Let's begin in verse 11. Let's
read the two verses and just look at them as we go. Deuteronomy
chapter 25 and verse 11. And when men strive together
one with another, and the wife of the one draw near to deliver
her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth
forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets, then shall then
thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shalt not pity her."
Now I've been trying, and it's been very difficult to be honest
with you on some of these verses, to understand their meaning.
I know they have a meaning because the scripture says in the New
Testament, whatsoever things were written beforehand, before
time, were written for our learning. The problem we face by going
back in the Old Testament to these places is what do these
things teach us? What do they teach us today,
the church today? Of course, this is the law for
the ancient Jew. And when you read a passage like
this and like some of the other laws that we read, it makes you
glad that we're not back in those days, doesn't it? It makes you
glad you're not a Jew living back in those days. And I'm glad
that these laws now, they were for the ancient Jew, but I'm
glad that we're living in another time. I'm glad that even the
Jews now, no one as far as I know is required to obey this law,
to have this as the law of their land. Sometimes you're about
in the Muslim countries, this Sharia law which is very cruel,
They cut people's hands off all the time for theft. Well, they're
welcome to laws like that. I think it's too harsh myself.
I think there's a better way to deal with a thief than cutting
his hand off. And I can think of several ways
to do that. So they're welcome to those laws.
I'm glad that we have the laws we have and we're not under such
laws as you and I just read about. But what can we read? If we read
this, what can we learn about it? that will help us. And as I thought about this,
I thought, well, here's three things, surely, that we can learn
from these two verses of Scripture. One is, did you notice, and maybe
you've noticed this as we've been reading through this book,
the modesty of the terminology. The modesty of the language.
If she touched His secret parts. We know what that is, don't we?
That's His private part. But did you notice how with such
modesty this whole concept is set forth? The Hebrew, they tell
us the Hebrew is not only the first language and the purest
language that this world has ever known, but it's the most
modest language. It's modest. A few weeks ago, if you remember,
we studied about soldiers when they were in their camps. And
when they had a battle movement, they had to go outside the camp
and dig a hole and cover it up with their paddle. And if you
remember, right, the way that spoke of that was like this,
when they go out to ease themselves. And they cover that which comes
out of them. So while we read that and we
know what it means, We're living in a day where there's no modesty.
I mean, modesty has been thrown out the door. When I was a child,
we weren't allowed to talk so freely about the anatomy of the
body and bodily functions as they are today. And maybe they
were too strict on us in my day. We couldn't even talk about it
in medical terms. But I'm telling you, it's gone
the other way now. There's no modesty at all. You
hear people using these slangs for body parts and body functions
that is vulgar as it can be. And it's almost become culture,
ain't it? I heard somebody say the other day, well, it's a culture
thing. Well, we need to change the culture.
Don't we? Somebody needs to start and say,
yeah, that's the culture I was raised in. My brothers and sisters,
well, you start and change your culture. You don't have to use
language like that, do you? the immodest language like that. Listen to what the Apostle Paul
tells us, and this should surely be the language of a Christian,
of a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let no corrupt communication
proceed out of your mouth. If it comes there, then stop
it. Don't let any corrupt communication
proceed, but that which is good for edification. And here's what
Paul wrote to Timothy. He said, Consent to wholesome
words. Wholesome words. Even the words
of our Lord Jesus Christ and the doctrine that's according
to godliness. I tell you, if we just spake
like he spake, and I bet you he never told a joke, especially
an all-color joke, did he? Not him. And Paul said, Let your
words be even the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the first
thing we can see here is modesty in the language. Modesty in the
language. And secondly, I thought of this.
We can also see here the modesty of the woman. Aren't you glad,
men, that there's a difference between a man and a woman? And
one of them is modesty. It's modesty. If the man was
in a fight, we never read any place in the Scripture that I'm
aware of that he can't do whatever he needs to do to deliver himself.
If somebody's getting the best of him, kick him, scratch him,
poke him, anywhere, any way to get the best of him. But with
a woman, it wasn't that way. And one of the reasons it wasn't
is because there's a difference in the man and in the woman.
