Deuteronomy 19:15-21 Bible Study | Episode 916

 April 14, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Deuteronomy 19:15-21  Bible Study | Episode #916

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day,

especially today in Jesus name.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Deuteronomy, chapter 19, verses 15 through 21. I'm smiling and kind of laughing because as I, as I kind of thought through this, it is, it is one of those passages where it just hits real, real close to home as far as my profession and some of the things that.

Conversations that I've had with other attorneys and conversations with,

with people who, who deal in these issues, it is a. It is one of those passages that most people don't even know about, I'll be honest with you, and most attorneys sure don't know about is because.

And I know that because, you know, they talk about these ideas and these understandings and they don't mention it being in scripture at all. In fact, that's not where they're coming from.

And the reason is, is because it's just so. It's just so on point. It's just. It makes so much sense. And God, God puts it in here because it, it when, when you're considering governance, when you're considering the legal system, when you're considering good community, good society issues, when you,

when you're thinking about all those things, this just kind of makes some sense. Now. It's not easy to deal with and it's not easy to work out, especially in the legal system we have.

Because I will tell you, if man was made to follow the law, we wouldn't need a code that is, you know,

fub dozen books.

We would just have a very small group of laws and we'd all follow them and we'd all live by them rightly. And the truth is, the Bible says that the heart of man is replete with wickedness.

He says we invent new ways to sin. And so if we're that good at sinning, then obviously we're in need of a lot of Rules, if we're going to have to follow rules in order to have a good society.

And that's why we got these huge codes. The United States code, the code of the United States is massive. And the code of the state of Alabama is, like I said, three or four dozen books worth of rules and laws.

And we're making them all the time. And so when I read this, it just seems God can boil it down to just what is so obvious.

It says, one witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits.

By the mouth of two or three witnesses, the matter shall be established. And what he's saying is we're not going to have any he said, she said, or he said, he said, or she said, she said.

We're not going to have that.

That's not how we're going to establish the truth by having two people who are angry with each other telling lies about each other. We're going to have to establish this by more than one witness.

Now I'm going to tell you, I've been a, I've been a defense attorney most of my attorney years. Now that I'm a judge, I hear I'm going to do in fact, district criminal today.

And it is hard to establish the truth based off of the witness of one person who is, it's either the victim or has some reason, some, some desire to see the person who is accused punished.

It's very difficult to establish that. And when we say establish it, we mean establish it in such a way that you could actually punish somebody. And that would be establish it beyond a reasonable doubt.

And that's our standard in our legal system. And it's a biblical standard.

We want to make sure that there's no good reason to doubt whether the person did it. That's a reasonable doubt, a doubt that has a reason that you can assign to it.

And so the, and a good reason, not, not just of, you know, some crazy trumped up reason, a real reason.

And so the, the, the matter has to be established by two witnesses. This just makes sense. And it is hard for prosecutors to establish it based off of testimony of one person because like I said, it's a, he said, he said, you know, this person said this and that person said that.

And, and it's not, it's probably not, it's probably, probably somewhere in the middle, but we don't know which one it is. Oftentimes I say, especially when, when there's a divorce or when, when a couple is breaking up, nobody is 100% wrong.

Wrong.

In, in, in that situation, usually the other party, even if one party has been doing everything they can to destroy the marriage, the other party, because of their feelings, because of their hurt, because of whatever, will do something that will, you know,

push that even farther down the road toward breakup or toward divorce, meaning they had some role to play in it. Maybe it's not the main role, maybe it's not even a small role, but there is some role.

And so when you're, when you're dealing with these things, you got to establish it on more than one witness. That's what God says here. And that makes so much common sense that it doesn't even seem like it ought to be.

We ought to say it's biblical sense. And you go, what do you mean by that? Well, you know, some things are so common sense. You think, well, you know, we didn't,

we don't, we don't even need to try to attribute it to God because God is bigger than that. He's better than that. He's better than our common sense. But, you know, sometimes God is really good at being common sense to us.

Meaning he just, he just comes and tells us, you know, the stuff that just is, is, is.

Is. So it just meets us right at our core, and we just love it. We love it. You know.

You know, the, the, the most, the most well known verse in scripture is just so to the point and low. And, and when I say low, it's, it meets us right where we are.

