Deuteronomy 21:1-9
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
[READING - Deuteronomy 21:1-9]
1 “If a slain person is found lying in the open country in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess, and it is not known who has struck him, 2 then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the slain one. 3 “It shall be that the city which is nearest to the slain man, that is, the elders of that city, shall take a heifer of the herd, which has not been worked and which has not pulled in a yoke; 4 and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which has not been plowed or sown, and 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 serve Him and to bless in the name of the Lord; and every dispute and every assault shall be settled by them. 6 “All the elders of that city which is nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley; 7 and they shall answer and say, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it. 8 ‘Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, O Lord, and do not place the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel.’ And the bloodguiltiness shall be forgiven them. 9 “So you shall remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.
[PRAYER]
[CONTEXT] God has said to His people in the Sixth Commandment…
17 ‘You shall not murder.
Deuteronomy 19-21 expound on the idea of not murdering or protecting life.
Deuteronomy 19 spoke about cities of refuge for those guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.
Deuteronomy 19 also talked about moving boundary markers, which amounted to taking or murdering someone’s livelihood in the Promised Land.
Deuteronomy 20 spoke about laws for warfare, i.e., when it was right to take a life in the war coming to the Promised Land and when it wasn’t.
And now we come to Deuteronomy 21, which answered this question for the Israelites, “What do you do when there’s a murder but the murder is unknown?”
[ILLUS] I like to listen to the Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace. He’s a cold case homicide detective who is also a defender of the Christian faith.
He says in his homicide work the hardest murder to solve is the “no-body murder.”
Someone has gone missing.
A suspect is suspected of murdering the missing person.
But there’s no body.
So, how do you prove a murder with no body?
Much easier to solve is the “no-murderer murder.”
A body is found.
Detectives ID the murdered person, talk to witnesses, gather evidence, and identify a suspect.
If the case is strong enough, the suspect is arrested and tried for the crime.
But that’s in our world today.
In ancient Israel, the “no-murderer murder” might be just as difficult to solve as the “no-body murder.”
But the case didn’t just go cold.
The blood still cried out to God for justice.
Bloodguiltiness still remained on the land.
The murder still had to be addressed by God’s people even when the murderer could not be found.
[TS] Let’s get a right understanding of these verses in Deuteronomy 21 before we see how they point us to Jesus…
Exposition
Exposition
First, we see the situation (Deut. 21:1).
First, we see the situation (Deut. 21:1).
1 “If a slain person is found lying in the open country in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess, and it is not known who has struck him,
Some have said that this could be a case of manslaughter rather than murder. After all, what if the person found slain was slain unintentionally rather than intentionally?
Although, the text doesn’t try to determine if the cause of death was intentional or accidental, there are couple of things that stand against this being a case of manslaughter.
One, in Deuteronomy 19, the one guilty of manslaughter is commanded to report to a city of refuge.
This passage seems to assume that no manslayer has reported to a city of refuge and admitted to an accidental slaying.
Because that seems to be the case, this seems more like murder than manslaughter.
Another reason this seems more like murder is that the word “slain” in v. 1 is literally “pierced”, i.e., stabbed.
I guess its possible that a couple of friends were practicing with their knives in an isolated place when one of them accidentally stabbed the other one a couple times, but it doesn’t seem likely.
So I think the text has in mind a case of unsolved murder rather than unsolved manslaughter.
But v. 1 also tells us why this case of unsolved murder is so significant.
One, it’s a slain person, a person created in the image of God.
The life of a creature is in its blood and the most precious of all creatures is the human being made in the image of God.
A murder is a murder of an image bearer. It’s a direct assault on the glory of God.
Two, this person was slain in the Promised Land.
The Promised Land was sacred land, and murder polluted that sacred land. In Numbers 35:34, God said…
34 ‘You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the Lord am dwelling in the midst of the sons of Israel.’ ”
Because holy God dwelt in the holy land with his holy people, this unsolved murder could not simply go unaddressed.
[TS] But what should be done about when it is not known who has struck him?
We see the answer to that question in the response.
{Second, we see the response.}
{Second, we see the response.}
The response involved the determination of proximity (Deut. 21:2).
The response involved the determination of proximity (Deut. 21:2).
2 then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the slain one.
Earlier in Deuteronomy 16, the Israelites were commanded to appoint for themselves judges and officers.
In this case those judges would determine along with the elders of the surrounding villages which village was closest to the where the slain person was found.
The response then involved the elders of the nearest city killing a heifer (Deut. 21:3-4).
The response then involved the elders of the nearest city killing a heifer (Deut. 21:3-4).
3 “It shall be that the city which is nearest to the slain man, that is, the elders of that city, shall take a heifer of the herd, which has not been worked and which has not pulled in a yoke; 4 and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which has not been plowed or sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley.
The elders of the nearest village were responsible for responding to the no-murderer murder.
They were to take a heifer that had never been worked to a valley with running water that had never been worked and break the heifer’s neck in the valley.
The heifer and the valley were set apart for this purpose because they had never been worked, i.e., they were in a sense untouched by sinful man.
The price for sin is always death, but was this death a sacrifice?
Some view the breaking of the animals neck as an atoning sacrifice; they think the death of the animal paid the price for the murder that was as yet unsolved.
