Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: The Tenth Word, Part Six

Sermon text today is found in Deuteronomy 25:4 through chapter 26:19. It’s a few more verses than normal for one of our readings. If you get tired, you can certainly sit during the reading of it, but I thought it’d be good to read it through. We’ll just touch briefly on the six elements here. Deuteronomy 25:4-26:19 is that concluding portion of Moses’ sermon which comprises most of the book of Deuteronomy on the Tenth Commandment, the Tenth Word.

And so we’ll deal with it as a whole today. Our sermon title is provocatively called “Make War, Not Love.” You’ll see why I say that. And I suppose it would have been better to put in there “Make War, Not Illicit Love.” Proper love is a good thing, but it’s a reversal of the ’60s slogan. I thought it might be kind of interesting to grab your attention. So please stand as we read Deuteronomy 25:4-26:19. And I believe this is a commentary on the Tenth Commandment: to not covet your neighbor’s wife or your neighbor’s house or his land and then various other things of your neighbors.

Deuteronomy 25, beginning with verse 4:

“You shall not muzzle an ox when it is spreading out the grain. If brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside of the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go into her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of its dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.

And if that man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel. He will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.’ Then the elders of his city shall come and call him and speak to him. And if he persists, saying, ‘I do not wish to take her,’ then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face, and she shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be to the man who does not build up his brother’s house. And the name of his house shall be called in Israel the house of him who had his sandal pulled off.’

When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, then you shall cut off her hand. Your eye shall have no pity.

You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God.

Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt. How he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary and cut off your tail, those who are lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. Therefore, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget.

When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, and have taken possession of it and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God has given you. And you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name to dwell there.

And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.’ Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God, and you shall make response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation great, mighty in populace. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor.

Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers. And the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground which you, O Lord, have given me, and you shall set it down before the Lord your God, and worship before the Lord your God. And you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you, and to your house, you and the Levite and the sojourner who is among you.

When you have finished paying all the tithes of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, giving to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled. Then you shall say before the Lord your God, ‘I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them. I have not eaten of the tithe while I was mourning, or removed any of it while I was unclean or offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God. I have done according to all that you have commanded me.

Look down from your holy habitation from heaven and bless your people Israel and the ground that you have given us as you swore to our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey.’

This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have declared today that the Lord is your God and that you will walk in his ways and keep his statutes and his commandments and his rules and will obey his voice. And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession as he has promised you and that you are to keep all his commandments and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God as he promised.”

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your promise and your fulfillment of it. We thank you for the historical fulfillment we have just read of the deliverance from Egypt. But we give you greater thanks, Lord God, for the great deliverance that our Lord Jesus effected two thousand years ago, of which the deliverance from Egypt was a pale foreshadowing of the reality. We bless your holy name, and we thank you that these promises to make us a holy people, a treasured possession, and to set us on high in the context of the earth are with us because of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Bless us today as we consider your word—a word given to a saved people to tell them how they should then live. Bless us, Lord God, as we consider how we should live. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Christine and I saw a movie a couple of days ago called “In Time.” I guess it has somebody named Justin Timberlake in it, which is not the reason I went to see it, but it’s an interesting movie and it always plays on current themes—a lot of anti-rich-people stuff going on in it. But early in the movie, a man from another time zone, another reality almost, another place of living—the blessed time zone, so to speak, in the movie—he’s got all this time and he gives his time to a young man who has very little time. He expires, dies, giving him all his time. Time is money in this movie. He does this while the young man sleeps. And when the young man awakes, the man that he had helped escape from people that were trying to kill him is gone, and he’s got all this time.

And then he sees written on the dirt on the windows of the place he’s in: “Don’t waste it” or “Don’t waste your time” or something like that. Well, you know, these things work because they’re kind of a metaphor for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ—God fulfilling his covenant with us while we slept, almost an Abrahamic idea. And we come together today as his redeemed people that have been brought into eternity through the death of our Savior and his resurrection.

I think his message for us today, looking at this text, is “Don’t waste your time.” We’ll see that what are we supposed to be doing with our time? We’ll look at that in a couple of minutes. But first, remember that what we have here is, I think, part of the structuring of the book of Deuteronomy that helps us to understand the Ten Words. So we have this kernel form of the Law of God.

Remember, the law is given to a saved people. It’s how we’re supposed to live in the context of our world as saved people. And so this law is given to us graciously by God. It comes in this kernel form in these little nuggets that we can remember and memorize. But God wants to give us more information. He wants to unpack that zip file, so to speak. He wants to build the husk around the kernel and show us more of what it actually means, what kind of fruit it represents.

And so he gives us, among other things, this book of Deuteronomy—largely a sermon talking about the implications of each of the Ten Commandments. It’s this way of kind of fleshing out the book of Deuteronomy to help us understand what these words mean. We tend to boil them down to little slogans and completely miss the true meaning. So when we come to a set of texts today, at the end, I read the last few verses—which is the formal end of the sermon on the Ten Commandments—it was kind of obvious, I suppose. So these all have to do with the Tenth Word, and it’s not immediately obvious to us how that works. So my job today is to help us to see how it works and help us to understand the implications of this portion of Moses’ sermon for us.

