Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Deuteronomy 19:14-21

We’ll be looking at verses 14-21. Your handout has some extra verses which we’ll talk about in the sermon, but I’ll begin actually reading the sermon text in Deuteronomy 19:14. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark which the men of old have set in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any iniquity or for any sin in connection with any offense that he has committed.

Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a sin be established. If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently. And if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother.

So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eyes shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you that you are a God who delights in life. That life is the very essence of who you are. We rejoice, Lord God, in life. And we thank you, Father, for your commandments that protect life and encourage us to actually not only not harm life, but to see it flourish in our times.

Bless you, Lord God, that you have provided even in the context of focus on commandments not to murder an emphasis on life for life. Bless us, Lord God, as we study your word. Help us to be transformed by it. Help us to be thankful for the wonderful truths contained in it and the artistry with which you have written it. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

So last week the order of worship had this teaser picture of Naboth being killed and this week the rest of the story is on the order of worship, Ahab being killed. And we will deal with that as we, after we get through with a brief discussion of the specific laws in this section of Moses’ sermon, which lasts from 19:1-28 on the sixth word, the sixth commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

Of course, we’ve seen that the word kill means taking the life of a human and can refer to either accidental death or actual murder. And that’s very significant in terms of an understanding of the text.

Now, what I want to do is see Jesus as we always should in the text that God has placed before us. And during the Advent season, Anne C. gave me a great idea for a sermon as I was walking into the sanctuary. She said, “You know how we used to always have pictures of Jesus on our Christmas cards and now we’ve got pictures of ourselves.” That’s good, huh? Yeah. Think about it. It’s interesting.

Well, what we want to do is see pictures of Jesus in these texts in Deuteronomy 19:20 and 21. And what we will see in today’s text, I think in the laws that are articulated for us in the second half of chapter 19 is vindication. And we’ll develop this theme a little later. But Jesus came, he himself sought vindication on the cross by crying out to God. And he comes to bring vindication. He comes to put the world to rights, bringing vindication for those who have been slain innocently by way of example here.

And so this provision for the capital punishment for violence or murder by deed or by word, right? A witness who testifies in a capital crime falsely trying to get that guy executed is himself supposed to be executed. We can see that in the context of vindication for the one who has been accused falsely or murdered in innocence. And so today I want us to kind of think about that. We’re going to talk about violence by tongue, murdering by tongue.

But the overarching theme as we try to see these snapshots of Jesus and his advent as we move toward the celebration of his incarnation. This little snapshot today is about Jesus coming as vindicator, the advent of vindication. And I’ve laid out on your handouts today the next few sermons. Next week we’ll deal with a chapter of Deuteronomy 20 dealing with warfare. And we’ll see there that Jesus is the anointed of the war.

That’s an expression from that chapter we’ll talk about next week. And another thing Jesus comes to do as he brings vindication is to wage war and to conquer the land the way that they were to conquer the land that they were going into. And so we’ll see the advent of the anointed of the war. And then we’ll look at chapter 21 and we’ll see the relationship of these sixth word to atonement and honor. And we’ll talk about the advent of atonement.

Jesus comes to make atonement and to bring honor, restore honor to people. And then we’ll deal with 22:1-8. The advent of neighborliness. And then finally we’ll deal with the advent of purity. The reference there is wrong, but we’ll see that when we get to it as well. So we’re going to look at little snapshots of Jesus as we move through these sermons by Moses in Deuteronomy.

The other thing I’ve given you right after that on your handout, there are five places: Exodus 21, Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 4, Joshua 2, and Deuteronomy 19. The section dealing with that deals really with these discussions of murder, unintentional slaying of life, et cetera. And the code for those little divisions there is P means premeditated. So in Exodus 21 there’s a discussion of premeditated murder and then there’s the unpremeditated murder and then back to premeditated murder. And so C refers to cities of refuge.

So these are just for your notes, for yourself if you want to do a comparison of the texts that deal with the effects of violation of the sixth word either in killing accidentally or by killing by way of murder. Those are the five texts that deal with it in the Pentateuch. For instance, in Deuteronomy 4, we read this in verses 41-43.

Moses set apart three cities in the east beyond the Jordan that the manslayer might flee there. Anyone who kills his neighbor unintentionally without being at enmity with him in the past. He may flee to one of these cities and save his life. And then he tells us the names of the cities in Deuteronomy 4. Bezer in the wilderness of the tableland for the Reubenites, Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites, and Golan in Bashan for the Manassites.

So we’ll be talking more about Ramoth in Gilead as one of the named cities of refuge in Deuteronomy 4.

Here in Deuteronomy 19, they’re not named, but another three are to be selected as he goes into the land. I then given you again this little overview from the Word Biblical Commentary of chapter 19. We’ve talked about the establishment of cities of refuge in the promised land in verses 1-10. And then there’s a designation for what you’re supposed to do about intentional murderers in verses 11-13.

The riddle at the middle is verse 14, the inviolability of boundary markers. Why is this, you know, ninth commandment thing coming into this sixth commandment word? And we’ll talk about that a little bit more. And then there’s laws about witnesses, right? You have to have two witnesses or three and you’ve got to purge false witnesses. You have to purge the evil of false witnesses from your midst by bringing judgment to them.

And that’s the conclusion of the chapter is Lex Talionis. So there’s this structure to it of what’s happening in 19 that places the riddle at the middle, right in the center of this. And it is a riddle—you know, why is it there? And what I’ve done today is to give you a structure to the text that I think is significant and helps us to understand what’s going on and why these laws at the end of the chapter are linked into the laws at the beginning.

