Deuteronomy 5
RileyDeuteronomy 5:1-33
THE OF THE LAWDeu_5:1 to Deuteronomy 26:19 record for us a recapitulation of the Law. The study of this section sets out clearly certain fundamental truths.The Decalog is repeated with significant variations. Chapter 5, fundamental to all the laws of God is the Decalog. In Exodus, Moses delivered the same as he brought it from the tip of the fingers Divine. In Deuteronomy, the Law is given again. From the first to the tenth commandment, the very language of Exodus is employed, save in the instance of the fourth.
Here, the reason assigned to the Jew for keeping the Sabbath, is strangely and significantly changed, namely, from “because the Lord in six days made heaven and earth and rested on the seventh day”, to “Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm; therefore, the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15).This change is so strange and so unexpected that it arrests immediate attention and demands adequate explanation. Why did God shift the reason for keeping the Sabbath from the finished creation to a completed redemption?
The answer is not difficult. In the Divine plan, redemption is a far greater event than creation; the soul of man exceeds the weight of the world; for that matter, of all worlds. The Law was given by Moses, but “Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ”. The Law was given for Jews; the Gentiles were never in bondage to it, and above all, believing Gentiles are not bound by it. To them, the Law is not a great external or outside force created for practices of restraint. Its spirit is transcribed to their souls rather; they walk at liberty while seeking Divine precepts. This is not to inveigh against the Law. “The Law is just, and true and good”, but by Law no man has ever been redeemed. It is to exalt Grace, which God hath revealed through Jesus Christ, in whom men have redemption from sin.
If I only love my father and mother because the Law commands it, I do not love them at all; if I refrain from making images and bowing down before them because this is the demand of the Law, my heart may yet be as full of idolatry as a heathen temple. Redemption is not by the Law; it is by Grace in Jesus Christ!The early Church was shortly called upon to settle this question of salvation by Law or Grace, and in the Jerusalem Conference Peter rose up and said unto them,“Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the Word of the Gospel, and believe.“And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us;“And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.“Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear”? (Acts 15:7-10).Later he said, “We believe that through the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (not by Law) we shall be saved, even as they” (Acts 15:7-11). Mark you, in that very sentence, Peter, the Apostle, proves his realization of the fact that the Law had failed as a savior and the very Jew himself had hope alone in grace. How strange, then, for men of the Twentieth Century to turn back to Law and proclaim the Law as though it were a redeemer, and protest that men who ignore the Jewish Saturday as the Sabbath will plunge themselves into the pit thereby, when the Law never saved! The keeping of the Sabbath was the one Law that contained in itself no ethical demand. The Law to worship, the Law to honor father and mother, the Law against killing, stealing and covetousness—these are all questions of right and wrong; but to tithe time by the keeping of the Sabbath was a command solely in the interest of man’s physical life.
When, therefore, by the pen of inspiration the reason for it was shifted from a finished creation to a finished redemption, the act was lifted at once to a high spiritual level and became a symbol of the day when Christ, risen from the grave, should have completed redemption’s plan. That great fortune to mankind fell out on the first day of the week, creating not so much “a Christian Sabbath” as making forever a memorial day for redemption itself, for the eighth day, or the first day of the week, clearly indicated the new order of things, or “the new creation” through Christ.We have no sympathy whatever with secularizing each one of the seven days; but we would have the first day of the week kept in the spirit of rejoicing as redemption’s memorial.
On that day our Lord rose from the dead; on that day He met his disciples again and again; on that day the brethren at Troas assembled with the Apostles and broke bread; on that day the Christians laid aside their offerings; on that day they met for prayer and breaking of bread—the fellowship of the saints; on that day John was caught up in the spirit and witnessed the marvels recorded in his apocalyptic vision. Oh, what a day! No legal bondage, for what have we to do with “holy days, sabbaths and new moons”; but salvation’s memorial, a day of special service to the Son of God, our Saviour, a day for the soul’s rejoicing in Jesus. “Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth”.But as we pass on in the study of this section of Scripture, we find Moses defends the Decalog in character and consequence. He reminds them of the glory out of which the voice spake (Deuteronomy 5:24). He reminds them of the obligation in the words themselves (Deuteronomy 5:32). He reminds them of the relationship of the possession of the land to obedience of the precepts.
