THROUGH THE BIBLE - Deuteron..

Welcome to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Thank you for using and sharing our resources. What you're about to hear is God's Word from one of our teaching elders. We trust that God's Word will inspire, instruct, and bless you. For further teachings or information on our ministry, please visit us on our website at cornerstonerbc.

com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. By God's grace, we are now in Deuteronomy chapter 24. We're going to be reading this chapter together, beloved brethren, brothers, sisters, and dear friends with us.

We're going to be reading the whole chapter together. I'm going to be reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible, and then we're going to be given a brief Christological overview, I hope, of the contents of this chapter. Now, beloved brethren, as you see, this chapter you have 22 verses. And the chapter is divided, or at least I'm going to present it to you in two different sections, one that goes from verse 1 to verse 5. And those are laws concerning marriage and remarriage.

Perhaps you have a different title there if you have the ESV, but laws concerning marriage and remarriage from verses 1 through 5. And then from versus six all the way to verse 22. I'll speak to you, and I hope with the help of the spirit by the sacredness of life, the sacredness of life. So we have those two thoughts in this chapter 24 loss concerning marriage and remarriage. from verses 1 through 5, and then from verses 6 through 22, we'll speak with the Lord's help, I hope, about the sacredness of life.

Having those two things in our mind, beloved brethren, let us please read together chapter 24 of Jeremiah. This is the word of the Lord. When a man takes a wife and marries her, If then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate or letter of divorce, and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house. And if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce, and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, For if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord.

And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God has given you for an inheritance. When a man is newly married, He shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife, whom he has taken. Number six. No one shall take a meal or an upper millstone in pledge, for that would be taking a life in pledge.

If a man is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, and if he treats him as a slave or sells him, Then that thief shall die, so you shall purge the evil from your midst. Take care, in a case of leprous disease, to be very careful to do according to all that the Levitical priest shall direct you. As I commanded them, so you shall be careful to do. Remember what the lawyer God did to Miriam on the way as you came out of Egypt. When you make your neighbor a lawn of any sort, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge.

You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you make the lawn shall bring the flesh out to you. And if he is a poor man, you shall not sleep in his flesh. You shall restore to him the flesh as the sun sets. that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you, and you shall be righteousness for you before the Lord your God. And you shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land and within your towns.

You shall give him his wages on the same day before the sun sets, for he is poor and counts on it, lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin. Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin. You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow's garment in pledge. But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there.

Therefore, I commend you to do this. When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. You shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. you shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.

When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it afterward. You shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. Therefore, I commend you to do this." This is the word of the Lord.

My dear brother and sister and friend, would you please join me as we ask the Lord to help us with our meditations, please. Lord Jesus, we give you thanks for your word and we give you thanks for the salvation that we have because of you and because of your blood shed upon that cross. Lord Jesus, we're coming before you to ask you that you may bless us, not only as we have just read and with the things that we have put in our minds, but also that you may bless us as we preach your word and as the brethren receive the word and as our brother is going to come to preach the word and as we're going to be partaken of the Lord's table and singing and praying and having fellowship with Jesus. Be among us and help us, guide us with clarity of mind and guide us to receive in good soil my faith, that we may be transformed in the likeness of Jesus Christ, that we may not be found doing religion and just doing things in the flesh, but that indeed we might be strengthened and empowered by you and through you and for you through the preaching of your word. Help us, Lord Jesus.

I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Beloved brethren, chapter 24. We continue with our studies through the book of Deuteronomy. And as we have said, this is a sermon of Moses that is preaching to the people of Israel before they cross the Jordan and enter and take possession of the promised land, this land that has been given to these people by virtue of this covenant in which God entered with Abraham from Genesis chapter 12 into chapter 17.

It is because of this promise, that is to be by faith, that the people of Israel now are in the wilderness in the moment that they are going to enter into this promised land. So the Spirit of God that is moving in Moses is now preaching to the congregation, to the people of Israel, as they will enter into that promised land and will be without Moses. Moses is going to die before that. about all of these important loss and instructions and regulations that pertain to the covenant that was given to these people in the Mount Sinai. This is the most side covenant.

When people are studying the different covenants of scripture, this is what is called the covenant of the law or the most side covenant. And we have arrived to this section here in chapter 24, in which Moses continues to give different instructions and different laws and different statutes, if you want, to the people of Israel on how they are supposed to behave and the divine expectation by virtue of the covenant once they make it into the Promised Land. As I said to you before we read, what I want us to do is just think about laws concerning marriage and remarriage in the first section of the chapter, and then in the second section of the chapter, just to think and meditate about the sacredness of life. Now, in the first section that pertains to marriage and remarriage, there are actually two different laws. The easiest law to understand is the one that is given to us in verse 5, in which the man, the Israelite, who was newly married to a woman, he was expected to remain in the house for one year and not to go in duty or to work.