Now the outline I’ve given you is one I developed a couple of weeks ago as I was doing my original research in Deuteronomy 19. And I was very excited last week as I did some study early Monday morning to come across an article by a man in the Pacific Northwest, an OPC professor named James B. Jordan. And now I want to commend his article and its structural analysis of Deuteronomy 19. But his article is also on one hand it’s very good looking honestly at the text and I know it’s good because he came up with the same outline that I did.

But to me it was the grace of God. It was a nice reassurance that Dennis, yeah, this is right. His article is also however very bad from another perspective when he talks about the application of Deuteronomy 19 to our world. He says the only thing that really is applicable anymore is the death penalty for murder. And because these are all theocracy laws, we don’t have a theocracy. So death penalty for homosexuality is gone.

Death penalty for adultery is gone. We don’t have cities of refuge. So he sees no relationship to the church and sanctuary and all that stuff that we drew out a couple of weeks ago. He just blows by all the application by saying that was for then and this is now and this side of the cross. It doesn’t really pertain. Now, he wants to hold on to the death penalty for murder. And so what he says is, let’s see if I have the specific word he uses.

Yeah, he calls it natural equity, not theocratic specificity. So there’s a natural equity to execute somebody who’s deliberately murdered somebody else. But there’s no natural equity for attacking the family through adultery, for instance. That’s a theocratic deal. So we ignore that. Well, how do we know what natural equity is? Well, everybody knows. He says that it just seems right to everybody in all cultures that you would put to death people that murder other people.

And yet, in his same article, he talks about how the World Court is moving toward making a declaration—and this is continuing of course—that capital punishment is a violation of human rights. So the whole world—okay—the natural equity is nowhere apparent anymore to the world that moves away from Christianity and moves away from the God of the scriptures and seeing it as one word from him. Natural equity doesn’t exist in a truly post-Christian culture.

So in the EU you can’t be a member if you’re going to have death penalty—you’ve got to get rid of it. So, so what’s natural? We don’t know what’s right or wrong. Apart from the revealed word of God, there is no natural equity. There’s not everybody knows this is wrong. No, they don’t. They’re blind when they reject the God of the scripture.

So Dennis’s application is bad, but his structural analysis is good.

And so if you look—I hope you have the handout today because it’s important to see what I’ll be talking about—we’re just going to talk through these statutes. And as I said, I began by reading the statute about the riddle at the middle of the boundary marker, but I’ve tied it into the statute about death to premeditated murder. Why? Well, you have this interesting repetition of a phrase in verse 13.

Okay, so I’ve given you the first few verses relating back to murder to show you the context for verse 13. Your eye shall not pity him. You shall purge the guilt of innocent blood. That’s a reference to the death penalty for intentional premeditated murder. Okay? And then if you look down at the bottom, or if you just have your scriptures, look at the bottom of this section down to verse 19. You shall purge the evil from your midst.

And then it says, “The rest shall hear in fear and never do it again.” And then verse 21, “Your eyes shall not pity.” So we’ve got pity, purge, purge, pity. Okay? So you say, “Well, okay, but that just means that was a section marker at the end of the death penalty case and it’s a thing at the end of the other case.” But no, because God intentionally—okay, this is the word of God. He chose every word.

He chose the order. God intentionally changed it. It doesn’t say pity, purge, pity, purge. That would be parallel. But instead, what it says is the opposite of that. It says pity purge and then purge pity. Do you see what I’m saying? It doesn’t say AB—that’d be parallel. It goes ABBA. That’s a chiasmus. That’s a deliberate device to mark off two ends of a section. So you say, “Well, well, but Dennis, why would God mark off two ends of a section when the first end is in the middle or the end of another section?”

Well, that’s a good question. And that’s the sort of question we should have when we read our Bible. Why does God do that? And I think the answer is kind of obvious. The answer is that God wants us to see the last half of Deuteronomy 19, including the boundary marker stuff, in relationship to the first half. And specifically, he wants us to see it in relationship to premeditated murder. It stitches the passages together so that we think about them in relationship to one another.

And so it’s—and so for instance, it’s just as bad to lie in court about somebody and to murder by tongue as it is to take, you know, a gun out and shoot somebody intentionally murdering him. It’s just as bad. It ties those texts together. And that’s one thing it tells us. So that’s what I’ve given you here. And the end result of that kind of brings us to a focus point, too. And again, the structure of the scriptures help us to focus on particular things that we might just blow by as we’re reading a text of scripture.

So let’s just talk our way through verses 13 and following, right? Your eye shall not pity him. And as I said, that’s repeated at the bottom. So important, as we mentioned last week, you know, pity—our emotional states are to be controlled by us. You’re supposed to have control over who you pity and don’t pity. Now, that alone is worth the price of admission today, which was nothing. It’s worth nothing. No, but I mean, we didn’t have to go through body scanners and we don’t have cell phone disruptors in here yet.

We’re still free. But the next time al-Qaeda goes after a church, maybe the government will make us do all that. Hopefully not. But what I’m saying is this alone is such an important message for the world to hear today. Your emotional states are controllable. Number one. And number two, you’re supposed to reject pity in particular cases. That’s real significant. But in any event, it says that of course.

We talked about it last week. You shall purge the guilt of innocent blood. Innocent blood needs to be purged. It needs vindication. It needs something to happen because of its shedding. So, you know, if somebody kills an innocent party, their blood sits out there, but it needs to be purged. It needs to be dealt with. God is—this, you know, from one perspective, you know, this I don’t want to put it that way, but God brings vindication.