He pleads with them as a father, “Hear, therefore, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4). He anticipates the day of prophecy and begs that these words have place in their hearts (Deuteronomy 6:6), to be diligently taught to their children (Deuteronomy 6:7); bound for a sign upon their hands and frontlets between their eyes, lest they be forgotten (Deuteronomy 6:8); written upon the posts of the house and on the gates, where they could not be unobserved (Deuteronomy 6:9).
Moses knew the relationship of law-keeping to national living. It is doubtful if modernists now have or will ever again entertain the same sacred reverence for Law that characterized the ancients, even the heathen of far-off days.We cannot forget how Socrates, when he was sentenced to death and, after an imprisonment of thirty days, was to drink the juice of the hemlock, spent his time preparing for the end; friends conceived and executed plans for his escape and earnestly endeavored to prevail upon him to avail himself of the opportunity, but he answered, “That would be a crime to violate the law even when the sentence is unjust. I would rather die than do evil”. If a heathen philosopher could treat unjust laws with such reverence, Moses was justified in pleading with his people to regard the laws that “were true and just and good”, and such were the mandates of Deuteronomy.It is easy enough for one to pick out some one of these precepts and, by detaching it from its context, create the impression that it was foolish or superficial or even utterly unjust; but when one reads the whole Book, he sees the effectual relationship of laws, general and particular, to the life Israel was leading, and for that matter, catches the supreme spiritual significance of the same as they interpret themselves in the light of New Testament teaching. There is not a warning that was not needed, nor an exhortation which, if heeded, would have failed to profit the people. It all came to one conclusion for Israel.“What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul” (Deuteronomy 10:12)?And as there was not a law in the Old Testament but was fitted for the profit of Israel, so there is not a command in the New Testament but looks to the conquest of the Christian soul.Among these enactments were personal and significant suggestions.
They gave dietary and sanitary suggestions (Deuteronomy 14); they established the Sabbatic year (Deuteronomy 13); they fixed the time of the Passover (Deuteronomy 16); they set forth the character of the offerings (Deuteronomy 17); they determined the duties of the Levites (Deuteronomy 18); they gave direction concerning the cities of refuge (Deuteronomy 19); they determined the way of righteous warfare (chap. 20); they established a court of inquest (Deuteronomy 21); they announced the law of brotherhood (Deuteronomy 22); they descended to the minute instances of social life and regulations of the same (Deuteronomy 23); they dealt with the great and difficult question of divorce (Deuteronomy 24); they ended (Deuteronomy 23) in an almost unlimited series of regulations concerning the social life of the people knowing a wilderness experience, including the law of the first fruits (Deuteronomy 26).It is interesting to study not alone the laws enacted here, but the penalties declared, including the blessings and curses from Ebal to Gerizim. There is about them all an innate righteousness that has been unknown to those purely human codes for which God never assumed responsibility.
From the curse against bribery to the curse against brutal murder to this day the sentences are justified in the judgment of the world’s most thoughtful men.In all they contrast the injustice and inordinately severe punishments often afflicted by godless governments. Plutarch, in writing about Solon, tells us that he repealed the laws of Draco except those concerning murder. Such was the severity of their punishments in proportion to the offense that we are amazed as we read them. If one was convicted of idleness, death was the penalty. If one stole a few apples or potherbs, he must surely die, and by as ignominious a method as did the murderer. And out of that grew the saying of Demades that “Draco wrote his laws, not with ink but with blood”. And when Draco was asked why such severe penalties, he answered, “Small ones deserve it, and I can find no greater for the most heinous.” Such were human laws in contrast to these laws Divine.But a further study of these laws involves a third lesson.