I mentioned in the past that Daniel is the same thing. Daniel is a way to look at stories and think about the implications of the Ten Words as we live in the context of an empire not yet devoted to God. And so that’s another useful way. Daniel has twelve chapters. Chapters one to nine track the first nine commandments. And chapters ten to twelve, as a unit, really are a representation of the Tenth Word.

And if we had time, we would look at it and see that the kings of the north and the south—the two different descendants of Alexander, two different generals of Alexander who divide up his kingdom—make war literally against each other, back and forth, back and forth in Daniel ten through twelve. And God’s people are in the crossfire, so to speak. And so it’s a lot of havoc in the world created. And what the predominant words in Daniel ten through twelve and various sections of it are “booty” and “treasure.” So covetousness for neighbors’ possessions creates warfare and animosity and destruction, including to God’s house, caught in the crossfire.

So Daniel ten through twelve is another way to sort of look at the kernel of the Ten Commandments in story fashion. I really think that you ought to be teaching your children, younger children particularly, Daniel by looking at it as a series of stories, fleshing out, giving spiritual broader meaning to the Ten Words. And if you do that, chapters ten through twelve are about covetousness—evil covetousness of your neighbors’ property—and the devastating effects on houses, the destruction of houses that accompany such covetousness.

All right. So we’ve got these six sections that are laid out in your outlines, and let’s just march through them.

**Number One: Pay Your Laborers, Tithe to Your Pastors, Don’t Muzzle the Ox**

We have this beginning statement, and you know, several times we’ve seen in this articulation of the Ten Commandments in the sermon a little funny thing at the beginning that sort of articulates a proverb that will be pertinent to what follows. And so this one is that way: “Don’t muzzle the ox.” What is this? Is this the Humane Society? Is this a society prevention of cruelty to animals stuff going on?

Well, of course, God does want us to be nice to animals. That’s clear in other portions of Scripture. But that really is not what’s going on here. It’s really not talking literally. Oh, it certainly has reference to muzzling oxen—they tread out the grain—but that’s really not the deal. The deal is you’re supposed to pay laborers. So the ox represents a laborer doing his work. And as people do their work, you’re not supposed to muzzle them by not letting him enjoy the fruit of his labor.

Specifically, this verse is quoted in 1 Corinthians 9:8-14 as applying to ministerial wages. And in fact, Paul says, “Well, was this written? Who was this written for, this proverb?” And he says, “It was written for our sake.” And what he’s saying is that ministers of the gospel should be paid for their labors.

So he uses interesting language. Let me read verse nine as well, going back to verse eight in 1 Corinthians 9:

“Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the law say the same—talking about his that they should pay ministers of the gospel. It is written in the law of Moses: ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.’ Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Is it for oxen that God…?” He says no, it’s not for oxen. He says, “Does it not certainly speak for our sake?” And that word “certainly” is a word that means “all of it.” Doesn’t it really altogether speak for our sake? And the answer is yes. “It is written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope.”

So he uses very strong language to say this proverb that begins this list relative to covetousness—evil covetousness—is really primarily for the purpose of supporting ministerial wages.

Now we can apply it to anybody doing work. And in fact, some people have applied it to what follows. The next section is the law of the levirate, or brother-in-law. That’s all “levirate” means—it’s an old word, but it just means the law of the brother-in-law. And so there’s some recompense. Some people think in terms of land that should accrue to him as he labors to bring forth a child for his dead brother’s wife.

So we can apply it to all kinds of situations in terms of labor. It’s an important principle to let people enjoy the fruit of their labor. But very specifically, the scriptures interpret this in terms of the tithe, in terms of ministerial support of tithes. The same thing is found in 1 Timothy 5:17-18:

“Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor.”

Let me just note there that the word “honor” means honor, but it also means money. It means weight. And so it has been our view, and we had a discussion about this recently as we were revising our constitution, that really all elders according to this verse should be recompensed in some way monetarily as well as by honor. But in any event, he goes on to say: “They’re worthy of those who double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching, for the scriptures say: ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and ‘the laborer deserves his wages.’”

So here again it’s applied directly to ministers of the gospel. So it’s important to recognize that.

Also in Matthew 10:10 we read: “Don’t bring a bag for your journey or two tunics or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food.”

Now that’s what is being quoted in 1 Timothy 5. 1 Timothy 5 lumps together muzzling the ox with the proverb that a laborer is deserving of his wages or food. And in the Gospel account, that’s talking about the disciples sent out by Jesus in twos—again, ministers of the good news of the arrival of the kingdom. The ascension in this case, this side of the ascension—the announcers of the ascension of the Savior King to the throne and the rule of Christ now over all men and nations. So those men specifically are given this provision.