And one of the differences is modesty. The lady is modest. Paul said this about a woman.
Now listen to this. And I think this is what is meant
by the way we describe a woman. She's modest. One of the best
characteristics of a woman is she's modest in her attitude.
She's modest in her dress. She's modest in her talk. She's
just modest. And listen to what Paul said
about her. that the woman adorned themselves in modest apparel
with shamefacedness. That word means bashful. You
know one of the things that makes a woman pretty is sort of being
just a little bit shy. And I tell you what will make
a pretty woman ugly is a loud mouth. What did Solomon
say about that? He said it would be better to
dwell up in the attic by yourself than with a contentious woman,
an argumentative woman, a loud woman in a White House. And that's the way, just unbecoming
a woman to be loud and boisterous and argumentative. Not only did he say shamefacedness,
but sobriety, self-control. a certain bashfulness about her
and self-control about her. And that's why she wasn't to
do this certain thing, not even to deliver a husband. Let him
get beat up, but you remain modest. Maybe he needs to learn a lesson,
but you remain modest. Shame face. Thirdly, we may learn
a spiritual lesson out of this. I think probably this would apply
here, what the Lord Jesus Christ told us They cut this woman's
hand off here because her hand had offended. It had caused trouble. And the Lord Jesus said this,
and it's to be taken in a spiritual manner, If thy hand offend thee,
cut it off. It's better for you to enter
into life having one hand than having two hands to be cast into
hell. THE MOST PRECIOUS THING THAT
YOU AND I COULD POSSESS. IF THEY CAUSE US TO OFFEND, IF
THEY KEEP US FROM CHRIST OR KEEP US FROM WALKING WITH THE LORD
JESUS, HE'D BE BETTER TO CUT IT OFF WITH. CUT IT OFF AND CAST
IT FROM US, JUST AS THIS HAND THAT OFFENDED WAS CAST OFF. ALRIGHTY,
LET'S GO ON THEN TO VERSE 13, OKAY? This is the law against deceitful
weights and measures. It begins here in verse 13. Look
at it. Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers or different weights,
a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thine
house divers, measures, a great and a small. But thou shalt have
a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have. that thy days may be lengthened
in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. For all that
do such things and all that do unrighteousness are an abomination
to the Lord." Now, we don't do things like this now, but back
then they had a balance that they weighed things out with.
And if a man sold produce, if he sold barley wheat, or if he
sold cloth, bought and sold cloth, and they had to weigh that produce
and they had to measure the cloth. Well, they could cheat at that. And what they had was stones.
They had little stones from about a pound on up until however many
they needed, up to ten pounds or however big they needed, and
they had a marker on them. One pound, five pounds, six pounds. And what they would do if they
were crooked, They would take a stone that weighed five pounds
or six pounds. They said it weighed six pounds,
and they put it in there for a five-pound stone. They would
put the stone in there, then the farmer would come in and
sell his grain to them, five pounds of grain. Well, he was
really getting six pounds of grain. He had a five-pound stone
stamped on it, but it really weighed six pounds. So he got
six pounds of grain for the five pounds. Then when he turned around
and sold it, he put a little stone in there, a four pound
stone. So see what they were doing?
They had these deceitful rocks, these deceitful measures, balances.
And they did the same thing on the measuring. When they went
to buy some yarn or something, they had a huge, long yardstick. and then measure a whole yard.
And when they went to sell it, lo and behold, it was just 30
inches long. So they did things like that.