He rights the wrongs. He does it maybe through a long series of events and over much time. We’d rather it was quicker a lot of times, but God rights the wrongs at last, right? Purge the guilt of innocent blood.

So then he says, you shall not move your neighbor’s landmark. Now, you know, we’ll come back to that, but notice here a couple of things. A landmark is a border. This word can be translated frequently as border. It’s a border stone. It’s some sort of device. And it’s also a truth-teller, right? So what he’s warning against here is lying about the boundary markers. So if we went to our next door neighbor and moved the boundary markers that they used to use to mark off plots, we’ve lied. Now that boundary marker was supposed to be truth and we’ve moved it. It’s not a truth marker anymore. It’s a lie marker. Okay?

And that leads right into a discussion then in the text of your lying or truthing truth statements or statements in the context of court. So it kind of fits that way, right? And the other thing—the other ways it fits, particularly in our day and age when natural equity doesn’t help us to understand things correctly—what we do when we move away from what Dennis would call theocratic implications, when we move away from the clear teaching of God’s word relative, for instance, to the death penalty, we’ve moved away from God’s borders, his truth markers.

We live in a culture where the state certainly, schools and a lot of churches have moved the ancient truth-tellers. What we’ve got in Deuteronomy 19 are truth-tellers. That’s what God’s word is. It tells us what reality is. And it tells us that we should—as the father, the father of all fathers, has set these truth-tellers up. You know, sin is transgressing a line, right? It’s trespassing, moving over a line. Okay. Well, that assumes there’s a line that you’re not supposed to go over. There’s a boundary marker. God has established boundary markers.

And when we want to say it’s okay to trespass in a particular way, we can make ourselves feel better by moving the boundary marker. So, no matter what way you come up with it, the point is this isn’t really a ninth commandment saying about not moving the landmark. It’s placed in the sixth word. And so it tells us this sixth word is part of God’s truth-telling mechanism. And it also tells us about the importance—the tremendous importance—of truth-tellers in a trial, for instance, or in any other thing that’s been set up.

So we’ve got this long C-section and it says that one other thing about that is it’s important to notice here for later purposes that these landmarks have been set in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that your Lord is giving you to possess. So the truth-teller is linked to inheritance. That specific word is used. And in the context of Israel, there were specific boundary markers that were established for the tribes that lasted and lasted and lasted.

And that’s really the first application of what’s being said here is not just, you know, who owns what land, but in a specific way in Israel at the time, the tribes had particular tribal lands and that’s what it’s talking about.

In any event, then it says, “A single witness shall not be sufficing against a person for any iniquity or for any sin in connection with any offense that he has committed.” This is interesting language. If we wanted to take the time, we could articulate more of this, but recognize for those of you who have been here long enough to know the difference between a trespass, a sin, and an iniquity, that what’s being talked about here is a charge against a person of iniquity—liability to punishment.

In other words, so what’s being said is in order to bring a testimony against somebody that would make them liable for punishment, which means in a capital crime for the death penalty, you’ve got to have a couple of witnesses. And then it says “for any sin”—that’s the word for impurity. And then it uses the word “offense,” which is the same word basically as the word “sin.” So sin is there and trespass is involved, but what’s placed forward is the iniquity of the thing—what a guy has done here by killing someone else is to incur a liability for punishment and that punishment is specifically death penalty sort of stuff.

And so a false witness now that it moves on to talk about is trying to get him killed. In fact, in verse 16, the reason I bold in “malicious witness”—if a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing—malicious, literally there, could be translated a witness of violence. Malicious doesn’t mean, you know, just something a neutral abstract concept. It means the witness is trying to bring violence upon the person that he’s falsely testifying against. He’s trying to make him liable for punishment so that he would be killed in the case of a capital crime.

By parallelism in verse C-prime: if the witness is a false witness. So one of the values of these structures is it helps us to see that in court a false witness—it doesn’t just mean somebody that’s made a mistake. It means somebody who is malicious, trying to get a punishment against somebody. You know, we’ve got a deal now where the civil government has gone crazy in all kinds of directions, but as I understand it, Scooter Libby, for instance, spent time in jail and has a record of conviction because—not that he was trying to maliciously hurt anybody, but because he made a mistake in his testimony.

So this parallelism says, well, it’s not just a false witness—a false witness is a malicious witness who’s trying to bring intentionally harm to somebody else. And that’s where these punishments come into. But look at the very center. I think—oh, before we get there—verse 16, the other thing that’s important about this is that this violent witness accuses a person of wrongdoing. Well, wrongdoing, that sounds pretty general.

And what you need to know about that particular word is it’s much stronger. It means apostasy. It’s only used a few times. And what you’re doing is accusing the person not just of doing something wrong, but of being an apostate from the faith—to really violate the word of God that he can’t be seen as a member of a Christian community anymore. So that’s the strength of what the false witness is trying to do.

Young’s Literal Translation puts it this way: “When a violent witness rises against a man to testify against him, apostasy.” Okay? And that’s the sense of this. So it’s a big deal. It’s a big qualification. These are the kind of witnesses that receive Lex Talionis, the law of the talon, or the law of the hand—hand for hand, life for life, eye for eye, et cetera. It has to have those conditions applied to it.

But look at the center then. What this structure does with God doing an ABBA at the front and beginning, or the beginning and end rather, he brings us into a center, and the center is about advent. Well, how so? Well, it says then both parties of the dispute who shall appear before the Lord. Well, that’s good. We got God at the center, right? Lord at the center. They’re appearing before God. We appear before God today. And this has that kind of sense to it, this phrase to appear before God.

