity and respect. They were given time to grieve, to process their emotions, to come to terms with their new home, all while being cared for by the man of the house. It is only after the time of mourning that the woman would then (ideally) be ready to become a wife in her new home.
It is also during this time that the man has an opportunity to see if the whole marriage thing is going to work out or not.
Look at verse 14:
But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.
So there’s an option, right? The man has rightly won her as a spoil of war. He saw her beautiful and has taken her home. And he has put her through a process where she has lost the outward adornment of her beauty and has humbled herself. Through this process, he could still find her beautiful, through physical attraction and in character, and opt to take her as his wife. Or he could let her go before settling into a marriage which would be unfit for either of those involved. The manner in which he was to let her go was to not be of one that profited from the process, but that honored the woman and her life.
The Hebrew word in verse 14 for “let her go where she wants” is the word nephesh, which is most often translated to mean life, spirit, or wind. The idea here is that just like the wind blows where it wills, she is to go free. I also do not think it inconsequential that this law is given under the broader context of the sixth commandment of you shall not murder, and that this law may have been given to preserve the sanctity of life. The Lord does not want to rob a woman of her purity, life and freedom merely upon the controlling nature of a conqueror.
Even within the bounds of this law, I believe the intent is that the two of them would end up together at the end of the process. The man himself should be unwilling to humiliate a woman in such a manner. And it would be difficult for that woman moving forward. Think of how much hair would return within a month’s time. About half an inch. Here’s a woman, now rejected by the man, released back into society with a half-inch head of hair and the beauty of her nails shorn. He has indeed humiliated her by taking a way her beauty and seeing her as undesirable. It is only right and fair that he does not benefit further. He forfeits the treasure which he took. But if he took the time to appreciate the woman, they should wind up together in marriage.
And that’s this passage. Looking at it, what principle should we pick up on that we are to apply to our lives?
I believe that the main premise in this section is that we ought never to diminish God’s grace of life.
Do not diminish God’s grace of life.
Do not diminish God’s grace of life.
We touched on this principle briefly within the context of marriage, as seeing the other person as an heir of the grace of life. But this principle is one that can be applied even broader to how we view others in society. There are plenty of people out there who have humiliated themselves because of sin, and have put themselves in positions where they can easily be taken advantage of by those whose passions are not tempered according to the law of the Lord.
It would be easy to slip online to view pornographic material to satisfy your fleshly passions and to disconnect yourself from the individual whom you were watching because you are not valuing the dignity of their life. True, they are not respecting their own dignity either, but they are not walking with the Lord and have been ravished by the way of this world. Do you, as a Christian, value their personhood, as a human being meant to bear the image of God, enough not to take advantage of them while they are at their worst?
I think of Noah and his sons, after the ark was settled. Noah had a little too much wine, so he slipped back into his tent exposed. One of his sons, Ham, walked into the tent, saw the nakedness of his father, and turns around to tell his other brothers about it. What a hoot! What a laugh! The dignity of Noah uncovered, left to shame and mockery. The other two brothers, knowing better, took a garment in their hands and walked backwards into the tent to cover up their father’s shame. They did not take advantage of Noah when he was at his worst.
And we have the clear depiction of the two sides of the sword here: Ham, who did not respect the dignity of and grace of life which the Lord had instilled in his father, but took to mockery, and Shem and Japheth, who valued the grace of their father and did not expose him. It’s because of this that Ham’s son, Canaan, was cursed while the other sons were blessed.
Do not diminish God’s grace of life by looking at the exposed nakedness and giving yourself over to passions. Rather, temper your spirit according to the law of the Lord, that you might learn the right process through which you can walk with him.
There’s also a sense in which our passage today could be read spiritually.
I believe this passage is a clear expression of God and the church.
Just as a man goes out to war, defeating his enemies and taking home a prospective bride, waiting to see whether or not he shall be with her and giving her time to prepare herself, so does the Lord do for us.
We are the bride who has been taken out of the world. Through the process which we call sanctification, we shave our heads, pare our nails, and put off the garments of our captivity. We put our old nature to death so that we might embrace a new life in the house of the Lord.
Just as some women were invited into the house of the man only to be cast out, so many are invited into the house of the Lord, yet not all belong to him and enter into covenant relationship.
There are those who will come to this church and sit in the pews who will never belong to God. Sure, they shave their heads and pare their nails so that they can look like everyone else. But at the end of the day, God has not chosen them to be part of his bride, the church. Christ knows the heart. He does not decide based on outward appearance, but based on what is in the heart. And if what he sees is not pleasurable to Him, he casts them out. He allows them to walk away from him freely, to reap the end to which they sow of their own accord.
Now, we as humans have a hard time looking at what’s in a person’s heart, do we not? It’s not for us to decide who is in God’s kingdom and who isn’t. There is a clear indication of the sense of those who are, that everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and confesses that he is Lord shall be saved. Belief is often expressed through action, such as the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and seen in the subsequent fruits of the Spirit. But ultimately we do not decide who is to remain in the household of God and who isn’t. Rather, we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. We are to spiritually shave our heads, pare our nails, set off the garments of our captivity, and to ready ourselves for unification with the Lord.
This reminds me of the words in the book of Revelation, which read,
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”
The bride of Christ is granted time to make herself ready, to clothe herself not with garments from captivity, but with her righteous deeds which are not diminished in the eyes of God.
How are you doing in that?
Do you seek to clothe yourself with righteousness? Are your actions tempered according to the Lord’s way?
The call for the life of the Christian is to put off the old and to put on the new. We put to death our passions which lead us to violate God’s commandments, and are given the Spirit who calls us to walk rightly according to the Lord’s ways. We can either listen to the Spirit, or we can push him aside and diminish him. We either fan to flame the gift of God or we quench it by covering it up.
For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands,
Just as Timothy was given the Spirit of God, so you too have God’s spirit within you. I would encourage you, when working out your salvation with fear and trembling, to be led by the Spirit of God that you might be clothed with righteousness before him and not be seen undesirable and cast out from his kingdom.
To be led by the Spirit and by Christ is life. Do not diminish the grace of the newness of life that the Lord has given to you.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
When we think about the gift of life God has given, we think of it not only in the context of honoring those whom he has made to be image-bearers on this earth and the value which is instilled in all of humanity, but we think of life in a much broader sense of human flourishing spiritually. God wants us to live unhindered, pure, doing good around us, sharing in the conquest over sin and death through the name of Christ and the power of his Spirit.