Deuteronomy is full of “case” laws that God gave to Israel. These were temporary laws that he wanted to be establilshed and carried out as Israel grew as a new nation.
Last week we discussed a case law that explained what to do if a son of Israel was found to be hopeless, and thought to be incorrigible enough that he would never change. If it was formally agreed that he would remain a threat to the whole community; the son was to be brought to trial. If this son of Israel was pronounced guilty after all the laws were properly administered to allow him every opportunity to change; then capital punishment was to be administered.
One might have read this passage and thought about the fact that these words mentioned sounded very similar in nature to those one would recall when pondering judgement day. One day we all will be judged; but those who have the blood of Jesus covering their sins and blotting them out of The Book of Life will be given grace.
There are, however, some people who are beyond reach. I speak of the hopeless ones who will never confess their sins or repent. These same people cannot manage to believe that Jesus is The Messiah. They do not even care to know about the fact that there is a God who loves them.
When judgement comes; these people will be thrown into the fiery furnace that burns forever.
It would not be fair or just for a loving God to allow the incorrigible wicked into eternity.
This is a very hard fact to digest and accept; but there is no other way to obtain true righteousness and justice in the end if exceptions are made and wickedness is given eternal life.
No matter how harsh the words sound, that simply can’t be done.
Those who have found peace with God feel so bad for the people who are still trapped within their own selfishness so deeply that they cannot open their eyes enough to see God and reach out for His help. Many of us pray daily that these people will be inspired somehow by God to change and turn around. This is always our hope, especially for those that we love and hold dear.
God too, is forever waiting and hoping for this to happen with all of mankind; but He has given us free-will and He lets us make the final decisions as to our own destiny. Therefore; justice for every living soul lies deep within their own reach.
The wicked and unchangeable sons of Israel which we have previously studied, who were spoken of in this Deuteronomy “case-law” example passage, can also be seen as a perfectly symbolic picture of all of the eternally doomed of mankind.
These sons made their own decisions and they had to live with the final punishments their decisions brought about. Today we will look at a type of punishment that they might have experienced. Most often the punishment was by stoning, but sometimes capital punishment was in the form of hanging from a tree until dead.
God gave Moses the instructions that in such cases; the bodies of these criminals were not to remain all night upon the tree; but He instructed that they should be buried on the same day that the death takes place.
The actual words of this scripture follows:
Deuteronomy 21: 22-23
If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.
Here again we see “case” law at work.
The whole purpose of hanging a punished man upon a tree was to show the community what would happen to them if they committed such crimes too. The people would most likely have accepted this law about taking a body down from a tree at the end of the day of their execution without too much difficulty. In those days there was much emphasis placed on the fact that in order to honor God and to keep His ways, you must not desecrate the land and/or the world which God had created with death.
Any form of death was considered a desecration. Death could not remain in open, public places. It could not be left to contaminate healthy life. It was forbidden for people to touch a dead body. If they did; the person who had touched death was considered unclean for a certain period of time, and they had to take certain precautions to cleanse themselves from the death which they had encountered.
To leave death hanging on a tree any longer than necessary would desecrate the land and keep it from being sanctified and holy.
This type of contamination or desecration would interfere with the production of crops and the growing of things which were good for life.
Our culture today does not often consider such things to be relevant.
We live in a culture surrounded by death and the thoughts and causes of death all the time. Most communities today are surrounded by things that prevent sanctification and holiness, which are always needed to bring new life after death has occurred. There is; for the most part, not even the knowledge of anything different being taught. Horrible practices are now common place and totally accepted even by those who claim to be a part of God’s elect.
This is especially true when you consider how the act of abortion is overlooked and promoted in the land. That isn’t the only factor though. It is probably the worst in measure but; there is also a whole huge vast portion of the current culture that promotes sexual sins, immorality and other abominations such as idolatry and wickedness against God, including many common pagan practices that are popular within the culture and the community; even within the part of society that claims godliness.
All of this is totally opposite to God’s laws which promote life, renewal and restoration.
That is why, even back in the ancient times, it was said that dead bodies hanging on trees were cursed. Everyone seemed to know that the process of contamination would begin after too many hours of something within the land being openly exposed to death. Think of how infection begins small and then grows and grows until it is multiplied into a sickness or infection that eventually causes death.
We know that the ancient Roman government loved using execution by crucifixion as a punishment. They realized that seeing these crucifixions in pubic put fear into the people’s hearts and that they would be too afraid to break the laws if they realized the consequences were so horrid.
Remember the story of Pilate in the crucifixion of Jesus?
You may recall how he washed his hands and did not want to be involved in convicting an innocent man?
This would have compared to the ancient people washing their hands before the ritual where they broke the neck of a heifer in the valley in a place of a running stream because of the fact that a mysterious, unsolved murder had been committed in their community. This was the process they followed when they wanted to rid the land of the contamination of death. (This too was covered in an earlier discussion of one of the first sections of the scriptures we found in Deuteronomy Chapter 21 in a previous lesson.) This ritual for the sins of the whole community being atoned was actually the first steps toward the use of the ashes of the red heifer later in the times of the days of the Temple. All sins must be cleansed from the land for a nation to grow and flourish and prosper.