But look at the way they’re appearing before God. They’re appearing before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently. It’s advent. It’s incarnational. When you appear before the judge and the priest, you’re appearing in the face of God. You’re appearing before God’s manifestation of who he is. And ultimately, true man is Jesus. And his advent is about coming what? As a priest and a king, right? A priest and a judge. That’s who he is.

So what this tells us is at the center of these laws is the extreme importance of what we do and the officers that God has set up to administer violations of the second tablet of the decalogue. Remember at 6 through 10 are kind of linked together. They’re appearing before the face of God. When you get into the presence of God, man, you lie there, you’re in big trouble.

When you come here today and appear in formal worship in his presence in a special way, you know that to do things here is bad. That’s why you got little nicer clothes on, little nicer attitude. You’re trying to be nice to each other, right? The way you would might not be at some other occasion. Well, that’s what this says about court. That’s what this says about this inquiry that’s going to go on. Men administer the justice of God.

And ultimately those who are in union with the true advent of true man, Jesus Christ—that man in all that he’s meant to be—comes as judge and priest to bring vindication, to clear the innocent or to avenge them, and to punish the guilty. That’s what Jesus is. Okay?

And then we got the false witness in the C-section. And what do you do? You do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. You shall purge the evil. So it’s a real bad deal again. Purging the evil. And then it ends by saying you can’t pity. And then the Lex Talionis said shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Now this is one of those verses that you know makes Christians uncomfortable. Don’t be uncomfortable at this verse. It’s a great verse. You ever see anything in the Old Testament where people are cutting off hands or gouging out eyes? Can you think of any time like that? No, you can’t. What this says is this is a limiting principle on proper vengeance. Proper vindication is proportional to the crime. It’s the basis for what we call the proportionality of punishments, right? The punishment has to be proportional in proportion to the crime. You can’t kill a guy because he stole.

What did Lamech, the ungodly guy, do? Well, I killed a man because he insulted me. He broke this provision—this particular law of the talon, so-called Lex Talionis—talon. It’s another word for hand—the law of the hand, hand for hand, but it doesn’t mean you’re supposed to chop off hands. What it means is the punishment has to fit the crime. I mean, if for instance, you did chop off a guy’s hand, what you’re going to do is have the value of that hand attributed to you, and your punishment has to be fit to what you’ve done to that other person somehow.

So it’s not about, you know, it’s not about some kind of a deal that goes on in Muslim countries where people’s hands are cut off and their eyes are gouged. You just don’t see that in the Bible. This is a very important law that establishes proportionality in terms of punishment. And very importantly, the proportionality is applied not just to the perpetrator of a crime, but to a witness who tries to convince you that somebody else who is innocent did that crime, no matter what the crime is.

So this law of the witness receiving punishment for what he intends isn’t just about capital punishment. It’s about any witness in court. There’s a tremendous significance in the scriptures of witness. Okay. So that’s how this text flows along. That’s how it moves.

And one other reference I wanted to make about this riddle at the middle, the landmark thing. Proverbs 23:10 says this, “Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless, for their redeemer is strong. He will plead their case against you.” See, that’s interesting. If you understand what’s going on in Deuteronomy 19 and you read Proverbs 23, you’re thinking, “Oh, yeah, that landmark thing is related to the avenger of blood.”

And so in Proverbs 23, what it reminds us about the importance of that is it brings in this same Hebrew word as avenger—avenger of blood, redeemer. The word avenger is ga’al in the Hebrew. It means a kinsman, a redeemer of some sort. And that’s what’s going on here. God is the redeemer. When Jesus comes, he comes as the ga’al. He comes as the avenger of blood. He comes as the one who will bring punishment against you for moving the ancient landmark in the sense of attempting to disestablish his law as well.

So that’s the way the text moves and I want to have some comments now as we sort of wrap up the discussion of the text.

Some very brief comments. These are on your handouts. First, life is a tremendous gift—the gift of all gifts. It is to be celebrated and protected. Okay. So what this is about is life for life. And even in the midst of punishments for improperly taking life, what God wants us to see is the prominence of life in the whole thing. Life is a tremendous gift. And if people attack it either directly or by their tongues, God is the avenger who will bring his judgments upon them.

Life is to be seen. It’s to be celebrated in the fourth word. It’s to be honored—long life—in the fifth word. And it’s to be protected and enhanced. The sixth word—life is the deal. And over and over again in God’s sermons, in Moses’ sermon here, the idea is life, life, life, protect life, protect innocent life, punish those who take life, et cetera. So life is the preeminent point of all this. It is a good thing.

Secondly, life is protected by executing those who murder, whether they do so by act or by tongue. So this is the point of seeing Deuteronomy 19 connected through that structure that whether you kill somebody in a premeditated way or whether you strike out with your tongue against their life, either way, life is supposed to be protected from people that would do that. And we’re to restrain ourselves from that happening in the context of our lives.

The text told us in Deuteronomy 19 that this should be speedy. The avenger of blood is an executioner. He’s not a judge. He’s the executioner. That in God’s system of justice, the executioner gets moving like that. Execution is supposed to happen quick. This, you know, what’s been going on with 9/11? I, you know, where we’ve got people that supposedly were part of the plot. They haven’t even been tried, let alone executed.