This is matched by the sixth case, as we’ll get to it in the order of these. The sixth thing, the thing that comes at the end of the Tenth Word and really as a summation of all of the law, is tithing and offering, being faithful in tithes and offerings. And so I think that the message here, and it begins here with muzzling the ox—pay your ministers of the gospel—the message is that one of the ways you avoid sinful covetousness is by dedicating your money, all of it, or at least part of it, the tithe, for the purposes of God’s kingdom.

So tithing is set forth, and tithing specifically for ministerial support, is set forth as the way of life—how we should then live—in a way that avoids and helps us to avoid the temptations of sinful covetousness. So that’s significant.

So the sermon here by Moses tells us that one way you can avoid sinning by violating the Tenth Word is to remember to tithe, and to tithe specifically in support of ministers of the gospel, your elders, your pastors in your church.

So don’t muzzle the ox.

**The Second: The Law of the Levirate: “Habitat for Humanity”**

The second one is not a proverb. It’s a set of regulations. It’s a regulation that is a little difficult for us to relate to. This is called the law of the levirate. The law of the levirate. And basically, you know, if a woman is married to a guy and he dies and they don’t have a child yet to inherit—a woman could inherit, that’s clear in the Bible—but doesn’t have a child to pass on her stuff, then the brother-in-law, if there is one, has a responsibility to provide a child by becoming married, in that sense, to the woman and providing for, giving her, covering and protection and also a child to inherit. So that the name of his dead brother won’t be wiped out.

Now, this law gets into detail. It says that’s what you’re supposed to do. And then it says if you don’t do that, the woman takes the sandal off of your foot. Why? Well, there’s all kinds of reasons, and I don’t want to get into all of them. It’s complicated. I’m not sure what the exact reason is, but it’s some sort of symbolic act. She takes the sandal off his foot, spits in his face, shames him publicly, and then she makes this declaration at the end of this section rather, which is very interesting.

“So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house. And the name of his house shall be called in Israel the house of him who had his sandal pulled off.”

Now what does this show us? Well, it shows us that we have a positive obligation. The brother-in-law has a positive obligation to build the house of—who we could say—is his closest neighbor: the wife of his dead brother or his dead brother.

So what is this? This is a reversal of the Tenth Commandment. This is the opposite side of it. Not only are we to not sinfully covet our neighbor’s house, right? And that’s what it is. It starts with wife, then it goes to house. But in Exodus it starts with house. So in the Deuteronomy version: “Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife, his house or his land.” And I think that house and land are emphasized here in this section of Moses’ sermon.

And here it’s his house. And three times this designation of the house of the brother or the brother-in-law is talked about: “He’s refused to build up his brother’s house.” So how do we avoid the sin of sinful covetousness? By coveting—by wanting—our neighbor’s house. We help his house.

Remember we talked about this in terms of envy. If we have envy against someone, how do we take care of that problem? It’s a rottenness to our bones. Well, what you do is you try to bless them for their successes—the very things that make you want to be envious. You, by a force of will and by the grace of God, you pray for the grace of God to thank him and to actually further him in the stuff that really bugs you about him, the things he’s doing well or she’s doing well.

So it’s this jujitsu that is common in Christian sanctification. We’re tempted to covet our neighbor’s house. Well, we can avoid that temptation by seeing that we have a positive obligation, generally stated by this part of the sermon, to build up our neighbor’s house, to help him have more in his house, and that it might be more profitable and well used for the kingdom.

So again it’s putting off sin by putting on what are our positive obligations. So I compare it to Habitat for Humanity, right? Because they go around and build people’s houses, or they build poor people’s houses for them. Well, that’s what we’re supposed to do. Not just poor people, but our neighbor. We’re supposed to have a positive interest in their house. And so we’re to think in terms of community and the blessings of community, not in terms of our individuality and just our own house. We have this obligation.

So I think the idea is to provide meditation on the Tenth Word in various directions and we could take it other directions. But I think the central meaning is given to us at the summation of that text where it talks about his failure to build his brother’s house. So his house will be known as the house of the one without a sandal. He’s dishonored and maybe he loses his possessions as a result in the providence of God.

So the law of the levirate—I’d say that there’s an abiding validity to this law. We have an abiding obligation to positively hope for our neighbors’ expansion of their house and to help them keep their house from falling away through a lack of an heir, for instance. And there are various ways to apply it. I think the general obligation is there to be, kind of, Habitat for Humanity sort of people in the broadest sense, to combat covetousness by how we should then live—to seek the well-being of our neighbors’ houses.

**The Third: The Female Assailant—Attacking the Future (House)**

The third law is one of the more difficult ones in the text of Scripture. It’s the female assailant. So two guys are fighting, and the wife of one of them wants to help her husband—understandably so. And the text tells us in verse eleven, she puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts. And so then what happens to her is said: “Well, you shall then cut off her hand.”