And he says to be happy with his wife. That is, of course, with the purpose of what marriage was given to the people, that is, to procreate, to multiply. It would be society dependent upon offspring and inheritance passing through the generations. So it was very important that for the reputation of the household, the husband and the wife, that they will have offspring. So the one who has been newly married to a woman, why is he going to go to war with the possibility of dying and leaving his wife behind?

He is to remain one year with his wife and to be happy with her. The glories of marriage given in this grace there to the husband and the wife. The second law is a little bit more complicated. We have it in the first verses from verse one to verse four. And as I said to you, this is a law concerning remarriage.

And that is very important. The instruction here is not about divorce. The law here is about remarriage, and the way that the law is given to us, and I hope that the Lord may help us to meditate upon this topic of remarriage, or perhaps marriage and divorce. The law that is given here in verses one through four is just simply with this hypothetical case of two men. The first one comes and marries this woman.

And if he finds no favor in her for an indecency or uncleanness, perhaps in your translation, then he is to give a letter of divorce or a certificate of divorce to this woman, and then there will be divorce in this marriage. Then the law continues. If this woman, who has now been divorced by this letter of divorce that has been given to her, comes and marries another man, another husband, And if it happens that this man finds something in her that is displeasing to him, and he ends up giving her a letter of divorce, or if he dies and this woman is now without the second husband, Then the law says here, in verses 1 through 4, that this woman is not to remarry the first husband because that is an abomination to the Lord, and that will bring evil to the land. The law is in relation to remarriage. That's what is supposed to be followed in case of remarriage.

If a woman divorces the first husband, and then there's a possibility that the second husband dies or also divorces the second husband. Now, here in these first four verses, we have implicitly an allowance for divorce. The law is not directly speaking here about what to do or how to divorce a husband or wife. But we can see here clearly that there's implicitly an allowance for divorce. And this allowance for divorce is clearly just mentioned there.

It says, When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency or uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, you just take it by granted that he can do that, there's an allowance for divorce, then the whole law of remarriage comes and tells her that this woman cannot marry or remarriage the first husband. Now, beloved brethren, I just simply want us to meditate a little bit about this law, these thoughts of remarriage and divorce. Because as I said, here there is an allowance, right? given to the people of Israel for them to write a certificate of divorce, an allowance that is clearly confirmed by the Lord Jesus Christ when he's expounding this law in Matthew chapter 5, and more particularly in Matthew chapter 19. So I'm going to invite you to come to Matthew chapter 19 for us to read here the confirmation of the Lord Jesus Christ, of this allowance that Moses gave to the people of Israel for them to write a letter of divorce.

And I hope that I can give some important clarity about divorce and remarriage here from this supposedly allowance that the Lord gives for divorce. Let us come to Matthew 19, I said, right? Matthew 19. And if you go just simply directly to verse 7, you remember the context of the passage in which there's a questioning of the Jews to the Lord Jesus Christ about marriage and remarriage and so on. And here in verse 7, we will have the confirmation of the Lord Jesus Christ about this allowance for people to write or men to write a letter of divorce.

Verse 7 says, they said to him, Why, then, did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? And then everything that we have just read in Deuteronomy chapter 24 is what is fit in that question there, right? It says, Why, then, did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her, the woman, away. He said to them, this is the Lord Jesus Christ, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. From the beginning, it was not so.

Two very important things here that the Lord Jesus Christ is doing. And even in the parallel passages, you will see that, first of all, the confirmation that marriage is not instituted with the Mosaic covenant or with the law, but marriage is instituted when? In creation, right from the beginning. They were made together, husband and wife, and we see that in Genesis chapter 2. However, what I want us to pay attention to is the confirmation, because the Lord Jesus Christ confirms.

He says, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wife. From the beginning, it was not so. He confirms there. He does not say that there was not an allowance of divorce in the Messiah covenant, but he confirms, indeed, that there was an allowance. Now, let us please read from verse one to get the context of the whole thing, and then I will make a couple of points.