Long delay. And the scriptures tell us what happens then. Ecclesiastes 8:11, “Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of man is fully setting them to do evil.” At the end of this whole section, it says the people will see, they’ll hear, they’ll see, and they won’t do this kind of evil. Deterrence is a biblical concept. Don’t get bogged down. Everybody give you these studies. Well, it doesn’t work. It does work. The word of God’s our standard, right? And the word of God says that you’re supposed to enact speedy justice, including the death penalty or proportional matters as well. And it’s got to be speedy. It’s got to be quick. We don’t want a slow avenger. We don’t want a slow executioner.

Now, the judge has to make diligent inquiry if needed, right? If needed, we got a guy down there in Gitmo says, “I did it. Execute me.” And we won’t do it. So, you know, if it’s needed, the judge representing God makes diligent inquiry into it. That’s certainly true. But not if it gets in the way of speed. Speed is important. I mean, diligence is necessary in some cases, inquiry, et cetera. But in obvious cases of crime, execution should happen speedily, and it doesn’t. And so what happens? People’s hearts are fully set to do more evil.

Three, even the accidental killing of a man seriously disrupts one’s life. That’s what this text tells us, too. Do not kill. Do not accidentally hurt somebody. So, well, how could I prevent myself from accidentally hurting somebody? Well, there’s ways, isn’t there? Be more careful. And this text tells us that even in the particular setting which they were with these Levitical cities, even if your axe head flies off and hits somebody and he dies, your life is seriously disrupted.

You’ve got to start running and you’ve got to get to that Levitical city. And even if you’re innocent, you’ve got to stay there till the high priest dies. So there’s serious disruptions. Why? Because life is the deal. God is about life. He doesn’t like to see life hurt. He doesn’t like to see life impaired even accidentally. And so what we want to do and what of course Christian cultures have done is try increasingly over time to get rid of as many accidents as you can reasonably get rid of.

That’s a good thing. That’s a Christian instinct to get rid of the disruptions to ordinary life that comes if we’re not careful in what we do relative to life. If we’re not thinking about the importance of life.

Four, innocent blood will be vindicated. You know that’s what it’s all about. Purge the evil. Innocent blood will be vindicated. Jesus on the cross, right? He cries out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” What is that all about? Have you ever wondered? Sounds like he’s in doubt. But doubt isn’t of faith. Doubt is sin. Jesus has to be sinless. So what’s he doing? You ever wondered? It’s a good question to ask. Now, there’s answers. And the answer is that he’s not doubting. He is praying in a traditional lament prayer complaint that the Psalms give us over and over again, a prayer for vindication.

He’s not really doubting that God will vindicate him, but he’s praying that would happen. Jesus on the cross is the picture of a desire on the part of us, if we’re in union with Jesus, to seek vindication for the wrongs that happened to us and the wrongs that happen to people that we love. We’re supposed to be doing what Jesus did. “My God, my God, why am I all alone here? Why is this happening to me?” Which is to say, Lord, please avenge the mistake here, the error, the sin of somebody else. Vindicate me. I want to be cleared. I want people to know that I’m up here on this cross, not because I’m a bad guy. And God answers that, of course, three days later, but he even answers it at the day of Christ crying it out because God then when he dies, you know, tears the temple in two, big earthquake, the earth is rent open, tombs are opened up, people come out, right? So God is already answering that prayer for vindication.

And then when he raises Jesus up for our righteousness, for our vindication, you see, God is answering this prayer as it were from the cross. Innocent blood will be vindicated. It needs to be.

Then any culture that tries to build a state must build into it punishment against people that take innocent blood and the protection of innocent blood. Those are the two sides of it, right? Sanctuary for protection of those people who are innocent and on the other hand the death penalty for those people who have malignantly struck out and taken the life of another.

Innocent blood will be vindicated. Jesus came to set things right, to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found. Psalm 98 is the basis for the great Christmas hymn. It means Jesus comes to reverse all the problems and parting reversing all of that through his death and resurrection on the cross is the persecution of his enemies and the enemies of his people. Clint Eastwood best picture of that in Grand Torino right at the end he’s vindicating people, he’s punishing certain other people, he’s bringing the good people into abundant life even as he’s bringing his judgments against the wicked people.

And that’s what Jesus does. Jesus comes. His advent is the advent of vindication. Psalm 98 concludes by saying before the Lord, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness and the people with equity. That’s at the heart of that particular book of the Psalms. That’s the basis for the best love Christmas song in the world, “Joy to the World.” And that’s what we should be thinking every Christmas—that Jesus doesn’t come just to be a nice cuddly baby. He comes to vindicate things, to turn the world around, to bring vindication, to put the world to rights.

Revelation 6, what do the perfected saints cry out? “How long before our blood is avenged? The people that martyred us.” That. And Jesus doesn’t say, “Shut up.” He doesn’t say, “Well, you know, no, no, there’s no vindication.” He says, “Well, wait a little while longer and it’s going to happen.” And of course, it does in Jerusalem in AD 70.

So vindication is an essential part. Deuteronomy 19, the sixth word tells us that innocent life will be avenged by God. The innocent will be vindicated in what they do.

Now let’s talk a little bit about a story. And I want to talk about this story to kind of get the point of this by talking about Ahab. And it’s a long story. It’s a long story that lasts for three chapters. First Kings 20-22. But it is a fascinating story. It’s fascinating particularly in reference to what we’ve talked about today from Deuteronomy 19.

What happens in the story? Well, in First Kings, and this is all about the end of Ahab, how he dies and what’s going to happen to him. And what happens with Ahab is the first thing that’s encountered in First Kings 20 is Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, decides he’s going to make war against Samaria. Okay?