And this is something that the Lord began to warn Israel about
all the way back in Leviticus. And He warned them about it all
the way through the book of Proverbs. And yet when they backslid and
He'd take them off into captivity, this is one of the things that
He confronted them with. You've got these divers' weight
and these divers' measures. They were crooked. Listen to
Amos chapter 8 and verse 4. They were in trouble here as
a nation too. Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even
to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the
new moon be gone? They weren't allowed to sell
or trade in the new moon. That we may sell corn. And the
Sabbath, that we may sell wheat. making the epod small, and the
shackle great, and falsifying the balances by deceit, that
we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes,
yea, and sell the refuge, the bad of the wheat." And that is
why the Lord told them here in verse 13, 14, do not even have
these different weights in your bag. Do not have the different
measurements in your house. And you won't have to be concerned
about being tempted to do this. But that's what they were tempted
to do. That's what they did. If you look at the history of
the Jews, it's no wonder that we use such phrases as I was
growing up and my dad said it, you're as tight as a Jew. You're
as crooked as a Jew. You're as cheap as a Jew. Now
there's sometimes the Jews may have got a bad rap, but a lot
of times they brought it on themselves. In World War II, And one of the
ways that Hitler turned the citizens of Germany and Poland and some
of those other Eastern Bloc countries against the Jews is because the
Jews had all the money. They'd collected up all the money
and put it in their accounts and nobody had any money but
the Jews. They're still cheapskates. They're cheapskates, the Jews.
That's not saying anything bad about them, and not all of them
surely, but you look at the history of them. Moses said, ìYouíre
stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart.î And the last time
we have anybody to describe them was Stephen and the Apostle Paul,
and Stephen said the very same thing about them, didnít he?
ìYou do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your parents did, so
do you.î They were crooked. They were crooked. And they cheated
each other. You donít need this kind of a
law today, do you? You wouldn't do your neighbor like this, would
you? No Christian, no Christian would ever do this. You don't
have to stand over his shoulder and make sure he's got the proper
balance. He's got the proper balance in here, doesn't he?
He has the Holy Spirit to guide him and to lead him. Here's something
we do have to be careful of. We have some other weights and
measurements that we have to be careful of. We have one scale
and one measurement for ourselves. And we have another scale and
another measurement for other people. Do we not? You ever find
your heart doing that? I mean, you got your little measuring
stick out and boy, you make a narrow road for your neighbor and your
dear brother. But when it comes to you, you
measure and the road gets wide, doesn't it? You measure yourself
in this scale And boy, you keep it balanced. But when you put
your neighbor in there, boy, he tells it. Don't we do that? Remember what the Lord Jesus
said about this? And this is what He was meaning.
Judge not that you be not judged. For with the same measure you
meet, it's going to be measured back to you again. And He said,
why do you behold a little splinter in your brother's eye And you
don't see this big old log in your own eye. And you say to
your brother, hold right still, let me get that little splinter
out of there. And you can't see because you've got this moat,
this log in your own eye. He said, pluck first that beam
out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly how to get
that little splinter out of your brother's eye. But that's what
we do, isn't it? That's what we do. It's just
so natural for us to do that. One of the reasons that we can't
hardly get along with, if you know anything about the Reformed
Baptists, boy, they just pick each other apart. I used to have
my office down here just that once a while. They'd call and
say, my name is so-and-so, and wonder what time you have your
service. And I wouldn't talk to them two minutes, and I could
know they were Reformed Baptists. And you know one of the first
things they say? What do you all do about discipline over
there? What do y'all do about this? That's all they think about.
They got the rules and everything set down for everybody else,
and they watch everybody else. And they got the weights, and
they got the measurements for everybody else. But when it comes
to themselves, it seems like they've got a wider measurement. Judge not that ye be not judged. And as you and I walk with one
another and fellowship with one another in the Lord, boy, you're
something that we've got to have in our scales and we've got to
have in our measuring stick. And that's mercy. That's mercy. If you judge me without mercy,
I'm never going to make it. If I put you in my scales and
weigh you after my own judgment, you're never going to You're
going down to no scales. But here's what James said, Mercy
rejoiceth against judgment. He shall have judgment without
mercy who has shown no mercy. And as you and I walk with God,
as we enjoy Him, He must weigh us and He must
measure us with mercy. with mercy. Here's covenant mercy. Here's what the covenant says.