Perhaps it will help us to understand a little bit better divorce and marriage, etc. It says from verse one, let us now get the context of that statement that the Lord gave in verse eight. It says, Now when Jesus had finished the saints, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

Verse four, he answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh So they are no longer two, but one flesh, what therefore God has joined together. Let no man separate. And then it comes the questioning of the Pharisees, saying, Okay, so you're saying that marriage was instituted in creation, and that God is joining husband and wife, and what God has brought together, then maybe it's not to put us under or to separate. Then the question comes, then why did Moses allow for that marriage to be separated? And then the answer that he gives, once again, is because of your hardness of heart.

Moses allowed you to divorce your wives from the beginning. It was not so. He says that the reason why there was an implicit allowance for divorce under the old covenant, it was because of the hardness of the heart. Now, there's something very interesting, because in Deuteronomy chapter 24, the first four verses that we have read, and perhaps I'm going to have to cut it just with those four verses, because it's going too long. But in that first section, beloved brethren, of this law of remarriage, we have two hypothetical men who are indeed taking that allowance and divorcing this wife, right?

And the Lord Jesus Christ says in Matthew 19 that the reason why under the old covenant men were allowed to divorce or to give a certificate of divorce to their wives was because of the hardness of the heart. Let us come back to Deuteronomy chapter 24 and let us see the heart of these two men who indeed took action and gave a letter of divorce to this theoretical woman in chapter 24 from verses 1 to 4. Let us go back. and see the heart of these men to understand the reason that the Lord gives us. It says, when a man takes a wife and marries her, now he's, from his will, nobody's pressuring her to marry this woman, right?

Theoretically speaking. It says here, when a man takes a wife and marries her, and perhaps he was very happy to marry this woman, right? He found nothing in the parish that was displeasing to his eyes. Because he decided to marry this woman, he is entering into the covenant of marriage. It says, if then, that is, if after this person has made the decision to marry this woman, that is, that something takes place after they have entered into this covenant of marriage.

After this man had been volitionally or from his will, decided to enter into this covenant of marriage, it says, if then she finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found something that was hidden to him, but he has found some indecency in her, or you have a different translation, something that is unclean in her, and then he says, and assumes, and he writes her a certificate of divorce. This man enters into willingly to these relations of marriage with this woman. And then after some time, this man finds something that is unclean, that there's no favor, no grace anymore in his eyes of her. And then he decides to take or write a certificate of divorce. First thing that I want you to note here The woman, once she receives a letter of divorce, she remains alive because, according to what we have in those verses, she has the possibility of going and marrying another man.

So that means that whatever she did or whatever happened to her was something that was not cause of death. You remember that under the old covenant, there were sins that were cause of death and sins that could be atoned for or forgiven. Even that gives us a little bit of light into the interpretation of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 19 or Matthew chapter 5 or Mark chapter 10, because he says that just in the case of sexual immorality, there could be divorce. The thing is that when you read the Old Testament, sexual immorality or fornication was equivalent to adultery. Adultery, the thing that happens is that if you are caught in adultery, and you happen to be taken not to the Lord Jesus Christ to receive forgiveness, go and sin no more, but if you're caught in adultery and you're brought before the law of Moses and the men that belong to the Mosiah covenant, the response of these men was death.

So then the woman would just simply die, just in the case of adultery. Here, this woman remains alive. Whatever happened to her or whatever she did that now his husband is displeased in her is not cause of death. That means that whatever she did or whatever she became, because the word there is uncertain, uncleanness or indecency was something that could be forgiven, was something that could be fixed. If it was a ceremonial uncleanness, it was something that could be a town for the God of the covenant gave the people of Israel the possibility that every time that they seen they will not remain in the state of scene, but they will come with their offerings to the temple and to the priest and many other things, and they will be able to atone for their sins, and they will find forgiveness.

So they will be able to remain in the covenant with the Lord. There were laws that the Lord gave to the people of Israel, in which if they sin so much, they will be the recipients of capital punishment, dead, because now they have broken the covenant. But here we have men who could have forgiven the wife or could have done whatever the Mosaic covenant required of them to purify or to remove the uncleanness or the indecency of this woman and to remain in the covenant of marriage. Yet these men decided just to go with the allowance of writing a certificate of divorce. But the question is still there.

Why, then, did Moses allow these people to have the possibility to write a letter of divorce? Well, I don't know if you remember this story, and this is just something that came just lightly into my mind. If you go to 2 Samuel, Chapter 13, which we might not read it now, brother, sorry. But if you go to 2 Samuel, Chapter 13, you may remember the story of Tamar. I don't know what the pronunciation is for Tamar.

