Deuteronomy 25, and let's read
beginning in verses 5 down through verse 10. See what we can glean
from this passage of Scripture this evening. Deuteronomy chapter
25, and let's begin reading in verse 5. If brethren dwell together,
probably maybe not in the same house, but in the same community,
And one of them die, and have no child. The wife of the dead
shall not marry without unto a stranger. Her husband's brother
shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform
the duty of the husband's brother unto her. And it shall be that
the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of
his brother which is dead. that his name be not put out
of Israel. And if a man lack not to take
his brother's wife, then let his brother's wife go up to the
gate and to the elders, and say, My husband's brother refuses
to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, and will not
perform the duty of my husband's brother. Then the elders of his
city shall call him and speak unto him, And if he stand to
it, and say, I like not to take her, then shall his brother's
wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his
shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer
and say, so shall it be done unto that man that will not build
up his brother's house. And his name shall be called
in Israel the house of him that has his shoe loosed. I think we have to remember something
about the Jewish nation. They were big on families. They
always wanted to distinguish their families. Individual families,
they wanted them to prosper, they wanted them to have many
children, and they wanted the name of the person to have the
children to EXIST in His children, in His posterity. And that's
what we see here in this passage. That's why you see so many places
in the Scripture in the Old and sometimes in the New Testament
where the Jews, the Israelites, the Hebrews were praying for
children. The husbands and the wives coveted
children. Remember Isaac and Rebekah? They
didn't have children. They went to the Lord and prayed
to have children. Leah had several children, but
Jacob's other wife didn't. Rachel had no children. She went
and begged the Lord for children. Hannah prayed the Lord to give
her Samuel, even in the New Testament. The old couple, John the Baptist's
mom and dad, remember them? Zechariah and Elizabeth, they
were praying for a child. So you see this. They put emphasis
on the family, the preservation and the distinction of each individual
family. And the second thing, not only
did it was the preservation and distinction of the individual
families, but they put a lot of stock in the inheritance of
the firstborn. That's what verse 6 here is about.
Raise up a child to his brother. His older brother, the firstborn
brother, had died, so he went in to his brother's wife, married
her, and had a child and then that child became the firstborn
of his brother. Now this was a practice among
the Hebrews long before this Law of Moses was written. I want
to turn and show you a place that is very interesting over
in Genesis chapter 38. Genesis chapter 38 and look in
verse 1. This is a familiar story that
happened to one of Judah, Jacob's son's son, Jacob's grandson. Look here what he says in Genesis
chapter 38. This thing of if your older brother
died, the younger brother married his widow. That was more of a
culture thing and it showed the The importance they put on their
families. They didn't want a single child
to die without his name continuing in Israel. So look in verse 2. This is Judah now. This is Jacob's
son in verse 2. Genesis 38, 2. And Judah saw
there a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name was Shua,
and he took her and went in unto her. He took her for wife, and
she conceived, and bore a son, and called his name Er. And she
conceived again, and bore a son, and she called his name Onan.
And she yet again conceived, and bore a son, and called his
name Shelah. And he was at Shezeb when she
bore him. And Judah took a wife for Er,
his firstborn, whose name was Tamar. And ere Judas firstborn
was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord slew him. And Judas said unto Onan, Go
in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed
to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should
not be his. What he is talking about there,
he knew that this child If the child was born to him, it wouldn't
be his child. It would be his brother's child.
And therefore, it would be the firstborn child. And what did
that mean? That meant Onan would not inherit. He wouldn't be the firstborn.
He'd lose the inheritance. So what did he do? It came to
pass, when he went unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the
ground, his seed on the ground, lest that he should give seed
to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased
the Lord, wherefore he slew him also. Then said Judah unto Tamar,
his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow at thy father's house, Toshila,
my son be grown. For he saith, Lest preadventure
he die also, as his brethren did. And Tamar went and dwelt
in her father's house." Now, this is the sin that Onan committed. It was a sin of covetousness.
He didn't want to lose his inheritance. Because like I said, he knew
that if he had a child by his brother's wife, that child would
not be his, but his brother's wife. And therefore, he would
lose his inheritance. So that was the first sin for
which the Lord slew him. But there was a deeper sin here
too, and it was this. In the Old Testament, the first
promise that was ever given concerning the Lord Jesus Christ was in
Genesis chapter 3 verse 15. I bet all of us remember that
promise. It's concerning the Messiah, the coming of the Lord
Jesus Christ to bruise the serpent's head. Remember that? The seed
of the woman. And from that time on, all of
those who believed God, they looked for that seed. The Messiah
is coming. They wanted to have children
for that reason because the Messiah was coming through the seed of
the woman. Here was another sin of Omen.