I love this. Listen to this. I will be merciful to their unrighteousness
and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. That's
what we need now. If we're going to walk with the
Lord and enjoy Him and be pleasing with Him, if He's going to watch
over us to pick us apart in every little thing we do, He's going
to accuse us And we ain't going to enjoy Him, are we? But this
is what He said, I will be merciful. And you know what we've got to
look forward to? Here's what Jude said, looking for the mercy,
looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. But somebody
say, Bruce, what about justice? Oh, God has perfect, He has a
perfect measuring stick, don't He? He has perfect scales. He has a just measure and a just
way. But if He deals with us on a
personal basis, we'll tip the scales. And here's what God will say
to us. I have weighed you in the balance. I found you one. Every time. Every time. If He sets His own just and holy
measurement on us, here is what He will say, You have sinned
and you have come short of My glory. You have not lived up
to My measure and stick. The Bible says that God is going
to judge the world how? By Jesus Christ. Do you know
one of the meanings of that passage? Christ is the standard. He's
not only going to speak to the world and judge the world by
Christ, but Jesus Christ is the standard. And I'll tell you one
thing, He was weighed in the balance, wasn't He? He didn't tip the scales. He
balanced them out perfectly because He was the just One. He's the
Holy One. God measured Him. and he lived
up to the full measurement of what God required of humanity. This is what the world needs
to hear today, brothers and sisters. This is what the world needs,
a world that is dead and trespassed and in sin. Here is the gospel
that they need to hear today, that Jesus Christ, the representative
man, has lived up and obeyed the full measure of what God
required out of you and out of me. And after he did that, he
bore the penalty that belonged to you and belonged to me. And
that's where reconciliation is. This is how God can be just,
and He will be just. I mean, he doesn't even have
any diver's weights in his house, does he? He doesn't have but
one measurement in his bag, and that's the Son of God, Jesus
Christ in our humanity, the perfect Son of God. That's his standard.
But in Him, we can be reconciled to God. In Him, we are reconciled
to God. And that's the way God can be
just, and yet the justifier of sinners like us. and yet be holy,
yet be just. God's not tempted to save a sinner
in any other way. He's not. He's not. He's not up in heaven wishing
and hoping that He could do it some other way. Ain't no other
way. In this representative man who
is just one, the Holy One, and who bore our sins in His own
body upon the tree. Now let's look at verse 17 through
verse 19 and finish this chapter right quickly. Look in verse
17. Here's another subject. Well,
I tell you, I wouldn't want to have been this man Amalek or
anybody of his descendants. in his country. Look at this.
Verse 17, Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when
ye were come forth out of Egypt. Now here's what he did. How he
met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, those that
were behind, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou
wast faint and weary, and feared not God. Now we're told there
that's what he did. And you can get this in your
mind. You can imagine this. What a cruel man this was. When
he sent his army, he may have been there with them, and he
looked and he saw a host of the Israelites, and they were tired.
They were worn out. There were some that were sick,
maybe some who were injured, some women and children, and
they were lagging behind. And he says, smite those people.
He didn't attack the front, he's afraid to, but he attacked the
back. And he smoked those weak people. And why did he do that? He didn't fear God. He didn't
fear God. Boy, I tell you what, you take
a man that don't fear God, he don't care what he does to man.
He didn't have the reverence of God in his heart that comes
there by the grace of God. And he didn't have a fear of
God that even the ungodly sometimes have, that common fear when they
look around them. They look up in the heavens and
the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness.
He had no fear. He was void. His conscience was
hard and seared. He did not fear God. So he said,
Smite them. Smite them. Verse 19, Therefore it shall
be when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine
enemies round about in the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee for the inheritance to possess it. that thou shalt blot out
the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven, thou shalt not
forget it." And it was a few hundred years later in the time
of Saul and the time of David when the Lord said, I remember.
I remember. They had probably forgotten it.
But the Lord spoke to Samuel and said, Samuel, I remember
what Amalek did. Boy, I tell you, a man's in trouble
if God remembers his sin. He may go for a while. He may
go for a long time. And it may seem like judgment's
not coming. But when God finally remembers
His sin, He's in trouble. God's either going to forgive
a man his sins or He's going to punish him for his sins. And
He said, I'm going to punish this man. I'm going to take all
of his descendants out and all of his tribe out. And boy, this
was the end of him. They put an end to his name.