And Amon, or Amon. And you may remember the horrendous scene that took place there, that Amon was a man that was captivated by the beauty of Tamar. And he was so taken by the beauty of Tamar. She was not married to him, but he was so taken by the beauty of Tamar that he did something horrendous. You remember, if you have read 2 Samuel chapter 13, because using violence, he will come and he will take her and he will abuse her, even committing this horrendous thing in the midst of the people of Israel.

Tamar, you might remember, that said, Brother, you can go and ask the king and I can be given to you as a wife and you can take me as your wife. Don't do this horrendous thing in the midst of Israel. And he was taken by the passions of the flesh and he came. and overtook him by his force and with his strength, and then he did what he did. And there's a verse there, a very powerful, that says that then he did not love her anymore, but rather the hate that he had for Tamara was stronger than the love that he initially had for her.

And what he does is that he's not going to send her away. And then she says, no, don't do this, please, my brother. Don't do this. You are to marry me, because if you do this, this is even worse than the first thing that you have done against me. But because of the hatred of Amon, within his heart, he sent her away.

The Bible says that Tamar, we should have read it, that Tamar now goes and dwells with Absalom, her brother, and she remains as a desolate woman. A woman who had been united by force to a man in consummation. This man was supposed to take this woman in marriage. Now, because of Satan and unrighteousness within him, he did something really evil. He did not consummate that marriage and remain with Tamar, but rather sends her away without a letter of divorce.

And this woman now remains as a desolate in the house. What is a desolate woman? Well, perhaps she was not able to marry anymore. She was not able to participate in the ceremonies and in the things of Israel. She remained as a desolate woman in the house.

Yet, the theoretical woman that we have here in chapter 24 is a woman who received a letter of divorce. And then by virtue of that letter of divorce that was allowed to the people of Israel, she's able to now enter in another marriage. Because the second man now is also willingly and involutionally accepting this woman and receiving her in marriage. This man is not taking into account whatever made her unclean or whatever made her indecent in the eyes of the previous man, but he's receiving her in marriage. And this marriage is accepted according to the scriptures.

They enter into this marriage, and she is able to marry him. The second man will hate her in his heart and give her a letter of divorce because of the hardness of their hearts. She had not done anything that was worth of death. Whatever she did or became was possible to be forgiven, was potentially forgiven or cleansed or purified with whatever atonement the covenant gave, yet because of the hardness of the heart, The Lord allowed them to give a letter of divorce. The love of bread and the same hardness of the heart is the hardness of the heart that we see there in the Pharisees when they're asking that question in Matthew chapter 19, coming and saying, when can we divorce our wives?

They are not asking in order to have an answer to the question. They are trying to find a way to indeed divorce this wife. And the Lord said, whatever the Lord has joined, men is not to put asunder, men is not to separate, because it has been established by the Lord. And brother, dear sister, forgiveness under the old covenant and forgiveness under the new covenant is the initial and the most important means by which we fulfill the law. Forgiveness is the instrument that God himself uses to fulfill the law in the person of Jesus Christ.

Forgiveness is the instrument that was used with a woman who was caught in adultery because it was the forgiveness of Christ, the same forgiveness that we are called to give to our brothers and sisters and to our wives. Brothers and sisters, this is the excellency of marriage, that is to be remaining together until the end by virtue of continuous atonement through forgiveness. Let me now quickly, super quickly, speak about the second section here, and I want to point your attention to verse 6, and I'm going to try to speak there very briefly. If you go to verse 6, we have the second section of this chapter, and I said to you, be it brother or sister, that this second half of the chapter I wanted to speak to you about the sacredness of life. The sacredness of life.

Now, life, according to the scriptures, is not sacred just by virtue of existence, but life is to be sacred and is indeed sacred as we live. It is not about just allowing a person to exist, but it's about allowing that person to exist with whatever they need. Whatever is necessary, I say provision for the life of a person, is as sacred as the life of that person, him or herself, because that provision, then that person will not live. And that is the principle that we're given there in verse 6. A meal or an upper meal stone was whatever was used by the Jews or by the Israelites to produce much of the food that they will eat.

So it says, no one shall take a meal or an upper meal stone in pledge or in security, like a loan, a security, a guarantee, for that would be taking a life in pledge. That is, you are not to take the means by which a person exists and eats and works and lives, because if you take that, then it's necessary for them to eat and exist and live, then you're taking their lives. It would be almost equal for you to come and just take their lives because they need that as sustenance for their existence. So then, when you come all the way down to that chapter, you will see that the Lord is speaking through Moses about precisely that, the sacredness of life. In verse seven, if you see basically it says kidnapping, you are not to take a person because if you take that person, then you're a thief.

