Deuteronomy chapter 22. We've
been studying in this chapter. Now this will be the second week.
We've looked there in verse 1, and 1 through 4 really where
we saw someone's ox had gone astray
or their sheep, and we looked at that in verse 1. The children
of Israel were to help each other, be considerate of one another.
If they lost their ox or a sheep, they were to take it home. Verse
2, if they didn't know who it was, who it belonged to, they
were to feed the animal and keep it. And then in verse 3, everything
that pertained to their brother, whether they knew him or not,
if he was a brother, they were to return anything that he had
lost to them. And you see that through verses
1 through 4. And then in verse four, if an
animal had fell down and his owner was trying to get him up,
you stopped to help him. And what we learned from this
last week that this taught the Jewish society that they had
certain claims on one another. If you was among the children
of Israel, your brother had claims on your sympathy. you were to help him in his needs. Whatever those needs were, you
were to help him. That's what that taught us. And
what was the alternative? Do you remember the alternative?
It was to hide from him. Turn your back on him. Pretend
you didn't see anything that you could do. Remember the Lord
Jesus told us about the, we call it the parable of the Good Samaritan,
the man who went down and fell among thieves and they beat him
and left him half dead and robbed him. Remember the priest and
the Levite when they came and they saw him, but then they went
on the other side of the road. Why did they do that? So they
said, we really didn't see him. We saw something up there, but
they went on by him and they hid themselves. Then the Samaritan,
the good Samaritan came by poured oil in his wounds and put him
on his donkey and took him to the inn and took care of him.
So what these verses here teach us was that our brothers, really
humanity, really don't. They have a claim on our sympathy.
We should be sympathetic especially with God's people helped in the
time of need. And of course we look there in
verse 5 for a woman not to dress like a man or a man to dress
like a woman. I was thinking about that today
because I went to visit a fellow, and I knocked on the door, and
this boy opened the door. A little fellow. Well, it wasn't a little fellow.
It looked like to be in his early twenties. And this is the second time this
happened to me. And I knew who it was this time.
But the first time, a few days ago, it happened to me, I said,
Thank you, buddy. Thank you. And I left, and they said, Hey,
that's not a buddy. That's a girl. And later I found
out it was a girl. Still looks like a boy to me,
but it's a girl. Well, it's one of those types,
you know, that she wants to be a boy. She looks just like a
boy. That's what this is talking about. That's what this is talking
about. So watch who you call buddy.
It may not be a buddy. They be sissy. Thank you, sissy.
In verses 6 through verse 7, we look there where they were
probably cutting a road or something or paths, ran into these bird
nests and they weren't to kill the female bird. They could take
some of her eggs or some of her young. And we learned some good
lessons from that, really, how we'd be unwise living in this
world to abuse God's creation or His creatures. And I think
this teaches us to be tender-hearted to the least of God's creatures.
And if we be tender-hearted towards the least, then surely we'll
be tender-hearted towards man, our fellow man. And then, of
course, I think, I don't know if we looked at this or not,
but it probably teaches us, too, to treat anything or anybody
that's inferior to us in their position, treat them with respect
and with dignity. Now we come to verses 9, 10,
and 11, and let's look at them tonight. Thou shalt not sow thy
vineyard with different seed, thyverseed, different kinds of
seed, lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown and the
fruit of thy vineyard be defiled, be corrupted. Thou shalt not
plow with an ox and with an ass together. Don't plow with a cow
or an ox or a bull and a donkey or a horse. Thou shalt not wear
a garment of divers sorts as of woolen and linen together. Now, let me begin. Of course,
you know this. I'm preaching to the choir, but
we know that verses like 9 and 10 and 11, it applied to Israel
only in those days. The Gentiles had nothing to do
with this. And in the Gospel times, since
our Lord came and fulfilled the law, this doesn't apply to Jews
or Gentiles. So when we go back and look at
this now, we have to look at it in a spiritual sense. What
does this mean spiritually? Can we glean something spiritually
from this? And I think we can. I want you
to look in Leviticus. This gives us what he's saying
here in a nutshell. Look in Leviticus a couple of
places. Leviticus chapter 19 and verse 19. And then I want
us to turn over to Genesis chapter 1. Look here in Leviticus chapter
19. and verse 19. What this passage is teaching
us, Israel was to distinguish between kinds, between different
species, kinds of material they made their
clothes out of. They couldn't make their clothes
out of any kind of material and put them together, wool and linen.