He didn't love Christ. He had no faith in that promise.
That's why he did not have the child. He had been told that
the Messiah was coming to bruise the serpent's head, but he didn't
care. He didn't believe. He didn't
have the heart that even Eve had when she begged of the Lord
a child. Or all those other Hebrew women
who begged of the Lord of a child. They knew the Messiah was coming
through the seed of the woman. He didn't care, did he? He had
no faith in Christ. He had no faith. He had no love
for the Savior. And that's one of the reasons
that the Lord slew him. Christ was going to be the firstborn.
He was more concerned about His inheritance. than herded to the
firstborn son. He had no reverence for that
at all. But you know it's strange, considering that, how he did
this woman, when this woman, just a while after this, through
deceiving her father-in-law, she had a child. Remember that?
His name was Pharis. And it was through his lineage
that the Lord Jesus Christ came. So isn't it ironic that here's
a man that says, I don't want to have a baby but this woman,
and yet that woman was in the very lineage of Christ, but he
didn't care, did he? That's why the Lord slew him. So this was one of the reasons
this was so ingrained in the Hebrew culture, and this is one
of the reasons Moses wrote this law. When a man died, his brother
went in and raised seed to his brother. Because they were looking
for the seed of the woman. It had to do with the inheritance
of the firstborn. It was important to them. And
it also had to do with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to Himself
was the firstborn. That's the first thing I wanted
to say about this. The second thing is this. Let's consider
this widow herself. This woman herself. She had lost
her husband. Can you imagine what a predicament
that put this woman in? He had refused to marry her.
And now she would be a widow by no means financial means of
support. She would be destitute probably.
You see many places in the Scripture where it talks about widows,
there were many widows in Israel because they did not have the
support like a lot of widows have in our day. Can you imagine
the fear come into her heart when He refused
her. She was a widow. We're told here
that she was refused, needy. Naomi said, I went out
full, but I've come home empty. She went out and had a husband,
came home without one. And now that's where this woman
here found herself. Can you imagine the embarrassment?
The humiliation, the shame. This was not only done to her.
He not only refused her, but he refused her publicly. This
was done in the gate with the elders sitting there. And they
called him and gave him an opportunity to recant and change his mind. And he said, No, I don't want
her. Can you imagine how that humiliated this woman? She is
a widow without any means of support. And now she was refused. No opportunity unless she went
to some strange house maybe to be married and to have another
child. So it threw her into an awful, awful predicament. Awful, awful predicament. A widow
with no child, refused, shamed, reproached, and grieved. That's where she found herself.
And the only recourse she had, if you could call it that, The
only revenge she had was to go spit in his face. I guess she
got something out of that. I bet she cleared his throat
before she spit, Reckon. And every time she went by his
house, she pointed up there and said, that's where the man lives
whose shoes had been loosed from his foot. Reproached him when
she could. There's a passage of Scripture,
and I want you to turn over and read it with me. It's over in
Isaiah chapter 54. It has to do with a Jewish church. And I think it relates to this passage here concerning
this widow. The Jewish church can really
identify with this widow. The church of old, the Jewish
church in the Old Testament. Look here in Isaiah chapter 54, how the Lord identifies her,
and she's a widow too. In Isaiah 54 and verse 1, Sing,
O barren, thou that didst not bear. Break forth unto singing,
and cry aloud, Thou that didst not travail with Jah. For more
are the children of the desolate than the children of the married
wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tents,
and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitation. Spare
not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stake. For thou
shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and thy
seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities
to be inhabited. Fear not, for thou shalt not
be ashamed, neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to
shame. For thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt
not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy
maker is thine husband, the Lord of hosts is his name, and thy
Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole earth, shall
he be called. For the Lord hath called thee
as a woman forsaken, grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth,
when thou wast refused, saith the Lord thy God. For a small
moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I
gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face
from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness Well, I
have mercy on thee, saith the Lord. Now, he says some of the
same things here that we've been talking about this widow over
in Deuteronomy chapter 25. There in verse 1, look what he
calls her. He calls her barren. Sing, O
barren. And when you think about the
church in the Old Testament, I mean the real church, she was
basically barren compared to the world. The whole nation of
the children of Israel were just a tiny nation. But you know,
all of the Jews weren't saved. Just because they were Jews,
that didn't save them. They still had to be believers.