And if you're a thief, you deserve death. In verse eight through nine, it speaks about leprosy diseases. But this is the leprosy disease is not only about the skin. You remember, a leprosy disease was also for house and different utensils. And when a person was with leprosy, or the house was with leprosy, or the utensils were with leprosy, they were worth nothing.

The person had to go outside of the camp, and the house could not be used for what it was supposed to be used, and the utensils could not be used for whatever they were supposed to be used. Or in verses 10 through 13, these are just pledges or securities or guarantees for lungs. And we are told here that they have to be voluntarily given to the person that is given the one. And if your brother is poor, then you are to return that place. Because if you take the place for you, then your brother is not going to be able to provide for himself.

And even if you go there to verse 13, very clearly there in the beginning of the verse, Do not oppress a worker by not paying what is fair or taking their wages return and give to them what they deserve. Because if you take their money, their wages, and even if they are poor, they are not going to be able to get what they need for eating and existing and surviving. And even if you go there to verse 17 through 20, do not oppress the sojourner or the person that is coming to your land, but do justice for the needy, for the poor, for the widow. The one that is in need is supposed to be helped and is supposed to be supported. Why?

Because of the sacredness of life. It's not only about existence. but the community of the people of Israel were supposed to care about the subsistence of their brothers and sisters and whoever came into the land of Egypt. That was the principle that was given to the people of Israel, that they were to care for the life of their brothers and sisters, and whatever it was necessary for them to exist and to subsist, it was to be respected. If a person takes what is necessary for us to exist, then that person is violating our lives.

If a person comes and takes our source of food and takes our house and takes whatever is necessary for us, that person is dealing with our lives. It's like taking our lives. And the Lord says that this is a great evil in the land. The author concludes there in verse 22, he is saying, this is a very powerful verse there in verse 22, dear brother, he says, you shall remember, that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. Therefore, I commend you to do this."

All of these things that you are supposed to do, all of these laws concerning remarriage and marriage and concerning your house and concerning the sacredness of life and concerning securities and pledges, all of these laws are to be rooted in your remembrance that mercy was shown upon you, and because you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and I gave you freedom with my grace, with my mercy, and you were taken out of that, then that is meant to be that which moves you, to provide for your brother, to provide for your sister, to care about your brother, to care for your sister, to care for your wife, to care for your husband, and to live in the land according to the law that I have given you. And beloved brethren, never able, not only the people of Israel, but even the world, never able to fulfill all their requirements of this law. They will fall short, and we have fallen short also of the standard of the law that was given to the people of Israel, only with one purpose. The purpose is that we will point it to the need of a person who will be able to forgive us and to give us the righteousness that we are unable to obtain. The only purpose by which or for which the Lord, God of Israel, imprisoned everything as sin was that sin will increase, that the awareness of guilt will increase, and that by increasing within the soul of the person, then that person will realize that, absolutely, I'm hopeless, and there's nothing that I can do to please this God that demands that I will be righteous and righteous perfectly.

Apostle Paul, as we said last week, says in Galatians 3 that the purpose of all of these things is to point us to the person of Jesus Christ. If you have the time and if you read Romans 1 and you go from verse 18 until the end, there in verse 32 says that all men have given themselves, because they have denied the Lord, the Lord has given them to a devised mind, or a mind that is corrupted, a mind that is just given. And they have given themselves to all type of impurities and all type of sins and unrighteousness. And it says something very fearful there in verse 82. Knowing the righteous judgment of God, they do not only do those things, but they also approve those who do those things.

knowing the righteous judgment of God, that the result of violating the law is death. They are not unaware of the judgment of God. They know the judgment of God. They do not only do them, but they please themselves, and they are satisfied with those, and approve those who give themselves to do all of those horrendous things. fearful thoughts, my dear brother and sister, because apart from the grace of the Lord, we are recipients of that judgment of God.

And apart from the grace of the Lord, we would be given over to a mind that is deprived, to a mind that is taken, to a mind that is corrupt, to a mind that desires to give itself to all of these type of things. And apart from the intervention of the Holy Spirit, we will not only be doing those things, And we will be rejoicing and approving and also supporting and helping all of those people that will do all of those unrighteousness. The duty of the Christian, remember the Egypt from which you have been taken. According to the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in Revelation, remember from where you have fallen. Because when you remember in our conscience of the salvation that the Lord Jesus Christ has given us, then it's only at that moment in which we are enabled to do what he has commanded us to do.

Amen. Let us pray.