They couldn't mix their different seeds. They had to distinguish
between seeds. They couldn't mix their seeds
and sow it in a field. And they couldn't plow with different
kinds of animals. They had to distinguish between
these things. Look here in verse 19 what he
says. He sort of runs all these together.
You shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle
gender with a diverse kind. Don't breed, don't attempt to
breed diverse kinds of animals. Thou shalt not sow thy field
with mingled seeds, neither shall a garment mingled of linen and
wool come upon thee." So the Jews had to distinguish between
these things. They did not plow with an ox
and a horse, did not mingle their seeds, and did not wear different
kinds of linen made out of different material. Now I want you to look
in Genesis chapter 1. in verse 11, Genesis chapter
1 and verse 11. And what the Lord is teaching
the children of Israel here in the natural realm that God Himself
distinguishes things. God separates things Himself. Even in the beginning, in the
natural realm, I want you to see how God Himself did not mix
things. He kept things distinguished. Look what He says in verse 11.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding
seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit, look at this, after His
kind. whose seed is in itself upon
the earth, and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass
and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding
fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind, and God saw that
it was good." In other words, He made grass, and then He made
the herbs, and then the fruit tree. But the grass was after
its kind? It wasn't mixed up with something
else. It was just pure grass. And then
the fruit tree was just the pure fruit trees and then the herbs. And look what he says over in
the 20th verse. He does the same thing with the
fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air. In verse 20, God
said, Let the water spring forth abundantly, the moving creatures
that hath life, and fowls that may fly above the earth in the
open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales
and living creatures that moveth, which the waters brought forth
abundantly, after their kind. And every winged fowl after his
kind, and God saw that it was good. So there we have the waters
in the seas, the animals in the sea creatures, those that fly
in the heavens, birds, But all of it was after their kind. And then he goes on in verse
22, And he blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and
fill the waters in the sea, and the fowls multiply in the heaven.
And verse 24, And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living
creature after his kind, the cattle, the creeping thing, the
beast of the field, after his kind. And it was so. And God
made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their
kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind. And God saw that it was good."
So He separated things, didn't He? Even the seeds that He caused
to come up. Everything was pure in its original
creation. Have you ever went out to the
grocery store and ate a pure peach? Never have, have you? I ain't either. You ever went
to the garden and picked a pure mess of green beans in their
original state, in their original creation? No, I haven't either. Have you? We don't. Nothing,
nothing is original anymore. God separated everything and
He made it pure. None of us now can go to the
stockyard and buy a cow and bring it home and say, man, that's
the original cow. Everything is purebred, as they
say, or it's what they call these seed hybrids. I wonder what a
steak would taste like from a pure cow, one that God made. We can't find them anymore, can
we? Everything anymore is mingled and mixed. It's not anything. I mean a cow, I don't even know
for sure what a cow may have looked like when God made it.
All we see is now is the ones that's been bred and bred and
all the different breeds. There's been no species mixed
up. A dog is still a dog. A cat is
still a cat. But within the individual species,
man, look at what we've got now. We don't have nothing in this
pure farm, do we? But in the original, in the original, there
was just one cow. There was just one horse. There
was one dog. There was one cat. When the fall
came and sin entered and the curse came, and with man's ability
and with man's desire, he has mingled everything together. All kinds of seeds, all kinds
of animals, and now everything is mixed and mingled together,
isn't it? farm store in the spring, down
at the garden shop, to get you some tomatoes, tomato seeds or tomato
plants. And I tell you, you'll stand
there and look for an hour, trying to figure out which breed you're
going to get. You ever do that? When God made
them, there was one tomato. One tomato. Man got ahold of
it, and look how he's mixed it up. What kind do you want, big
boy, little girl, early girl? Some kind of hybrid. It's the
same way with potatoes, isn't it? You want Kennebec? You want the red potatoes? You
want the Irish potatoes? What do you want? You want beans?