Many of the Jews perished. So throughout the Old Testament,
the Lord could really say, a little flock. She was a little flock. And in that sense, He calls her
here barren. And here also in verse 1, He
calls her desolate. Did you notice that? saying,
O barren that didst not bear, break forth into singing, cry
aloud, thou that didst not travail with child, for more are the
children of the desolate." She was desolate. No means of self-support. Poor. Poverty stricken. And look
what he tells her in verse 4. She had shame. She was ashamed. Thou shalt forget the shame of
thy youth. Also in verse 4, she is called
a widow with reproach. The reproach. You shall not remember
the reproach of thy widowhood anymore. So she was a woman forsaken
and verse 6 tells us that she was refused and grieved in spirit. So that sounded like that widow
woman we've been studying, doesn't it? She is refused. She was grieved
in her spirit. She had been forsaken and she
was a widow without any children. But you'll notice here in verse
5, look at where this little church's faith was. The church
in the Old Testament. For thy maker is thine husband,
the Lord of hosts is his name, and thy Redeemer, the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, is the Holy One of Israel. And look
what He's called, the God of all the earth shall He be called.
Now, He said, I'm going to be your husband. You've been called
a widow, you've been called forsaken and desolate and no children,
but you're going to have a great husband. And the Son of God is
your Redeemer, and He's your husband, the God of all the earth,
shall He be called. So back up in verse 1 again,
just notice how things change. Here now He told her, her children,
single, barren, that did not bear, break forth into singing
and cry aloud. Now that this not prevail with
John, for more are the children of the desolate than the children
of the married wife." You know Paul quoted this verse over in
Galatians 4.27 and he applied this to the church and it is
the Old Testament church and said you are going to have more
children than the married woman. That is a great promise ain't
it? And here in verse three, look what's said about her. And
thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and
thy seed, if it's speaking of her or probably speaking of Christ,
the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the seed of David,
he shall inherit the Gentiles and make the desolate cities
to be inhabited. So here's the promise to this
church, this widow, that you're going to have a husband and you're
going to increase your seed, the Jews in the first chapter
and second chapter through the book of Acts. Remember it said
many believed, multitudes were added to the Lord. And then when
the Gentiles began to be brought in, there was multitudes of them.
Even to this day there has been multitudes, a countless number
of Adam's race brought in. And this poor widow has a husband
and now countless multitudes of people in the church. Wouldn't
it be wonderful, I doubt this is so, but wouldn't it be wonderful
if there was more in heaven than there is in hell? Wouldn't that
be wonderful? Spurgeon used to say, counting
all the little infants that's died and saved by the marriage
of Christ and heaven being populated, there'll be more in heaven. I
don't know that. Maybe some scripture seems to indicate that's not
so, but that's a wonderful thought, And here he tells her up here
in verse 2, look what he tells her. He gives her some instructions
here if this is really going to happen. Enlarge the place
of your tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy inheritance.
Spare not. Lengthen thy cords, and strengthen
thy stakes. For thou shalt break forth on
the right hand and the left. And what he's telling them is
this. He's likened the church to a tent. And she's had this
little tiny tent. And he said, I'm telling you
what you better do. You better strengthen that tent. You better
let out your cords and drive the stakes deeper in the ground,
because I'm going to enlarge the inhabitants of your tent.
And that's what he's been doing all through the New Testament,
ain't he? And we look back on the Old Testament church and
her infancy, and now they're all in glory. And the New Testament
church, most of them is in glory. And we're still here. But you
know we're one with all of them. All of us are one in the Lord
Jesus Christ. There's not two churches any
more than there's two Gospels. We're all one in the Lord Jesus
Christ. One in Him. A widow, enlarge
the place of your tents. You know every believer can relate
to this widow, to being a widow, just like these widows that you
and I have been studying about in our text and here in Isaiah
54. Look in retrospect. We had a husband, didn't we?
In our natural state, when we were in nature, we had a husband.
We had the law. The Bible teaches that the law
was our husband. And boy, he's mean to us, wasn't
he? I mean, you couldn't satisfy him. He just kept wanting more
and more. No matter how well you thought you'd done, when
he came home, he didn't tell you how good you'd been that
day. He told you how you'd failed and how you should have done
more, and what you did wasn't done good enough. And then he
beat you up and sent you to bed bruised and fearful and grieved
to lay there and sob all night. I tell you, the law wasn't a
good husband, was it? But you know the law. is dead to us. We're dead to the law and it's
dead to us. It has no more dominion over
us. We've got a new husband now, the Lord Jesus Christ. And He
loves us, doesn't He? And He speaks so comfortably
to us. He doesn't beat us up. He's not
mean to us. He tells us that everything He
has He shares it with us. All His victories are our victories. And when we fail, what does He
do? He forgives us. He is such a good husband, isn't
He? And I tell you, doesn't it make you want to please Him more?
