Deuteronomy 24:5-25:4

Hey, hey, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions this morning. We're at Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse five through Deuteronomy. Yeah. Deuteronomy chapter 25 verse four. So it is a big passage, lots of miscellaneous law. So we're going to do this a little bit differently. It's going to be ABC, but we're going to do it paragraph by paragraph, quick, quick, quick. So I need you to buckle up, get in the roller coaster, right? Cause we're going to go fast today. Let's have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get into God's word. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for this day. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the blessing it is to get to read your word. It's in a language we can understand. It's on pages that we can have in front of us, Lord, and we rejoice for all your goodness. Please help us, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Deuteronomy 24, beginning at verse 5.
If a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business. He shall be free at home one year and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken. All right, so if a man's a newlywed, give him one year before he has to go to war. At least let the guy enjoy time with his wife before he has to go to war.
I remember an elder took the principle behind this, and it was a young guy who was just getting married. The congregation wanted to elect him as a deacon, and he asked them to please wait one year. Let the guy have a year to establish his home, and then they could elect him as a deacon, right? So this is, again, upholding marriage. So verse six. no man shall take the lower or the upper millstone in pledge, for he takes one's living in pledge." You can't take away a man's livelihood even as a pledge, right?
And so this would be, I remember one guy who was I was talking to him, he had taken a welder's helmet, right? And it's one of those like, hmm, I'm not sure I like that idea. Like he let you borrow his helmet so he would pay you back. But what happens if he doesn't pay you back now? He can't weld and it's a cycle of, well, then he can't work. If he can't work, he can't pay you back. And so this just ends the cycle. Don't do that, right? Try to avoid that.
7. If a man is found kidnapping any of his brethren of the children of Israel and mistreats him or sells him, that kidnapper shall die, and you shall put away the evil from among you.
They were not to be man-stealers, kidnappers. Again, going back to our American history, one of the big things, the denomination I'm a part of, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, used to be known as the Covenanters. The Covenanters specifically knew that there were a number of African slaves brought across the ocean and they were kidnapped, either kidnapped by other Africans and then sold into slavery, or they were just outright kidnapped by white people on the western coast of Africa and brought over here. And so the condemnation of a lot of slavery was because of the stealing of people's labor and the stealing of people themselves and kidnapping. So kidnapping is an evil before the Lord.
Verse 8, take heed in an outbreak of leprosy that you carefully observe and do according to all that the priests, the Levites, shall teach you, just as I commanded them, so you shall be careful to do. Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the way when you came out of Egypt. So, be careful about leprosy, be careful about uncleanness, be careful about becoming unclean before the Lord. And he takes them back to Miriam, who was complaining about Moses' leadership and became leprous herself. And so this idea is, again, for the people to be holy or to be clean. Verse 10-13, the next law.
What is this talking about? This is about loving your neighbor, right? If you're going to go, give a loan to your neighbor, you're not allowed to just burst into his home and go take his garment and say, yeah, you don't got a bed to sleep on or you don't have a cloak to sleep with tonight because you still owe me money. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Even if you take it during the day and he doesn't pay you back because he hasn't made enough money that day, give him his cloak back so he's able to sleep at night and he'll bless you for it and your righteousness will be before God. So it's the love of your neighbor in front of your love of money is what I think this is getting at.
Verse 14 through 15. You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether one of your brethren or one of the aliens who is in your land within your gates. Each day you shall give him his wages, and not let the sun go down on it, for he is poor and has set his heart on it. Lest he cry out against you to the Lord, and it be sin to you." You're gonna hire someone to do work? them as soon as possible.
This is one of the things I wrestled with. I felt so bad. There was a guy in town, he's a member of our church, or he attends the church, and I asked him to fix a tire for us, and I forgot the checkbook, and I felt so bad because I kept forgetting the checkbook. I had the money to pay him, and I should have paid him right away.
If you're going to hire someone to do a job for you, Pay them as soon as possible. Don't hold on for as long as possible, especially when these are small businesses and people who need that money. Love your neighbor as yourself. If you did work, you would wanna get paid, so go pay the neighbor who has worked for you.
All right, verse 16. Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers. A person shall be put to death for his own sin. thin, right? So a son has his own accountability and so does his father, right? The point is you're not to go on kind of clan vendettas, right?