So now this is difficult, not because we think it’s a really a bad deal to attack, you know, the private parts of a man. We understand that. We understand that on a couple of levels. One level is it’s an attack on his masculinity. In our day and age, we have seen these attacks on the front pages of the paper. The Bobbit incident, for those of you that keep up with the news from twenty years ago—there have been several instances where women actually attack the manhood as represented by the private parts, the genitalia, of men. Genitalia isn’t a bad word. It means beginnings—it’s where life begins, where human life comes from through conception.

But in any event, so we understand that it’s bad to strike out at masculinity, and particularly because the Bible has men as the covenantal headship. So it’s almost like striking at the very image of God in the covenantal representation of God’s headship through men. So we see that it’s bad.

But the question is: what is this dismemberment stuff? If this is what it purports to say in our translation, it’d be the only instance in the Bible of mutilation as a required punishment. It goes on to say “don’t pity her. Don’t pity the person.” But it may not say what it actually says. I’m not trying to get out of the implications of the text. I’m trying to be honest with you about what the Hebrew says here. And our knowledge of Hebrew has gotten better and better. There’s more and more information being shared.

One of the resources I consult when I do studies on Deuteronomy is R.G. Rushdoony’s commentary on the Pentateuch. And in his section on this particular law, the publisher has put in a footnote about this new scholarship and the translation of this phrase. So even publishers who are sympathetic to the works of R.J. Rushdoony—which would be his own calculations—they do this stuff. Even they say, well, he might not have had the translation. It’s not his fault. But here’s the point.

What am I trying to say? Well, the point is: when it says “she puts out her hand,” it’s a different Hebrew word for “cutting off her hand.” When she puts out her hand, it refers to the whole of the hand. But when it says to do something, to cut off, to do something to her hand, it doesn’t say “hand.” It says “palm.” It’s the palm of her hand. And it actually is a word for a socket or receptacle.

So, you know, it’s just—so you understand—this is a bad translation to translate it with the same word. If you want to, you probably should say “palm” or something else. And so, right away, A, how do you cut off a palm? Well, if they wanted to cut off the hand, they’d say, “Cut off the hand.” So it probably isn’t cutting off the palm. There’s something else going on. I’m not sure we know what the punishment is. We know it’s significant because what she’s done is significant. But to clear that up, I wanted to do that.

And then I wanted to make the point that what she’s doing, again, is attacking his house—the man she’s attacking. Because she’s attacking a place that, if she’s successful, she’s going to not just strike out at the masculine representation of the headship of God. She’s going to strike out at the reproductive ability of that man to build his house.

So in terms of the Tenth Word, she’s sinfully coveting—we could say—his house by wanting to chop off his house and let it not proceed. So what she’s doing here is attacking the future, the future of the house specifically. And the Bible really doesn’t want us attacking the future. It wants us building the future. And it doesn’t want us eliminating the building up of someone’s house. It wants us positively doing that.

So you can see, particularly in following the laws of the brother-in-law, that this law—I think its primary purpose is to protect, again, the house, the growth of the house, the building of the house through more heirs.

Now we could make some other points about this text. It’d be an interesting one to do a whole sermon on. Her love for her husband is lawless, right? And this is a law that would warn us against lawless love. She’s trying to do something for her husband. She’s trying to love him, but she’s using lawless means for that love. And God’s love is always found in the context of his law.

So we could speak against lawless love. We could also use the text to talk against false pity. It says that whatever it is you’re supposed to do to this woman, whatever public humiliation she’s to suffer, it says that your eye shall show no pity. Show her no pity. And so, you know, there’s a limit. God’s law limits who we can show pity on and who we can’t show pity on.

This is a phrase that’s found in other portions of Deuteronomy in terms of the capital punishment for a murderer: “Don’t pity him.” And so we’re not supposed to. We live in a culture that wants us to pity everybody. Everybody, you know, is on Oprah or whatever it is, and has a reason for what they do. Coach Sandusky should have, instead of that interview he did, said he was molested as a kid because that would elicit pity from us. But a man who does those things to children, if he did, should not be the recipients of our pity. The Bible hedges who we can have compassion or pity upon. And so this text is useful for that as well.

And then more generally, it certainly helps us to see, in terms of the Tenth Word, we’re to build other people’s houses and we’re not to interfere with the building of their house, right? So not only are we not to covet and take away what they’ve got, not only are we to help them establish their house, we also don’t want to hinder the growing of their house, okay?

And I think that’s what the primary message is here. But we can see beyond that: we are not to attack reproduction, the future, the ability to have children or childbearing. This would be another text that we could use successfully, and it’d be a good text to talk about in terms of abortion or some of the modern methods of stopping fertilization. So this is a text that could be talked about in that way as well, because it’s a text at which—you know, the source of reproduction is to be protected by God’s law. I don’t understand the way it equates what’s going to happen to her with the death penalty—”I shall not pity her”—but now it’s not the death penalty. It’s something else that we maybe don’t know. But whatever it is, the point is the production of reproduction is an important aspect of biblical law.

But here I think the idea is, you know, don’t attack a man’s future house.