And so Ahab is willing to give up all kinds of things to Ben-Hadad. But when Ben-Hadad crosses the line and demands too much, then finally Ahab kind of says, “Well, wait a minute. This is too much. I’m not going to let your people come in here and hunt everywhere for the beautiful women. I’ll send them out to you, but don’t send them in here to do that.” Well, Ben-Hadad says, “Well, who do you think you are? I’ve got a much bigger army than you. I’m just going to come in anyway,” and he makes preparations for war.

Now, a prophet comes to Ahab and says, “Well, the Lord God will deliver you out of all of this.” And Ahab then begins to get ready for the war. And the king, Ben-Hadad—there’s this great line in First Kings 20 about this where Ben-Hadad says, “You know, you’re really stupid. I’m going to kill you all, yada yada.”

And this is Ahab’s response. Tell them, “Let not the one who puts on his armor boast like the one who takes it off.” Now, there’s another thing a point application that you can tell your kids and tell your grandkids that’s right. If you’re putting your armor on, don’t boast as if you’re taking it off. Don’t think the victory is over and is yours. Don’t do that. And Ahab was right.

And Ahab defeats Ben-Hadad. But there’s a problem that happens. Ben-Hadad is supposed to be killed. He’s been devoted to destruction by God. He’s a murderer, right? And so he is one of these guys in Deuteronomy 19 who has intentionally murdered people and Ahab is supposed to kill them all. Well, they kill a bunch of them, but Ben-Hadad—he tries to cut a deal with Ahab and Ahab says, “Okay, I like the deal.” And the deal is this promise of stuff, this booty that Ahab would get and bazaars in Damascus and, you know, trade routes and all that stuff.

And Ahab says, “Okay.” And it’s interesting because as the story develops in First Kings 20, Ahab brings Ben-Hadad into his chariot to finalize the pact, the treaty between them. So here’s a guy that’s supposed to be executed. Deuteronomy 19 is a play. And Ahab spares him instead and actually brings him into his chariot. Now, you’ll notice on the front of your order of worship, where does Ahab die? He dies in that chariot.

Several chapters later, he’s going to die. So Ben-Hadad, you know, does this. And then Elijah comes to him—or not Elijah—they say another prophet comes and says, “Well, this is all wrong. You were supposed to kill this guy and it’s not going to go well for you.” So that’s the way the first part of the story ends.

And then several years later—I think actually—well, actually the very next chapter. First of all, what happens next?

So this been a case of sparing the life of the guilty and then in the next chapter in 21, Ahab takes the life of the innocent. It’s Naboth. And so he wants—he comes home and he’s, you know, not feeling good because God has said it’s really bad what you did. It was evil letting the guilty guy go. And he’s sulled. And so he wants this garden of Naboth’s vineyard, right? And so Naboth says, “No.” And Naboth says, “I can’t do that because this is my inheritance of my fathers.” That’s the same language that we see in Deuteronomy 19 about the ancient landmarks that is in the inheritance that your fathers gave to you.

So the same word is used: inheritance. So Ahab is trying to move the ancient boundaries, the truth-telling lines by getting Naboth’s vineyard for himself. Now, it’s too bad he wasn’t an American president or an American governor or a mayor because he could have got the land quite easily. He could have said, “Well, we just need it for our city and that’s the way it is and it’s legal.” But back then, even in the times of wicked Ahab, they had better laws on this stuff and Ahab couldn’t do it that way.

So what happens is his wife Jezebel lines up some false witnesses. Well, now we got, you know, we’re moving from moving—trying to attempt to move the landmark into the next section of Deuteronomy 19. We got false witnesses lying about Naboth. And of course, they do. And what do they say? They say Naboth has cursed God. They accuse Naboth of apostasy. Remember I said that witness of violence in Deuteronomy 19 is bringing a charge of apostasy, evildoing, really malicious stuff against the guy they’re testing.

And that’s exactly what Jezebel arranges to have done about Naboth. She gets witnesses of violence so that Naboth will be seen as an apostate and he’ll be stoned. And he is. He’s stoned.

And so all of 19 is kind of getting linked together, isn’t it? Now you’ve got an innocent guy who’s not protected by the king. In fact, he’s attacked. You’ve got a guilty guy that’s spared by the king. And the innocent guy—he’s moving the ancient landmark and he’s doing it through false witnesses and he’s doing it through murder.

Now he’s murdered. He set up these false witnesses. Ahab has the blood of Naboth on his hands and Elijah comes to him and he says, “Oh, you found me, have you? You man of God.” That’s what Ahab says to Elijah. And it’s language that’s odd if you’re reading. What’s going on? Well, Elijah must have been a pain in the neck to Ahab for a long time. And that’s sort of—he’s. But you know, if you put it together with what we’ve been talking about in Deuteronomy 19, it sort of looks like Elijah who comes to Ahab and says, “You know what? You’ve murdered and taken possession. You’re going to die. Your family’s going to die. They’re going to lick up, you know, your blood’s going to be in the same place of Naboth’s blood. Naboth will be avenged, vindicated through the judgments of God on you.”

And it looks like Elijah is the avenger of blood. He’s the one that’s being raised up to go and at least inform Ahab of the execution that’s coming. Ahab repents. And so it’s put off for a little while. God says, “Well, I’ll put it off for a while because you’ve repented.” And then we get to chapter 22. And now what’s the next thing he’s going to do? He just tried to take land from Naboth through deceit. And now he wants to go up against the king of Syria and take a city. What’s the name of the city? The city is Ramoth Gilead. Remember I told you—remember that name.