You want the Kentucky wonders, Missouri wonders, the bunch,
the stick? You go to the stockyard and you'll see 25 different breeds
of cattle. Now that's what we've got since
the fall. But when God made the seed, the
grass to come up, it was pure grass. Every species that He
made, they were pure in their making. All of this other stuff,
this jumbo stuff, has come together with the fall of man. That may
be all right. That may be all right. It's created
a lot of confusion. Maybe fine. I don't know how
we'd have done anything different. But in the natural realm, that
may be okay. But boy, if you bring that concept
over into the spiritual realm, and you begin to mingle things
up, mix them all together, it creates havoc, doesn't it? It
creates danger when we do that. Let me give you one or two examples.
We cannot mingle the holy incorruptible seed of God's Word with the corruptible
seed of man. This Bible is called the incorruptible
seed. Being born again, not a corruptible
seed. What is that corruptible? That's
everything that proceeds from this flesh, isn't it? Not of
corruptible seed but of the incorruptible by the Word of God that liveth
and abideth forever. I may give you my opinions. I
may sow the seed of my own personal convictions in your heart or
my preferences and that may defile your soul. But here is the incorruptible
seed which will save a man's soul. We talk about the new birth
and how does it come? It comes by this incorruptible
Word, doesn't it? It produces an incorruptible
new creature being born again, not of corruptible seed. Listen
to this. Listen to this new birth. How
does it come? What is the new birth? Is it
a mixture of the sovereign will and grace of God mixed with the
power and will of man? Is that what the new birth is?
Do we mingle the will of the flesh and the merit or power
of the flesh with the sovereign will and grace of God in the
new birth? You can't mix those two, can you? You can't mingle
those two together. As many as received Him, to them
gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe
on His name. Now listen, which were born,
not of blood, Not of the will of the flesh, not of the will
of man, but of God. Born of God. And yet you ask,
this world loves to mingle these things up, don't they? The religious
world loves to mingle these things up. This is why the Lord told
the children of Israel, don't mingle your seeds. And that's
to teach us, don't mingle our seeds. The holy seed with the
corrupt seed. But boy, I tell you, the religious
world loves to do it, don't they? You ask the average religious
person you run into about the new birth and see how many will
distinguish between the flesh and the grace and power of God
in the new birth. See, if some were another, they
don't mix them. What did you have to do in the
new birth? Was it all of grace? Was it the
Spirit of God working in you, even repentance and faith? What
did the flesh, what did the old man have to do with it? Absolutely
nothing. It's a work of God, isn't it? It's a work of this incorruptible
seed. You can't mingle those two together. Paul was writing to the Thessalonican
church and he said, when you receive the Word of God, You
received it not as it is the Word of man, but as it is in
truth the Word of God. We must distinguish between those
two. The pure seed of the Gospel,
the grace of Christ, will give life to your soul. But if you
mix that with law, it will kill you. Wayne has been teaching
us on Sunday mornings about being justified by grace, being justified
freely by His grace, justified by His blood, justified by His
blood. But if you start sprinkling some
seeds of the law in there and some works in there, what does
it do? It defiles it, doesn't it? The
same way it did with the seed that Israel mixed and mingled
together. We distinguish the incorruptible Word of God. And
in this incorruptible Word, in the Holy Scripture, the Sacred
Scripture, we have the knowledge of God given us, the knowledge
of God. And we separate that knowledge,
that God, from all other gods. And the world gets so upset with
us. I told you about the debate they had in our newspaper there
in Muncie one time. It went on for weeks and weeks
and weeks. This debating on if God and Allah was the same God. And this world would love just
to mix all of these gods together. That's what they want. But you
can't. We can't mingle. They will not
mingle. God is not Allah and Allah is
not God. Hear, O Israel, the LORD thy
God is one LORD. And a man said, Master, you have
rightly said, Truly there is one God, and there is no other.