**The Fourth: False Weights and Measures—Prepping for Defrauding**

The next set of verses—preparing for defrauding is to be avoided. Make no provision for sin. Avoid the appearance of sin.

Now so the idea here is that you can’t have two different weights. And you know, the reason I hope is obvious. You would have these two weights so that when you enter into commercial transactions, you would use whichever of the false weights best benefits you in the transaction, right? You use the two weights in a way that let you cheat the person you’re entering into a commercial transaction with.

So not just the cheating, but the preparation for cheating, okay, is outlawed here. This is another interesting text because there’s a lot of discussion about whether we should preemptively prevent crime. Is that the job of the civil magistrate? They do far too much of that. But here it says that preparation for defrauding is itself—not just a sin, but—the text concludes by saying it’s an abomination to the Lord your God. It’s really a big deal when something in the Bible says this is an abomination. We should probably think: okay, what is this? It’s really important.

And what’s really important is proper evaluation in financial transactions. That’s interesting, isn’t it? That’s really important. Again, because our culture—well, finance is just this dirty stuff we got to enter into to keep our lives going. What’s really important is, you know, love, peace, and all that sort of stuff. But here God says transactions, the marketplace, is very important for a godly culture. And to attack commercial transactions and proper evaluation of them is an abomination to the Lord.

So this is obviously related to the Tenth Commandment. You’re coveting your neighbor’s house, his possessions, his field, whatever it is, and you’re preparing to defraud him. And so that is an abomination here.

We could broaden it out. So don’t get ready to make a provision for sin. If you’re having, you know, problems with drunkenness, don’t have a bottle of whiskey in your house, right? So the obvious things here—well, make no provision. Avoid the appearance of sin.

Now in the Bible it says to avoid the appearance of sin, it means the first appearing of sin. It doesn’t mean something that looks like sin. The verse doesn’t say, well, don’t do something if somebody else might think you’re sinning. That’s not what it says. That might be a good idea, but this text that tells us to avoid the appearance of sin means the first appearing of sin. The first appearing of the sin of sinful covetousness, evil desirings, is the preparation for it—the preparation for it through these mixed systems of evaluation.

So the text is interesting. Again, we can spend a lot of time on it. The importance of the marketplace, the importance of evaluations—these things are not, again, they’re symbolic representations of evaluations of decisions, right? The scales represent justice in our system. And that’s what these are talking about: just scales. So really it’s broader than just commercial transactions. It refers to all of our evaluations—they’re not to be of such a type that would cause us to have unfair advantage over others.

But specifically the text warns us against: it’s an abomination to prepare for covetousness.

Interestingly, we said before that another place we can look for the Ten Commandments is Leviticus 19. Let me point this out. This will prevent sleep. The point of Leviticus 19 tells us how to be holy. “Be holy, for the Lord your God is holy.” Well, how do you do that? Well, there’s a whole series of structure to Leviticus 19 that we’ve talked about. And right now, I want to point out the beginning and end of it. Remember that these sections have these little things in there: “I am the Lord. I am the Lord your God. Whatever it is.”

And at the beginning of Leviticus 19, we read in verse three, the very first of these regulations: “Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father and keep my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God.”

So those are bound together as the header, really, for everything else. So if we want to know how to be holy, it’s about the Lord’s Day and it’s about your parents. Now if we just stop there, we have enough to work on for the rest of our lives. I think particularly for young people, this would be enough. Now God helps us by giving us a whole bunch of other stuff.

But the summation of the Ten Commandments given to us in Leviticus 19—not in the order of the Ten Words, but logically the significance, the primary significance here in terms of your life—or practically, I would say rather—is a denial of God’s word by not honoring your parents or keeping the Lord’s Day. It’s funny how those are the temptations of youth, isn’t it? You know, we have people that get real bugged about the whole Lord’s Day commerce thing and need to go to church, and the whole day set aside. Usually it’s the young people that do that. Same people that have trouble respecting their parents.

Well, in any event, that’s the header here. Now at the end there’s a conclusion too, right? So at the end of the chapter, have your eye cast down to verses 36 and 37. It ends like this:

“You shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length or weight or volume. You shall have honest scales, honest weights, and honest ephah and an honest hin. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

So again, there’s that marker.

So the last thing he says here is: we’re to have just evaluation. So, interestingly, if you look at Leviticus 19, then holiness has to do with church, the Lord’s Day. It has to do with family—honoring your parents—and it has to do with the workplace, commerce, using just weights and measures, particularly in trade or business. I meant to say the marketplace, the city. So you’ve got the high place of worship, you’ve got the city that develops out of that, and you’ve got the family as the basic unit. And that is, of course, the subject of the Tenth Commandment: your neighbor’s family.

So again, it’s interesting the great significance the Bible places on commerce. Don’t feel guilty about commerce. It’s central to the principles of God’s word.