I tell you, the law will beat on you to drive you and try to
make you do stuff, and it disgraves you to death. But Christ is your
husband, and you want to please Him, don't you? You want to please
Him. You look at Romans chapter 7.
The first few verses of that chapter sometimes it tells us
about Christ being our husband now. And what do we say about
oral life and nature? I remember the promises I used
to make. Ben Larry talked about it sometimes. The promises we
used to make God when we were lost and break them. Just made
them to break them. Depending on our morality that
was like a white as separator. You know what we do about that
now? We do the same thing with those
things that this woman did with her husband. We spit on them,
don't we? Just spit at them. Call it a
house with him that has its shoe loose. You rascal, you're unprofitable. You're just unprofitable. We
got a new husband now, a good husband. Let's look at this another
way right quickly because I want to look at it this way, and I
want you to turn over to Matthew Chapter 22. I want to look at
this because the Lord Jesus dealt with our tax. There were some
Sadducees who came to Him and quoted our tax to Him, at least
a portion of it, and confronted Him with it. In Matthew Chapter
22 and verse 23, these Sadducees came to the Lord Jesus and they
wanted to prove that there was no resurrection of the body. The Sadducees were a group of
men, they weren't very many of them, but they were a very strong
group. They didn't believe in the physical
resurrection of the body, they didn't believe in angels, and
they didn't believe in the immortality of the soul. They thought when
you died in body, your soul died with you. You can find that in
Acts chapter 23 verse 8. But look here in verse 23 through
verse, well, let's read the first, through verse 28 first. Matthew
22, 23. The same day came to him the
Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection. And they asked
him, saying, Master, Moses said, if a man die, having no children,
his brother shall marry his wife and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven
brothers, and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased,
he died, and having no children, no offspring, no issue, left
his wife unto his brother. Likewise, the second also took
her, and the third took her, and even unto the seventh. And
last of all, the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection,
whose wife shall she be of the seven? For they all had her. Now they came here to disprove
the resurrection and this is the Scripture, our text that
they used to disprove it. Now that's sort of a stretch,
ain't it? But you know what the enemies of the truth will do?
I'll tell you what they'll do. You'll see them do it all the
time. They'll take a truth and they'll twist it or they'll exaggerate
it, add something to it and then they'll say, now look how ridiculous
that is. And that's what they did with
the Lord Jesus. They said, here's Moses' commandment, now here's
these seven men who had her. I doubt that. Can you imagine
a case like that happening? Well, you just about know it
never did happen, but that's what the enemies of the Lord
will do. I had a fellow who came to me one day, and I guess he
was mad at the Lord anyway. He didn't believe Him or something.
He said, you know when God took the children of Israel out of
the rich northern part, of Egypt and it was rich up in there.
And he said he brought them into that desolate place over in Palestine. He said, all the countries around
them are just loaded with oil, but there's hardly any oil in
Israel. I said, well, there's two things about that. I said,
one thing you're missing. Back when the Jews came there,
they didn't need oil. What were they done with oil?
And the next thing is this, that's still some of the richest and
fertile soil over there of any of those nations. But whatever
it is now, it can't compare to what it was when God brought
them into that land. That was the richest country,
the most fertile country. All the minerals were rich in
that land. Listen to Deuteronomy chapter
8. We studied on this when we were over there in verse 7. Listen
to this. Here's this land. The Lord thy God bringeth thee
into a good land, a land of brooks, of water, of fountains, and depths
that spring out of the valleys and out of the hills, a land
of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and palm granites,
a land of olive trees, a land of honey and milk, a land wherein
thou shalt eat without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything
a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest
dig brass, when thou hast eaten an ark full, then thou shalt
bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath brought
you into." But that fellow thought because he wasn't a believer
that he'd just bring some kind of reproach on what the Lord
did to these people. Sometimes I see a clip of Bill
Morrow, he's one of the these talking heads on TV and he's
an atheist. I don't think he's an agnostic.
I think he's an atheist. But I heard him talking the other
night. And he said, the greatest mass
murderer is the Christian God. That's what he said. That's how
bold that man is. The greatest mass murderer is
the Christian God. And he'd given an example of
the flood, the old world. how He brought in the flood.
But one thing He left out, one thing He left out, what kind
of people did He destroy? He left out that they were exceedingly
sinful. He left out that the earth was
filled with violence through them. He just conveniently left
that out. And here's this murderous God
in an arbitrary way dispensed upon them with this flood and
washed them all away. God is a holy God. And He'll
punish sin and He'll punish sinners, but they'll know why He punished
them. They'll know why He punished them. And it won't be done in
an arbitrary way. It'll be each individual will
stand before Him and give account of themselves. But people do
that, don't they? They twist and exaggerate. That's what these fellows here
did. Look here in verse 29 how the Lord Jesus answered them.