Some, however, don’t think this was a sacrifice.
They point out that its the village elders who break the heifers neck and not the priests.
Also, the word used for killing the heifer is not the usual word for making a sacrifice.
Furthermore, the heifer’s neck was broken in an uncultivated valley with running water rather than at the Temple on the altar.
And the breaking of the neck is not a sacrificial method.
And in addition to all this, Numbers 35:34 says…
33 ‘So you shall not pollute the land in which you are; for blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it.
Under the law, there was no atoning sacrifice for murder.
[TS] But if this killing of the heifer wasn’t a sacrifice of atonement, then what was it?
I think we see the answer in the next part of the response.
The response then involved the elders of the nearest village declaring their innocence and asking God for forgiveness (Deut. 21:5-8).
The response then involved the elders of the nearest village declaring their innocence and asking God for forgiveness (Deut. 21:5-8).
5 “Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the Lord your God has chosen them to serve Him and to bless in the name of the Lord; and every dispute and every assault shall be settled by them. 6 “All the elders of that city which is nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley; 7 and they shall answer and say, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it. 8 ‘Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, O Lord, and do not place the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel.’ And the bloodguiltiness shall be forgiven them.
We’ve seen the elders and judges, and now we see the priests, the sons of Levi. Some say the Levites are just there but have no purpose, but I think they step forward to make sure that the symbolic ritual is performed accurately.
These are God’s chosen servants, the ones authorized to bless in His name.
Every dispute and assault is settled by them.
They will decide if this ritual is performed in the right spirit.
The elders of the village nearest the slain body lay hands over the heifer and declared their innocence, “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it,” (v. 7).
Typically, the Israelites laid their hands on their sacrifices and admitted their sin-guilt, but here its different.
The elders laid their hands over the slain animal and declared their innocence.
In this statement, they were saying that not only had they not committed the murder, they knew nothing about it.
Then the elders asked for forgiveness. We see that in v. 8, but notice that the plea for forgiveness is based on God’s saving grace in the past: “Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, O Lord, and do not place the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel,” (v. 8a).
God had graciously saved Israel when He redeemed them out of Egypt.
He would be gracious to redeem them from this bloodguiltiness that had polluted the Promised Land.
They could depend on the gracious forgiveness of God.
“The bloodguiltiness shall be forgiven them,” (v. 8b).
[TS] The whole ritual was the admission of sin in the holy land and the request for forgiveness from holy God.
After the situation in v. 1 and the response in vv. 2-8, we see the summary in v. 9.
After the situation in v. 1 and the response in vv. 2-8, we see the summary in v. 9.
9 “So you shall remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.
[TS] …
Illustration
Illustration
This morning in Sunday School we talked about Cain and Abel and humanity’s first murder.
Cain murdered Abel because he was jealous of Abel’s acceptance before God, so when they were off in an isolated field, Cain rose up and struck his brother down.
I imagine that Cain thought he got away with it, but there was a witness to the crime. In Genesis 4:9, God asks Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”
God is like a detective that already knows the truth; He knows He has his man; He’s just giving Him the opportunity to confess.
Cain refuses to confess, but God says, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground,” (Gen. 4:10).
Cain is caught. God saw the whole thing. Justice will be served.
The unsolved murder of Deuteronomy 21:1 is not unsolved from God’s perspective.
As the Lord of hosts, He hears the cries of every helpless victim. The blood of the murdered cries to Him from the ground and justice will certainly be served either in this life or the next.
[TS] Until then what do we do with so many unsolved murders in our land?
Application
Application
We should think about our responsibility as the people of God in this land.
We should think about our responsibility as the people of God in this land.
Like the elders who declared the innocence but still asked God forgiveness, we should go to God in prayer, saying, “We are not guilty of the murder but based upon the sacrifice of your Son Jesus we pray that you would forgive our land of this bloodguiltiness.”
We should look forward to the ultimate Promised Land in which no more slain bodies will be discovered.
We should look forward to the ultimate Promised Land in which no more slain bodies will be discovered.
This morning to close the service we sang What A Day That Will Be, which says…
There is coming a day when no heartaches shall come-
No more clouds in the sky, no more tears to dim the eye.
All is peace forevermore on that happy golden shore.
There’ll be no sorrow there, no more burdens to bear,
No more sickness, no pain, no more parting over there.
And forever I will be with the One who died for me.
What a day, glorious day, that will be.
That hymn surely has in mind Revelation 21:1-4, which says…
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, 4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
One day we will live in that eternal Promised Land with our Lord Jesus where no trace of sin, suffering, and death will be spotted.
All will be peace forevermore.
We should thank God that there is atonement for murderers in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
We should thank God that there is atonement for murderers in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
I mentioned Numbers 35:33 earlier, which says…
33 ‘So you shall not pollute the land in which you are; for blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it.
As I said, under the law, there was no atonement for the one who committed murder, but in Christ Jesus there is.
[ILLUS] Paul is one who took an active role in the persecution of Christians even to the point of having them executed.
This was murder and under the law there was no forgiveness for one like Paul.
But in Christ, there was forgiveness. There was atonement for Paul’s sin of murder.
Such is the great grace of God that even the murderer can find forgiveness if He repent and call on the Lord Jesus for salvation.
[TS] …
Conclusion
Conclusion
[PRAYER]