One last comment on this little part of the sermon. Some people take these verses to say you can only use gold or silver for measurements—that a dollar is a false weight because it changes in value. Well, that would only be true if people purported the dollar not to change in value. The problem isn’t, you know, if you buy something, if you buy a house, you know, actually it’s a deteriorating thing, right? It falls apart. Entropy means it all falls apart. It doesn’t purport to be able to stand there forever. And even gold and silver doesn’t. But gold and silver is pretty fixed. But the dollar—at least if you ask the government, will this dollar have the same value a year from now as it does now, they’re going to say, “Well, no, our intention is about 2 or 3% inflation. We want the dollar to go down in value because we don’t want you thinking of the dollar as a means of value. It’s just a way to enter into commerce.”

So to be a violation, I think, of this commandment in Deuteronomy 25 or Leviticus 19, you’d have to be purporting that a dollar is the same thing day to day. And in actuality, the government will tell you—if you just ask—that it’s not going to do that for you. So I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about that, but you know, I think it’s important that we don’t slip up here in some of these things and assume certain things that really shouldn’t be assumed.

So what’s really going on is: if you’re representing sixteen ounces, it’s got to be sixteen ounces, okay? And if tomorrow you want to call the standard unit of weighing things twelve ounces, well, that’s okay if everybody’s actually using a twelve-ounce measure. So the idea is honesty in commercial transactions, and it’s avoiding even the preparation for covetousness by having something bad in your house to do that with, okay?

**The Fifth: Remember to War Against the Bad Seed, the Home Wreckers—Warfare and Missions**

Number five, and this is where we get to “Make War, Not Love,” is: remember to war against the bad seed, the home wreckers, okay? So here what we’ve got is: well, remember Amalek. And we do because we sing Psalm 83, and Amalek is mentioned in there.

What does Amalek want to do? Amalek, what it’s talking about specifically here, is—God brings him out of Egypt, right? So he destroys Egypt. He brings Israel out of Egypt. On their way out, as they’re leaving Sinai and encampment, fairly soon after that, the Amalekites come along. Now the Amalekites are descendants of one of the descendants of Edom, or Esau. So that’s who they are. Amalek was this descendant, and his tribe is called the Amalekites.

We don’t really know what the word means, by the way. “Am” is “people.” “Alec” could be “nip” or “lick” or “valley.” Some people think “elec” might be in their state. We don’t know. But we do know what they did. And what they did was attack. The text tells us this. They attacked Israel on their way out of Egypt. Now, they didn’t attack them frontally. They attacked the tail of the troop, right? So they’re all going along and the weaker ones would be at the back, apparently unguarded. I don’t know why, but those are the ones who Amalek attacked. Amalek destroyed the household of God. And so because of that, God wants Israel to remember these people.

This just happened, you know, thirty-eight years before. Don’t forget it. When you go into the land, you think: well, why would they forget? Well, they do forget. You remember King Saul, right? He used to make war against the Amalekites. Samuel tells them: “Remember the Amalekites? They’re evil guys. They’re the bad seed. Don’t think that compromise is possible with everybody. It’s not. Make war against the Amalekites.”

Here and when they do that, Saul decides that the king of the Amalekites, Agag, is an okay guy and just fine because, you know, he’s a king too, and so Saul doesn’t remember the Amalekites and who they are, and he attempts compromise with a completely godless people who are demonstrated in their godlessness, their rejection and rebellion against God, by attacking the weak members of the house of God in violation of the Tenth Word, of course.

So they do need to remember, and they don’t tend to remember the Amalekites. You know, there are other occasions. Later, with David, when he has a bivouac or his people are at Ziklag, while the men are away, the Amalekites come in and take all the women and children, and now David has to go kill them. And then even later, in the empire period, Haman is an Agite. He’s a descendant of Agag, the one that Saul didn’t kill. He’s an Amalekite. And again, the Amalekites make war against God’s people.

Just like we said, saying that the people of God might be no more. The Amalekites have always wanted—and God is saying this is historically what they’re going to want to do—is destroy you. And so they’re going to want to destroy your house, their home wreckers. And don’t compromise at the home, right? Make war, not love.

Now let me connect this to covetousness. Let me tell you about David. David related to covetousness of the wife—not just the house. David covets illicitly another man’s wife, Bathsheba. And the end result of that is adultery and murder, and the death of many of his children. Bad things happen. He kills a man who was a Gentile convert, a member of his court. He has sex with a girl that grew up at his court—when he was, he knew her when she was a little girl, and now she’s maybe eighteen, nineteen, and he has sex with her. It’s a horrible scene. It’s like a fall. It’s like the fall of Adam. David falls big time.

And why? Well, the text tells us in 2 Samuel that it was the time of kings—it was the springtime when kings go out to make war. And then it tells us that David’s home. And while he’s home, he’s standing looking at this beautiful girl. Not her fault—his fault. What’s David’s real problem? The reason he falls into covetousness, sinful covetousness, which has devastating effects on his family, other families, the whole kingdom—the reason he gets into that is because he’s not doing what he’s supposed to be doing, which is making war against God’s enemies.