God remembered His sin. Something else I saw in this
as I was reading and studying on this, this is somewhat of
an encouragement and maybe an exhortation to us. It is dangerous
to be weak in it. It is dangerous to be weak. I
know that we see that in ourselves. And in and of ourselves, we are
weak as we can be. We are unstable as water. But
to really be weak in faith is a dangerous thing. That is
who Amalek smoked. It is dangerous to grow weary.
And sometimes we do, don't we? We grow weary. But you know it
is dangerous to be that way? Because we have an enemy that
is more dangerous than this man here was. He's more cruel than
this man here was. And he watches us, and he waits
to see us grow weary, he waits to see us get behind, waits to
see us when some sickness sets up in our soul, he waits that
he may smite us. That's why we have these encouragements
like this. Be strong in the Lord and in
the power of His might. Grow in grace and knowledge of
the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Put on the whole armor of God
that you may stand against the wilds, the trickery of the devil. There's a passage in Ephesians
3.16. I think it's one of my favorites
because I've had to rely upon this so much. I went there and
read this and I memorized it and I've repeated it over and
over again. When I feel my utter weakness to do anything and it
scares me, I often think of this prayer that the Apostle Paul
prayed for the Ephesians. Listen to it. He said, I pray
that God would grant you according to the riches of His glory to
be strengthened with might. by His Spirit in the inner man. And that's what we're talking
about. That's where we need strength. That's where the battle is raging.
That's where we get weak. That's where we get faint is
in the inner man. So we need the Spirit of Christ
to strengthen us with His might inside of us. Paul says, when
I'm weak, I'm strong. I glory in my infirmities, he
said, that the power of Christ may rest upon thee. There's nothing
wrong with realizing our weakness. We should. We must realize that.
But we've got to realize also that there's strength beyond
measure. And it's available to each believer. The Lord Jesus is our strength. Bunyan wrote a book. about the
ruin of Antichrist, and in that book he referred to this passage
here about Amalek. And he likened the church in
the latter days to these folks here who were feeble and faint,
and they lagged behind. And he talked about the weakness
of the church in the latter times. And he said he hoped he was wrong,
and I hope he's wrong too. But you know, we can see it,
can't we? Can't we see the weakness of
the church in our day? If you listen to much radio and
you read much of what's coming out of the religious realm, I
think we almost conclude, where's the church? Where's the church? And I think we can conclude with
a wickedness and the iniquity that's increasing in our day
that the church is getting weaker and weaker. I think it's sort
of telling that the last church the Lord Jesus wrote to in Revelation
was the church of Odysseia. And He called it the church.
I sometimes wonder why, but He did. But He said you're rich,
you're increased with goods, and you think you have need of
nothing, but you know not. You're conditioned. The condition
that you're in. And then you go right over into
the 11th chapter of Revelations and this beast that comes up
out of the bottomless pit makes war against that church and overcomes
the church and kills the church. Now what kind of death that is?
I know it's not eternal death. There's no way it could be eternal
death. But some death that her testimony is finished and she
dies. But Satan never could overcome
the church until she gets in this weakened, weakened condition. And then he suffered to do that.
Boy, and the Reformation started somewhere even in the late 1400s.
On up through 1500s, the Reformation, how the church was getting strong
all the way through the 1700s and the 1800s. If you read about
just what went on in England, Over in Europe, it was absolutely
amazing the revivals they had. Even in this country, the revivals
they had and how strong the church was. But beginning sometime around
1900, you could see the church begin to get weaker and weaker
and left these Crusades in and walking the aisle, the Billy
Graham Crusade, just repeating the prayer and making the decisions,
no heart changing. And boy, the church began to
get weak. begin to get weak. God give us grace today to mend
our ways, to seek His face more earnestly. God visit us. The
Lord visit your people, your little flocks. There are little
flocks like this all over the United States, all over the world,
little flocks like this meeting or prayer meeting to study God's
Word. And I think probably we all realize
that we really are weak and we need a revival. We need His presence.
We need a visitation of His presence. May the Lord bless His Word.
We'll take up there next week in chapter 26.