It was noted in that discussion that the people of Israel could not solve this particular problem of the responsibility of the blood-guilt of the community by producing the murderer; so they performed a ritual that was symbolic in nature and used that ritual to accomplish the purification of the land. It was thought if they had not done so; the whole community would have suffered from failed crops, and/or disease in the land because of the lack of justice for atonement of sins.
During the trial of Jesus, Pilot basically did the same thing that one from Israel was required to do when they did not know who was guilty of a crime. He did the ritual of the washing of the hands. That was how he started out in this hasty trial; but later Pilot became even weaker in his judgements.
Because he feared the pressure of the people in the crowd; Pilot caved in and allowed Jesus to be executed, though he knew that Jesus was not guilty. In the end Pilot’s decision was more political in nature, favoring those whom he thought would favor him at a later date and time. He was more concerned for the state and public reputation of his own office than he was for the lives of the prisoners he was given charge over.
Now, it was time for the preparations for the High Sabbath of The Passover Week.
The Days of Unleavened Bread would soon begin.
The people were thinking of Deuteronomy 21:22-23 when they asked the Roman soldier to break the legs of the crucified criminals so that their bodies could be taken away and buried. When they came to the body of Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, so his legs did not need to be broken and they allowed him to be taken down from the cross and taken away for burial.
Jesus was crucified between two other men. Because they had all three hung on a tree, most of the crowd thought they all were part of the incorrigible wicked; and it was believed by most watching that they were forever cursed because of their sins. It was thought among the people that anyone hanging on a tree had a terrible, horrible fate. Mostly because of the wording of this old passage of scripture from the scrolls of Deuteronomy, they imagined that even if the person had been innocent, the very fact that they were publicly hung on a tree would bring a curse upon them.
They were right; even in the case of an innocent Jesus.
As Jesus hung on the tree all of the sins of mankind were placed upon him.
He became the sacrifice for all of mankind’s most terrible and abominable sins.
Our Great God is the only One capable of reversing such curses. He had given the instructions for the law in the first place, and He and he alone could reverse the law.
Most believed if a man hung upon a tree he would be doomed for eternity.
For all of those who had followed Jesus and believed in His ministry; things looked pretty hopeless. They had seen the results of crucifixion all of their lives. They knew of the total contamination of death and how impossible it was to clean the curse of it from the lands.
This man called Jesus had suffered death to fulfill the words of the law and the prophets. Sins had been committed. The law had to be fulfilled in order for them to be forgiven.
The sacrifice had to be as innocent as a family’s pet lamb.
Only an innocent would qualify as the substitution for their sins; like the innocent lamb’s blood that was used to cover the door posts of their homes in that very first Passover.
This time though; it wasn’t to be just any lamb; the substitution was to be The Lamb of God; Jesus Christ.
Every sin of mankind had been laid upon Him as he gave up the last hours of his life on earth as an ordinary man who was truly the extraordinary sinless Son of God.
On the third day after The Passover, on the day of Early First Fruits, the 2nd day of Unleavened Bread; Jesus rose up from the grave!
He was alive again!
All of the sins, the shame, the corruption, the contaminations that resulted in death had left him on that third day.
Sin was totally defeated there at the cross.
All of it was taken away forever.
Resurrection and power were the victor on that third day that He was risen.
Remission of sins had been accomplished, and life came from His righteous blood. The life from His spotless and pure blood healed a whole world full of dirty, rotten, incorrigible, wicked sinners. Death had been reversed for everyone; a renewal had taken place that was a total miracle.
The impossible had become possible.
Only God could do this.
The faithful followers of Jesus who had given up all hope now lifted their eyes and hands to heaven in worship. Upon seeing that He rose from the grave victoriously; they finally had eyes to see and ears to hear and they knew and understood what He had been explaining to them all along.
One-by-one, they fell down and thanked God The Father for what He had done for them in giving the life of His Only Begotten Son, and making eternal life possible for those old disciples as well as the rest of us who live to know the story today.
This was a totally new and unexpected development, but it all began way back in those early days of the formation of Israel when God gave that “case” law of Deuteronomy 21;22-23; that said any man who hung on a tree was under God’s curse and that the land of inheritance must not be desecrated.
As Israel learned the meaning of their inheritance; so too did the rest of the children of God.
During the days that Jesus walked the earth, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit teamed up and made this old case law become totally fulfilled in every way.
In walking to his death on a tree; Jesus had given us the hope of new life.
This miracle opened the gate (Jesus) that provided atonement, not just for Israel, but for the whole world forever.
Acts 10:39 became truth to the disciples who were living back then, and eventually it rang true to the whole world, including you and me:
“And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree.”
In that sacred moment of time; all of us who were “cursed of God” for our sins; received redemption and freedom from those sins because He had taken them upon Himself and died for us while hanging on a tree.
I have said in the last three lessons that “case” laws were only for certain periods of time, for certain people groups in certain cultures and times of historical importance; then they no longer apply.
The case laws that would have nailed us to the same tree for our sins no longer apply.
Jesus died ONCE for ALL.
It is finished.
Deuteronomy, Chapter 21:22-23 might have been just a small detail explaining one little case law among many others, but that little detail was there for a BIG reason.
Jesus took on the curse of sin so that all of us accursed sinners could be set free from sin and death.
With this act of complete love and total compassion; Jesus endured capital punishment to redeem and restore even the very worst of humanity.
Now God’s grace and mercy have been poured out to us in abundance.
By His wounds we are healed!
Hallelujah!
He is risen!
He is risen indeed!