So that’s why I say “Make War, Not Love.” This text tells us that part of the solution for evil desiring against a neighbor’s woman or house is getting busy with what the Lord wants you to do. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. David’s hands were idle, and as a result his house fell.

What about you? If your hands are idle, if you’re not making war against God’s enemies, if you’re not doing kingdom work, dominion work, then this text tells you that you’re much more likely to enter into coveting your neighbor’s wife or house. And the end result of that could be absolute disaster for your life, for your family. We’ve seen it, right? You’ve seen it. You probably know of people in churches who end up committing adultery—horrific effects for generations, right? Because men aren’t doing the work that they’re supposed to be doing.

So make war, not love—not illicit love is what my point is. Get about making war. What does it mean to war against the Amalekites? Well, you know, part of it is—there will—we don’t want to overspiritualize the text. There is a point to that, but we don’t want to overdo it. There really are bad people. And God says, look, don’t think you can compromise with everybody. Don’t be buyin’ into Hegelian thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Don’t think that the Christian worldview can be wedded with—as we’ve been listening to the Francis Schaeffer tapes—to Aristotle and everything’s going to be cool. It won’t be cool. It’ll be bad. The synthesis that you create will be abhorrent to God.

So it is—there are certain people that just are evil. Now we hope they repent, but if they don’t repent, we want to execute them. If they’ve killed people, raped little boys, or whatever it is, we want them executed properly. So that’s what we want. Make war. And sometimes that’s physical war. And if a nation wages war against a Christian nation because they’re Christian, I think the Christian nation absolutely should go in and wipe them out.

Samuel’s war against the Amalekites is interesting, too. I don’t want to get into it in detail here, but how well does it fit with just war theory? I don’t know, but it would be an interesting case to look at in reference to this particular case law about the Amalekites and Samuel’s then decision to wage war against them and Saul’s deciding to compromise with one of them.

So we don’t want to overspiritualize the text. There is a need for actual warfare at times against the enemies of God—whether it’s military war or whether it’s executing people who are rebellious and obstinate and who have done the kind of capital crimes that God says require execution. So we don’t want to overspiritualize the text. We want to say, yeah, you know, that’s certainly what we need to do at times is to make that war.

On the other hand, on the other hand, the Psalm 83 that we just sang—you know, in imprecatory psalms like that—says, “Yeah, we want them destroyed. We want them off the face of the earth, through either conversion or through God’s punishments against them.” But conversion is one way of doing it. And so conversion would make them no longer an Amalekite, and they’re no longer subject to your punishments against them.

So the second way of making war is through conversion, missionary work, evangelism. And I wanted to take this time to, on your outlines, the elders had a meeting this last week, and we had a meeting just about, primarily about missions. And we tried to kind of draw out a short strategy for the coming year or two on missions.

And on your handouts, there’s various things there in your pews. There is a flyer, a bulletin insert looking like this. And you know, if you can grab a hold of one of those, do so. Take this, pray about it. Flynn and I went to a lunch this week at Rolling Hills. We did not realize that for ten years we’ve had this tremendous resource for global missions called Mission Connection. Every year—it’s to worldwide missions what the Ozark Network Conference is to homeschooling. So they’ll have ten to twelve thousand people in January, January 20 and 21 in Vancouver this year. Something that’s in Portland at Crossroads Community Church—big event. They’ll have seventy-five work booths, I think a hundred workshops—I don’t know, some huge amount of workshops and booths. And they’ll have some very interesting plenary speakers that are on the handout.

One of the men has had an art glass business in China for several years, has three hundred employees, and he’ll be talking about business as mission. So the idea that a Yavoré in Hungary doesn’t want us to send over Bible teachers or preach or pastors. He wants us to send over businessmen. One thing that Eastern Europe wants from America are Americans, American Christians who understand what business is and the importance of business to kingdom work. And that’s what he wants. Business as mission. So there’ll be a plenary speaker. There’ll be workshops about that. There’ll be workshops about storytelling. There’s a group called the International Orality Group—oral, how to tell stories to people that are illiterate and communicate and evangelize. There’ll be a couple of speakers here. This woman speaker—they say—is the best in terms of how to talk to Muslim women about the faith and how to evangelize them.

So you know, we would like to encourage as many of you as can make it, you know, and fits into your schedule, to consider attending Mission Connection, to get your sense, to get a sense of the global warfare that’s going on through global missions. Now these will be more conventional somewhat missions, but it’s important that we understand what’s going on, what the different fields are.

There’ll be a man there, another plenary speaker, talking about all the work in Haiti that’s going on. And if you want to know about Christian mission in Haiti, this Bishop Joel guy is the guy they say. So he’ll be there. So we encourage you to do that. You know, additionally, we’re in the middle of developing an Anselm Eastern Europe project where Gary Vandervine will be the point person for missions in Eastern Europe to give us information. We’ll get regular budget reports, etc. So we’re ramping up a group, a contact person to provide quickly information on the various Polish churches, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, etc. So we’ll be able to start giving you much more regular information on those things for your prayer, pray and financial support, and maybe going over and helping in these regions.