They never could take Him in His words. He's the wisdom of
God. And Jesus said unto them, You
do error. You do error. The first error
was this. They didn't understand the Scriptures.
Wasn't that what He told them? You do error not knowing the
Scriptures. They erred concerning the resurrection
of the body. They erred concerning the soul.
It does live on forever. They erred concerning these things.
And look at this, not knowing the power of God. That was their error. That was
their mistake. You know, if they had read the
Scriptures and believed the Scriptures, they would have believed the
souls in order. They'd believe there was a life
after this life. The Bible says that Enoch walked
with God, and he was not, for God took him. Where did He take
him to? He took him to heaven, didn't
He? When the chariot swept down and picked up Elijah, the Scripture
said the Lord took him. David said, I can't bring my
son back, but I can go to be with him. Where did He go? To the grave? To annihilation? There's no comfort in that, is
there? He went to heaven to be with His little infant who had
died. That's His meaning. Why didn't they know that? They
didn't know the Scriptures. They didn't know the Scriptures.
And the resurrection? How many places could you and
I turn to in the Old Testament Scriptures that teach us of the
resurrection? Job said, I know my Redeemer
living. And when I die and skin worms eat this body, yet some
day, he said, in my flesh I shall see God. In my flesh. David said, I'll be satisfied
when I awake in your likeness. I shall behold your face in righteousness. We could turn to all sorts of
Scriptures and prove that. Why didn't they know that? They
erred not knowing the Scriptures. and the arid not knowing the
power of God. These Sadducees leaned on their
own human reason and what they did, and this is so important,
they denied revelation and they denied the power of God. And I tell you, when we do that,
we get in trouble, don't we? We get in trouble. Is it beyond
belief to you and I that the eternal God could create a universe
out of nothing. It is to some people. They're
trying to reason out how this all come into being, where life
originated at. They're leaning to their own
understanding, human reason. This did not evolve, brothers
and sisters. This was created out of nothing
by the power of God's voice. He spaked this universe into
being. And these poor Sadducees, I know
a preacher used to say, the reason they called them Sadducees, they
were sad, you see. And if I didn't believe in the
resurrection, I'd be sad too, wouldn't you? But the reason
they thought that, they said, here a man dies and he goes back
to the dust. Some people are burned and their
ashes are scattered into the air. They are no more. They say,
the Corinthians said, How can the dead come up? How can they
be raised? And what bodies would they have,
they said. Paul said, you fools, you fools, you are denying the
power of God. He that made the body out of
dirt to begin with, can He not gather that dust and form it
and fashion it into His glorious likeness and give it life and
eternal being again? Well, of course He can. I tell
you, we cannot lean to human reason. We cannot. We're entering another realm.
We're getting out of the realm of human reason and human possibilities
and human abilities and we're getting into the realm of God. And with God, all things are
possible. Mary said, How can this be? I
don't know a husband. And what did the angel answer? With God. All things are possible. And the Lord Jesus was telling
these Sadducees here, He said, you're denying revelation. You're
denying revelation. You're leaning to your own reasoning.
You're trying to understand this with your carnal heads. Reason
it out and figure out how it can happen. And He says, you're
not believing what's revealed in the Scripture. and you have
forgotten the power of God. With God, all things are possible.
We do have immortal souls, don't we? Our conscience tells us that,
but the Word of God tells us that. What would a man give in
exchange for his soul? If he gained the whole world,
lose his soul. And when our body dies, our soul
shall live on, either in heaven or hell. And there will be a
resurrection of the just and of the unjust, and the body and
the soul shall be reunited forever, and the lost will suffer for
their sins forever, and the saved will be in heaven with their
Lord, free from all infirmities, all necessities of this life,
and they will be with the Lord forever, and be as the angels. Ain't that what he went on to
tell them? Look at this, in verse 29, You do error, not knowing
the Scriptures, nor the power of God. When the resurrection,
they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels
of God in heaven. Boy, the Lord's made a great
difference in us, hasn't He? Look what He's done with us,
poor old us, of all people. He's took us, we were like widows,
each one of us, like poor widows, destitute, poor, in poverty,
having no husband, having no children? And look what He's
done. He did for us just what He did
for the church of old. He redeemed us. He called us. He said, I'm your husband. He's
the Lord our God, our Redeemer. And bless His name someday, someday,
in the resurrection. will be glorified and be like
Him and be with Him forever. What a day! What a day that will
be! The Lord bless His Word. I hope
that was a help to you and a blessing to you. David, would you dismiss
us?