Live Justly in All Dealings

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we're at Deuteronomy chapter 25, verses 11 through 16. Two different laws. One about what do you do when people get in a fight and grab each other and then never there's no other reasons. Not necessarily a fun law to talk about, but important. And secondly, what about when you go to the gas pump or you buy something? It's nothing but air in the bag. So just weights and measures. Let's have some coffee.
We'll pray and get into God's word. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for the blessing of having your word. We thank you for time together to read your word. We pray that your Holy Spirit would help us to understand the words that we have here. But also Lord, that we would love what you love, that we would be transformed by your spirit to do as you have commanded us to do, redeemed by you, living in the light of loving you and loving others in Jesus's name.
Amen. All right. Deuteronomy chapter 25 verses four or 11 through 16. Here we go. If two men fight together, and the wife of one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of the one attacking him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the genitals, then you shall cut off her hand.
Your eyes shall not pity her. Verse 13 through 16. You shall not have in your bag different weights, a heavy and a light. You shall not have in your house differing measures, a small and a large. You shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. For all who do such things, all who behave unrighteously, are an abomination to the Lord your God.
All right. Two different laws here, various miscellaneous laws, both getting at what I think is loving your neighbor as yourself. So the first law, You guys are in a fight, a wife decides to jump in the middle and to defend her husband in this fight, right? It doesn't seem like maybe a fight unto the death, but these guys are fighting and maybe wrestling, disagreeing about something. Not a good thing anyways, but she reaches out, she escalates the matter and she actually grabs onto his genitals.
The commandment here is the lex talionis, right? It's that she has grabbed this man's testicle. So you take off her hand. Your eye shall not pity her. Man, that seems harsh. That seems like, whoa, what are you talking about? This is that's that's a huge penalty. But I want to take you back into a different culture in a different time.
By the way, other ancient Near Eastern cultures, There s both an honor and a utility specifically with children. Remember what we talked about last time with the Levrite marriages having to marry your deceased brother's wife, right? To produce offspring. Why? Because children back then, especially are for defense, they're for utility. They're also one's own glory, right?
So children care for their parents in their old age around here in an agricultural area. I remember talking to farmers and they just tell me that, Hey, you know, back in the 1940s and earlier before really engines were, you became ubiquitous, right? Before there were tractors that could help, it really did take, a small army of children to run a farm. It took a lot of hands and a lot of work and a lot of time.
And so to crush a man's nether regions, right, to to stop that is to both take away the family's livelihood, possibly mean that they're in a place of starvation and economic harm. as well as their glory, right? This idea that no longer is this man able to have children, and children, especially in the Old Testament, are a direct blessing from God.
I think there's still a direct blessing from God, right? There's all sorts of Psalms that talk about this in all sorts of places, right? Hannah desiring, longing to have a child. You can think of Zachariah in Luke chapter one, desiring to have a baby, right? Him and Elizabeth in this Desire we still even see today in our own culture as people struggle with infertility and this desire to have a child Imagine if that desire to have a child was taken away from you in a hasty moment So this was not saying that this is good. This is saying that you're not able to kill that woman You're not able to just get so angry that you would do something unrational But there you do need to make sure even in a fight.
There's fair rules and the next law Right. This is why you have the departments of weights and measures in many states. Right. If I go to a gas pump here in Iowa, the Department of Agriculture, I think it is, has a little seal on the gas pump and says that there's a that this has been inspected. One gallon is one gallon is why on a chip bag, it's sold by weight and not by volume. Right. So the bag may be a lot of air, but they aren't selling you the air. They're selling you how much food is weighed in that bag. And so it's based on the weight, not the volume, right?
But you could imagine somebody in their home, right? Or a merchant down the road, they have two different scales. One of them, I think about a balance, right? This was talking about with weights and measures, you're going to sell somebody, uh, one bath of, or one pound, let's say of, of grain.
And you put your little weight on there and you like this guy. So you give him a fair weight, but the other guy, you know, he's a real jerk. He's got more money than he really needs. So you put the, you put the, uh, the lighter weight on there so it balances differently or maybe the heavier weight i don't know which way that goes but the point is right you are either stealing from some people or being overly generous to others you never really know what you're doing neither of these people are loving each other right god is restraining the evil in israel there was to be a limits the laws there was supposed to be an upholding of life they're supposed to be Equity and fairness and trade.
This is what God is getting at here in these laws Specific scenarios where he's saying this is what my people are to be about loving each other Not trying to get over each other not fighting not over punishing valuing life Right thinking of the other person's good and the effects even of what we do to people So I think that's what this is getting at.
So what is it about? What's the best verse to summarize this? Why would it underline verse 11? And underline verse 15 is what I have underlined there as well. You shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. The last see calling. What are we called to do?
Do you have business? And are you loving your neighbor? Do you show your love of God and your fear of God by treating your neighbor well? Are you a brawler? This is one of the things for church officers. They must not be brawlers. Are you one who thinks about how the effects of your anger or of your fighting may affect somebody's, not just their life, but their family's life and even the life of their children to come?
Are we people who take seriously what Jesus tells us that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves? I think that this is what it's calling us to do to still live lives full of love and grace. Let's pray. Father, this is not a section on some type of legalism. Lord, you have loved us with a perfect love. And you are a God of equity and of justice. So, Father, we pray that we would please follow after you and love you and love others while in Jesus's name. Amen. May God bless you. May you love the Lord Jesus Christ and walk in his ways. And I'll see you next time. Bye.