Third, we’re hoping to send Elder Wilson to India. He has had a vision, and the church has as a result, for the Bengali people group, and we’re going to hope he can kind of reconnect with Sujoy and find out what’s happening in that part of India that we might be able to get involved with. We hope to have a missions banquet again this year, which we had a number of years ago. Matt Diaz kind of organized that for us, did a great job, and that’ll help us again to have information about the missionaries that we’re supporting.

There’s a few other things on here. Hopefully we’ll have San Sanich and Bubu and their wives at family camp in 2012. So the point is: don’t waste your time, right, from the end of that movie. And men and women here, I hope, see their obligation to war against the Amalekites. And part of that warfare is mission, global missions specifically, although local evangelism as well, but today focus on global missions and the work of RCC in those particular areas.

I was talking to Liz Prentice about this earlier in the week, and she said, “Well, I think there should be an interior warfare as well.” So I’ve got point number two in your outline.

**The Amalekite Inside You**

Right? You. Part of the Tenth Word involves an obligation to spot our covetousness, sinful covetousness, to war against it—because that’s who we are in our fallen man. And so part of getting busy about our lives, and as a result avoiding sinful covetousness, is to get busy with our own sanctification and apply ourselves to Bible studies, small groups, whatever it is.

**Warfare and Politics**

Third, warfare and politics. So the Parents Education Association—the only group that really is explicitly trying to address public policy matters from a Christian perspective, achieving the conversion of the political system long term through application of the word of God. We have to war politically because that’s where the attacks on our family, that’s the Amalekite attempt to take over, you know, our families is coming from the civil state.

And so part of our warfare would include using your political action tax credit, which doesn’t cost you a dime, next month to support somebody, and maybe the Parents Education Association, as we try to war against the attackers of our family, specifically in terms of political action.

So get busy with life, young men and women particularly. Get busy with it. Build your vocation, of course, but use the other time outside of your vocation in ways that are really good for the kingdom of God. Make war against the Amalekites, right, in various ways: evangelism, global missions, personal sanctification, political action. Lots of work to do. And when you’re busy doing that stuff, God says, well, then you won’t be subject—as David was—to sinful covetousness.

**Finally: Commanded Joy for the House Graciously Provided by Our Lord**

Finally, commanded joy for the house graciously provided by our Lord. You know, here’s the other part of it: if you want to avoid covetousness, as we said earlier, tithe. Pay your tithes and offerings. And this last text is the summation of the law. You have these great liturgical formulas where the people of God make assertions. We’re here by your grace. Our father was a wandering Aramean. We, you know, we had nothing in ourselves, but you saved us. And then you saved us through Egypt. You built us up as your house.

And one way, a primary way, at the end of this text to avoid sinful covetousness is to use our money, our money for the purposes of God’s house, God’s kingdom. Jesus is building a house. He’s building a temple, the house of God. And you’re part of that house. And you know, it’s interesting these texts because they really are very appropriate for thanksgiving.

We read it earlier, but to read it again: you’re supposed to take some of your offerings from verse two and put it in a basket and put it before the altar of God. And I thought of these cornucopias, right? Sometimes I think we’ve done this. We’ve had a cornucopia on the communion table. Well, that’s kind of what this is. The first fruits, these blessings of God—we put them in a basket and we put them before God.

And your home, you know, the family altar, your particular table at home where you eat. Many of you will have this kind of thing. You’ll have this grand symbol at the end of the year that the Lord has blessed you with—of giving thanks to him for all the wonderful things that he’s given to you by representing that in a basket with the first fruits of God in it. And God says, you know, you’re supposed to be joyful. Bring these things to me and recognize what I have done for you. And as a result of that, you shall be joyful before your God. You’re supposed to rejoice before him.

You shall rejoice in verse eleven: “in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you, and to your house, to your house, you and the Levite and the sojourner who is among you.”

And so that’s what we’re here today to do. We’re to remember Thanksgiving one more time. We do it every Lord’s Day. And at the end of the day, the proper response to sinful urges, to sinful covetousness, is thanksgiving to God—a thanksgiving and a joy before him represented by the giving of tithes and offerings, but then represented as well in various ways during Thanksgiving, particularly to rejoice for the fact that God has given you now and brought you into his house. He’s building up his house of blessing in the context of the world, and that house will grow to fill all the world.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for helping us to understand the sin of evil desiring and helping us to see the way we’re positively commanded to help build each other’s house, the way you’ve built us into your house, your dwelling place. Bless us, Lord God, as we attempt to get busy with our time making war against the modern-day Amalekites, and at the same time getting busy with tithing to you.

These are the two great solutions, Father. You tell us in this text to sinful desires is to get busy about the work you’ve given us to do and to understand your ownership and to rejoice in that over all that we have and are. Bless your holy name, Lord God. May your church continue to grow to fill all the world. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.