That’s one of the Levitical cities of refuge. And Ahab goes to the Levitical city of refuge to try to appropriate the land from the Syrians the way he had gotten the land from Naboth through lying. The interesting thing is Ahab, you know, we better find out if God approves of this or not. And so these prophets all say, “Oh yeah, you’re going to do great. You’ll take the land. It’ll be great.” And then this one prophet comes along and he says, “You know, actually, here’s what happened. God had a court. You had your court.” He doesn’t say this, but Ahab had a court with Naboth. Now, God has a court and there’s this scene.

Who’s going to have Ahab come up and get killed at Ramoth Gilead? And this guy, one of the angels says, “Well, I can do it. I’ll put a lying spirit into the tongue of the prophets.” And you think to yourself, “This is a conundrum. God is actually allowing—originating from his heavenly court—a lie to lure Ahab into battle.” But you see, it’s not some sort of willy-nilly deal.

This is Lex Talionis being played out. This is God giving Ahab what he had given to Naboth. So now he sends the lying spirit to the prophets and actually he reveals this through Micaiah, the last prophet that Ahab doesn’t like. He knows he always says bad things about him. So God actually reveals to Ahab, “Well, you know, I’m doing this by sending lying spirits to the rest of the prophets.” So this is really interesting.

We got false witnesses. We’ve got the city of refuge. We’ve got innocent blood that still needs to be avenged. We’ve got Ahab as a death penalty because he didn’t put to death Ben-Hadad. And now we’re back in Syria where Ben-Hadad was king before. And Ahab goes—now he’s got a little more sense than just to rush off into battle willy-nilly. He figures, well, maybe God’s got it in for me. So he disguises himself, right?

He dresses up not like in his kingly robe. He dresses up in a different way. And Jehoshaphat is along with him, the other king. He dresses up like royalty. So they all go after him and he shouts out and they—oh, it’s not a—we need to kill Ahab and the king of Syria is saying, “Just kill Ahab and him alone. Everybody else will flee.” Well, he’s disguised. So what happens?

Well, an archer pulls back an arrow, shoots it by chance, and in the providence, he doesn’t aim at Ahab. He just shoots it. And God controls that arrow, not just to come down in the general vicinity of Ahab, but to go through a chink in his armor, in his serpent armor. He’s got like, you know, worm armor. He’s got that armor, you know, like serpents have. And through a chink in that armor, that arrow comes, strikes him in the chariot that he had made the horrible pact with Ben-Hadad in. In that very chariot, now Ahab receives finally the death blow from God through chance supposedly.

What a wonderful story. And he sits there all day while, you know, he’s bleeding to death and he bleeds to death right in that chariot, right? And that’s his death. What a wonderful ending to Ahab’s life. God brings that. And where is he at? He’s at Ramoth Gilead. God saw that he didn’t deserve refuge at Ramoth Gilead. He was taken from whatever he was doing and executed and killed in his very chariot.

And then when they bring the chariot back and they wash the chariot out, the text makes sure it tells us that the blood of Ahab is now down there and dogs lick up that blood or the prostitutes are bathing and his blood there and the dogs lick it up. And then later in First Kings it tells us that other family members their blood was in the very place and probably Ahab’s was too where Naboth’s blood was. So years transpire in the telling of the story—events unfold—but it’s a wonderful picture really of everything we’ve got in Deuteronomy 19.

We’ve got an innocent person put to death. We’ve got false testimony. And we’ve got the guy that eventually who does the false testimony behind it, Ahab and his wife Jezebel, killed. He’s punished. Lex Talionis. Even the lies that he had set up, God sends a lying spirit to the tongues of the prophets. Whether it’s a failure to put to death Ben-Hadad or putting to death the innocent man, both of those acts are avenged by God. Vindication comes as Ahab sits there in his chariot bleeding to death and watching the defeat of Israel’s armies.

Lord God, this is a story—First Kings 20-22—that you know, if you miss all the parallels between it and what’s going on in Deuteronomy 19, you’re just not reading carefully or something. This is a story, a cautionary tale to tell us: be careful. Don’t think that it’s going to be okay with you if at the end of the day you have taken other people’s lives either by deed or by tongue. The Lord—and you could get away with it.

Not for long. You haven’t. Eventually, God will vindicate the blood of the innocent parties who have been killed by people that strike out against them. A cautionary tale, a nice picture of the unity and artistry of God’s word as Deuteronomy 19 comes to pass in the life of Ahab as a warning to us both ways. Don’t let guilty parties off. Use the death penalty. And on the other hand, don’t try to appropriate by moving the ancient landmark and by summoning up false witnesses.

Don’t take the innocent blood of another. The end result of this is we’re to be careful. We’re to be careful to do no harm to the life of our neighbor by deed or by tongue.

Leviticus 19:15-18 says this, “You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor nor honor the person of the mighty in righteousness. Since you shall judge your neighbor, you shall not go about as a tail-bearer among your people. That means don’t be a malicious person who is going out there with his tongue. Not actually now swearing in court, but swearing in the broader court telling lies about people, a malicious slanderer amongst the people against your brother.

Nor shall you take a stand against the life of your neighbor. It equates the simple slanders that people somewhat routinely do one to the other in the context of a brotherly neighborly community. That’s what these words are: brother and neighbor. It says in those kind of context, be very careful to understand the full implications of the sixth word and of the prohibition against doing violence by your tongue.