How many times in the book of Isaiah does the Lord make these
statements about Himself? I am God, and there is none else. I am God, and there is none like
Me. I am God, and there is no God.
I know not any. So we don't mingle the God that's
revealed in this Bible with other gods. We just don't do it. They
will not mix. They won't mix. We have this
one eternal God that the Bible reveals. He's manifested in three
distinct persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Ghost. He's the sovereign over creation.
He's the sovereign over providence. And He's sovereign over salvation.
That's the God this Bible reveals. And you and I seek a clear knowledge
of Him and we reject all other gods, don't we? They're just
idols. They're creatures. Even the God
of this world, Satan himself, is nothing but a creature. That's
all He is. Just one God. One God. We don't mix and mingle these
things. The Lord Jesus talked to us about another seed, not
only the incorruptible seed of God that reveals all of these
wonderful truths of His grace to us. He talked about the children
of the kingdom, and He called them the good seed. Remember
there in Matthew chapter 13, a man sowed good seed in his
field. The service went in a few days
when the blades came up. And they said, there's terrors
in there. And he said, an enemy did this. Well, you fellows slept.
Well, you fellows slept and an enemy came in. They said, tell
us, what are you talking about? Don't speak to us in parables.
Tell us plainly what you're talking about. He said, well, the children
of the good seed are the children of the kingdom. They're the good
seed. And I sowed them myself. That's
what he said. He sowed them. You're here tonight
and you're a believer in the Lord Jesus? He saved you. He
sold you. You're a good seed in His kingdom. And He said, the others, the
tyrants, they're the children of the wicked one. He did that.
And you know they were so close together physically. They said,
you want us to pluck up the bad seed? He said, no, you'll pluck
up the good one if you do. Leave them alone. Leave them
alone. Sometimes I can't distinguish
These fellows are smarter than I was. I'm telling you, if I'd
have been out there plucking up, I'd have been plucking up
wheat. I'd have been plucking up wheat. They were very close
in our eyes. But in God's eyes, He distinguishes,
doesn't He? He can see everything is naked
and open. So He says, leave it to Me and
let them both grow together. Let the seeds come up and grow
together, those that's producing fruit and those that's barren.
And on the Day of Judgment I'll send my angels and they'll bring
them all up here and we'll sit down and sift them. We'll gather
the good seed into our barns and we'll cast the bad seed away
into fire. So he makes a distinction. There's
a distinction between Christianity and Islam and the Kingdom Hall
of Jehovah Witnesses and Mormonism and Hyper-Mormonism There's a
distinction between the Bible and the Koran, Christ and the
devil, truth and lies, and light and darkness. All of these things
are to be distinguished between. And God separated them in the
beginning, even in the natural realm, to teach us that we must
do it in the spiritual realm. Don't mingle your seed. Don't mingle your seed. And I
tell you, if we don't If we don't distinguish between these things,
if we say like the world does, let's mix it all up together,
it's just as unnatural as trying to plow a mule with an ox. I was raised on a farm, and a
lot of times I've harnessed up my dad's old big horse and plowed
with it. And I used to have a bull that
I rode around everywhere all over the community. There's a
vast difference between an ox and a horse. And I have never
seen anybody try to work them both together. They just will
not hook up together. If somebody saw you do that,
but knew anything about it, they'd laugh you to scorn. It's just
not natural. It's not natural. And in the
spiritual realm, in the kingdom of God, it's not natural to mix
and mingle these things together. But they just won't mix. They
will not mix. And the world gets mad at us,
and they tell us that we're too narrow, that we're too strict,
we're too dogmatic, and all we tell them is we're just following
the Scripture. God has made a distinction with these things, and He's told
us to make a distinction too. Look over here with me. Let me
read a Scripture to that end. Look in 2 Corinthians 6 and verse
14. 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse
14. Be ye not unequally yoked together
with unbelievers. Now just think about that ox
and think about that mule and this is what it looks like. For
an unbeliever, for a believing woman, to go out looking to marry
an unbelieving husband? I'll write you what it's going
to look like. I tell you, you're going to have trouble with it.