One of the saddest things that still even happens today, especially in small communities, is children are judged based on their parents. Parents are judged because their children are doing X, Y, and Z. And sometimes, you know, parents, especially when they have grown kids, parents can't control their grown kids anymore. And children can't control their parents. And so it's one of these things that we're sitting going, why are you judging this child because their parents are drunkard? Or why are you judging this parent when their child, despite all their care and all their love and all their efforts, this child is going their own way? It's one of those difficult areas.
So don't judge people according to their own iniquity. Verse 17 and 18. You shall not perverse justice, do the stranger or the fatherless, nor take a widow's garment as a pledge. But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. Therefore I command you to do this thing." As the redeemed people of Israel, they were to be those people who had been shown mercy, and so they must also show mercy.
They're not to be about bribery. They're not to take a pledge from a widow. No, right? The care for the poor, care for the stranger, care for those who are sojourning. Don't pervert justice. Again, the Lord here is establishing an economy for them as opposed to be upon mercy because he has been merciful to them, especially to the most vulnerable of society. Alright, verses 19 through 22.
When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over the bows again. It shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward. It shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. Therefore, I command you to do this thing." What is this passage about? This passage is about, again, you have a harvest, you got a business.
You don't need to glean it for every single ounce possible, but let the roots of the world come. and glean in the fields. I don't go ahead and have some of the of the excess, right? This is one of the points of if you're running again, you can think about a business that like a restaurant, right? You got extra food. At the end of the day, go ahead and donate what you what you haven't used, right? What's the point in Throwing it away. Send it home with your workers, right?
Don't don't don't be so petty about every single little penny and dime and nickel that you forget that there are people who are hungry. There are people who need things. And so the point is loving people more than prophets. All right. Versus twenty five. Sorry. Chapter twenty five versus one through three.
If there is a dispute between men and they come to court, that the judges may judge them, and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked, then it shall be, if the wicked man deserves to be beaten, that the judge will cause him to lie down and be beaten in his presence according to his guilt, with a certain number of blows. Forty blows he may give. him, and no more, lest he should exceed this and beat him with many blows above these, and your brother be humiliated in your sight."
Again, it's about loving justice and mercy. If somebody does deserve to be, in this case, beaten, right? There's a society that believes in corporal punishment, bodily punishment. You're not allowed to utterly humiliate the guy, right? He's the judgment, it's supposed to happen. Punishment dealt out. The punishment is restricted. The Lord himself restricts it to 39 blows, not 40. You can't just beat the guy to death. No, 39 blows. Don't let him be humiliated more than he has to.
There's a maximum penalty here. But the point is, again, that you're in preserving the integrity of your brother, his good name. This is a ninth commandment type thing, preserving his good name as far as you're able to. And so, again, loving people rather than meting out every ounce of justice. This isn't like Lamech, you know, he's somebody has insulted me, so I killed him. No, none of that type of stuff. All right, the last of these sundry laws.
You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain. So verse 4 of chapter 25, what is this talking about? If an animal's working for you, feed the animal. Paul uses us to talk about ministers in the church, people who are laboring in the church. Don't tread the ox who's, or don't starve the ox who's treading the grain, right? If, if you're supposed to do it for your, for your animal, do it for the people who are working for you and blessing you too.
So what is this whole section? Why did I kind of group all this together? This whole section is about God has been merciful to them. So they're to be merciful to those around them. God has loved, God has cared, God has provided, God has protected. And so they ought to do the same thing.
They were the vulnerable in society. They were the ones who were told to make bricks without straw. They were the ones worked to death. They were the ones their children are being killed. They were not to be those same types of people, but they were to be the people of God walking in the mercy and justice that he had shown them. So what are we called to do?
I think in all of these principles we can do the same thing. All these principles are summed up by loving God and loving our neighbor. Do we love God enough to know he's been gracious and merciful to us? And then do we turn around and show grace and mercy and kindness, gentleness and patience and peace, goodness to others? Do we love them even as Jesus has loved us?
That's what God calls us to do. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that we have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus. But we're not perfect people, and we confess that to you. We love ourselves more frequently than we love others. And we pray that you please help us, Lord, turn us from the ways in which our hearts would want to go. Father, we pray that we would walk in your ways, that we would trust you.
Lord, that we would hold firm to you. Please, Holy Spirit, open our eyes to where we can be more generous, where we can be more loving, where we can be more like Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen. May the Lord bless you. May you walk in the joy and peace of Jesus Christ, and I'll see you next time. Bye.