Because to strike out through slander is to stand against the life of your neighbor. You see, that’s what it says it is. When we use our tongues to tear down the reputations of others, when we use our tongues to attack people for whatever reason—covetousness, envy, we just like doing it—no matter what it is, we are standing against the life of our neighbor. We are committing in minor what seems to us to be minor acts the very thing that Ahab did that was so vile and disgusting and would bring God’s judgment against it.

This is an exposition of Leviticus 19 of the implications of the sixth word. May we hear it well. May our speech be different when we recognize that our improper speech is standing against the life of our neighbor. “I am the Lord. He says, you shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor. If you’ve got a problem, go convince, exhort, rebuke. That’s how you get away from slander usually. There’s something that’s bugging you and you either overlook it or you don’t. And if you don’t, don’t talk to somebody else about it. Go to the person. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor.

If you’re not rebuking your neighbor, you’re hating him. Apathetic silence toward your neighbor who’s doing something sinful is hating him. This standing against the life of your neighbor, it also means, I think by implication, that when we hear a slander against somebody else’s character, when we hear violence done by the tongue, we’re not supposed to just sit there calmly. We’re supposed to rebuke the slanderer. Otherwise, we’re taking part. We’re standing against the life of our neighbor.

We want to stand in a positive relationship to life by putting slanderers to shame and by telling them to simply be quiet. It’s not love to fail to rebuke each other, to exhort each other nicely, lovingly, wisely, carefully. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you know what? If you can never get around to being nice and careful and wise, do it anyway. I mean that. Don’t wait till you’re the perfect saint who can say things in a way that doesn’t offend anybody.

Even if you do that, it probably the other person isn’t going to hear it. You’ve got to be a little edgy with people when you’re talking to them. You’ve got to get through. And that’s a specific application of the sixth word. You have to rebuke your neighbor, not bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children—excuse me, against the children of your people. Yeah, don’t bear a grudge.

If you bear a grudge in your head, you’re going to think about that. Those thoughts will then provide fertile ground for cultivating an image of hatred toward your brother. And that’s actually what it means here. When it says—where is it?—bear any grudge, to bear means to tend as a vineyard. Again, it isn’t obvious in the text, but that’s the basic idea. So don’t tend a grudge you have against somebody.

You know, something happens, you get sideways, and you sort of keep it in here. You don’t lovingly talk to them about it. You’re trying not to slander them, but you’ve got it in here. And what you end up doing is tending that vineyard. And when you tend a vineyard, what happens? It gets bigger. The plants grow. And you tell yourself the story over and over again, and maybe the second, third, fourth, twentieth time you tell it to yourself about how you’re offended, all it really doesn’t bear a lot of semblance anymore to the original event. You have still put your own construction on it.

You see, and that’s what you do when you bear a grudge. You tend it and you end up, you know, worse than ever. And then you may end up striking out with your tongue and your fists against your neighbor. And then finally, what does it say? “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”

Now, it’s interesting. One last little stuff. They say, don’t bring your study into the pulpit. I do it all the time. I guess that’s just who I am. But what—here it says here is you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Well, what you find out is there’s a little preposition there: “Love to your neighbor as yourself.” And some people think, well, who cares? But you know, it seems like the point of it is reinforces what the rest of the chapter has told us that love to our neighbor means actions to our neighbor. It doesn’t mean an emotional state.

It means you’re supposed to not love your neighbor, you know, quietly, passively in your heart. You’re supposed to have love to your neighbor in your actions, building up his life and not tearing his life down. The sixth word has implications to everything what we do when we harm or enhance life in relationship to one another.

Proverbs 17:4 says, “An evildoer gives heed to false lips. A liar listens eagerly to a spiteful tongue.” Don’t be a purveyor of violence by tongue. Don’t be a receiver of violence by the tongue.

Proverbs 14:1 says, “The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands.” Now, how do you pull down a house with your hands? Well, Proverbs 11:11 says this, “By the blessing of the upright, the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.” That’s how we tear down a house.

A wise woman. God builds this house here. And he’s used wise people to build a house of Reformation Covenant. And the way we will tear down this house, one—the way the scriptures say a city is torn down is through violations of the sixth word that we might have never imagined had anything to do with the sixth word. And yet God says it does.

Jesus has come to bring vindication, to right the wrong, to bring punishments against the wicked and to vindicate those who are innocent. May we be proper purveyors of life. May we be thankful for life. I had a horrible thing the last few months. Something bad was going on and was really causing me for the first time in years and years and years to just get to a position of despair over a particular thing. And we went out, my wife and I, to I think it was an orchard farm or something like that. And she said, “You know, Danny, we don’t deserve anything in life.

The gift of life itself is such a blessing. Do you feel the wind?” And it was a nice summer day, right? You feel the wind on your cheek. That’s life. And it’s blessed. God could have made us an amoeba that never experienced wind on our cheeks. Life is a tremendous blessing. Just the gift of life, right? And we can muck it all up when we act against our own lives, against the lives of others. Or we can be thankful for the wonderful gift of life and take the full implications of the sixth word into this week using our tongues and our deeds to extend life to cause it to flourish and grow where God has put us.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the sixth word. We thank you for Deuteronomy 19 and the wonderful way it prepares us for the story of Ahab. And we thank you for that cautionary tale reminding us that it’s—we may think we get away with things in the short term, but we never really do. Thank you that Jesus has come and that his coming means that your judgments are moving in the context of the earth to effect life, to bring increased life by bringing punishments against those who would strike out at life.

Help us, Lord God, today