It's just not natural. Most of us, if we ever had an
unbelieving spouse, it was because we married each other and both
of us were lost when we did it. And God saved one of us and hasn't
saved the other yet. That's usually the way it happens.
But why would a believer go seeking to marry an unbeliever? It just
won't work. Be not unequally yoked. And I
imagine this goes for so many other things. For what fellowship
hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with
darkness? The answer is obvious. What concord,
or what accord, hath Christ with Belial? the devil? Or what part
hath he that believeth with an unbeliever, an infidel? And what
agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For you are the
temple of the living God. As God hath said, I will dwell
in them, and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they
shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among
them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean
thing, And I will receive you, and will be a father unto you,
and you shall be my sons and my daughters, saith the Lord. So let's not join what God has
separated. And let's not separate what God
has joined. One more, let me quote this to
you here in verse 11. Don't wear garments of wool and
linen together. Now what in the world does that
mean? don't wear garments that have a mixture of linen and a
mixture of wool. Well, in the Scriptures, linen
represents pure righteousness. Listen to Revelations 19 and
8. And to her, to the church, was granted that she should be
arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen
is the righteousness of saints. It's the righteousness of saints.
He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness. The righteousness
of Jesus Christ which is given to us to cover our shame and
to justify us in the scripture is depicted as white linen. What about wool? What does that
represent? Well, wool represents the sweaty, stinking, flesh and
the righteousness that it produces. Now look over in Ezekiel chapter
44 and I'll show you that and we'll close. Look in Ezekiel
chapter 44 and verse 17. Wool. Well, wool is warm, ain't
it? It's warm. I sleep... Is that
a wool blanket I sleep under? Well, I sleep under some kind
of blanket and it's warm. I thought it was wool. But it
is warm. They were not even allowed to
wear it in the work of the Lord in the temple. Look here in verse
17, Ezekiel 44. And it shall come to pass, that
when they enter in at the gates of the inner court, they shall
be clothed in linen garments, and no wool shall come upon them
while they minister in the gates of the inner court and within.
They shall have linen bonnets upon their heads, and shall have
linen breeches upon their loins. They shall not gird themselves
with any thing that causeth sweat." Wool causes sweat. He didn't want them in their
ministry sweating and getting stinky. When did sweat come in? Remember when sweat came in? upon our sin and Adam. When Adam
sinned and fell and was cursed, what did God tell him? You're
going to earn your living by the sweat of your brow. That's
the way you're going to eat. You're going to sweat to get
what you get. That's what sweat is. It's man's
works, isn't it? It represents man's righteousness
that he's working out. He's hard. Man, I've worked hard. I have prayed long. I have read
a lot. I have given a lot. I have worked. Yeah, and all of it is stinking,
filthy flesh. That is what it is. We do not
sweat for anything, do we? I will tell you who sweated. We got what we have got through
the sweat of another who sweat drops of blood for us. That is
where our righteousness came from. Christ sweat. And all we
have comes through faith in His sweat, not ours. And one thing
I've noticed, when you've got this linen clothes on, it keeps
you cool. You're not so apt to sweat. Even
when you're ministering, you don't sweat. It's not all that
hard when you've got this linen clothes on. What's hard is when
you're trying to work out your salvation to please God and to
be justified when you've got that old curse on you. And you're
stinking. I heard a fellow say the other
day he got in the elevator and one man just stood there and
stared at him. He said, what are you staring at? He said, somebody
didn't wear their deodorant this morning. He said, don't look
at me. I've never used that stuff. Sweat and stinking. Sweat and
stinking. I wonder how God feels about
these fellows and towards these fellows who are sweating so much.
Saving themselves. I bet they stink. He told them
they stink. You stink in my nostrils. Get that old wool off. You need
to be washed and put on this linen robe where you won't sweat
and stink. Keep cool. It's the righteousness
of Jesus Christ. So there we've got the seed.
Don't mix and mingle your seed. Don't be unequally yoked together.
And don't try to mix the righteousness of Christ with your own. And
don't try to work out a righteousness of your own. You'll sure to stink
if you do. Lord bless His Word.