For God so loved the world. He loved every. He loves everything that he made. Every, everybody that he made, that he gave his only begotten son. Meaning there was necessary.

There was a necessary payment that had to be made. He gave his own that whosoever believe in him, meaning all you got to do is trust him.

You're going to have ever. You're going to have eternal life. I mean, that's just a. It seems so just at the core, but it makes sense. He says if a false witness against any man to testify,

man to testify against him of wrongdoing, then both men in the controversy shall stand before the Lord, before the priest and the judges who serve in those days. Meaning you got to bring this in front of court.

You can't handle it on your own. And that's another common sense. That's another common sense directive. God says, if you all got a controversy, don't, don't handle it on your own unless you're going to come to an agreement.

And that I always say you ought to come to an agreement rather than bring something to court. And the New Testament clearly tells believers to do that. That if you're in a controversy with another believer, try to work it out.

Don't try to, don't bring it to court where an unrighteous judge may hear your case, but you handle it between each other and be good toward each other. Well, he says if you got a controversy and you can't work it out,

then bring it to court. Don't fight it out, he said, and the judge shall make careful inquiry. And indeed, if the witness is a false witness who has testified falsely against his brother, then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother.

Now, this is one of those things that a lot of lawyers do talk about.

They say, you know, somebody claims somebody did something horrible, and it's quite clear that they didn't. And that person made that claim in order to, to cause the harm to the person who did not do what they said they did.

You know, that person ought to be punished in the same way. And you know, there is some, there's some,

well, God said do this. God said do it.

And that. There, there's, there's the idea that that would cause people not to bring,

not to bring claims against somebody that did wrong to them. But, but the, but the issue is, is, is that's why if you're going to bring a claim, you need to, you need to, you need to be able to prove that you did it, that the person did it.

We don't, we don't punish people for things that we, we're, we clearly know that they didn't do. And this is not saying if there's, if there's a, if there's some issue and you don't really know which one is right, you punish the other one.

That's not how that works. What he's saying is, you know, if, if they figure it out and it's pretty obvious that the other person just made a false claim against them, that they ought to be punished.

And by the way, we do have laws against that making false claims against other people. And so another common sense thing, just as you're studying through the law, it makes sense.

He says, and those who remain shall hear and fear thereafter they shall not again commit such evil among you. Meaning claiming somebody did something that, that they didn't do is evil.

It is evil. It's bearing false witness against your brother. He says, your eye shall not pity like life shall be for life. Eye for an eye. Tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

What he's saying is, is that there's a cost to sin that we don't pity. We don't pity people who do evil in the governmental, we're talking about government here.

We don't pity folks who do wrong to others.

We, you know, we meet out justice. And this is called retributive justice, meaning it's retribution for the wrong you've done to somebody else. And retributive justice is a biblical idea and it is an effective idea.

Now we want to be able to have restorative justice and everybody wants that. And what I mean by restorative justice, well,

what that means is that we want to restore people. We want to fix people, we want to help them become what they should. We don't want them to continue in their death and their sin.

I mean,

that is important for all societies and it's important especially for Christians. Okay, we want to restore people to God and we want to restore them back to before they did something horrific to hurt somebody else.

Okay, we want to do that. And, and if it's possible, we work toward that. But what happens? And a lot of things on the front end for first time offenders and small offenders, a lot of things are absolutely set up to help those people, help people get back on the right track.

We do that. And it is 100% the focus of juvenile law, juvenile delinquency law, it is the number one focus, is to get young people on the right track as they head into adulthood.

But there are people who are going to do what they're going to do and they will not stop doing that.

And at that point, in biblical law and in our law,

there has to be retribution for it. And it is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and a hand for hand and a foot for a foot.

And you never hear the hand and the foot thing. You just hear the eye and the tooth thing.

But it is, it's retributive justice.

And there does have to be retribution for some things down the road. And so when I was asked, you know, here recently, you know,

what about capital murder and whether or not the death penalty should be imposed? Well, it's an Old Testament idea. It is a New Testament idea. Paul says, does the axeman or the executioner wield his ax in vain?

And the answer is no, he doesn't. It's not in vain. It is something that has to be handled.

And so if you have somebody who intentionally just murders and takes life, then you take life. If you have somebody who intentionally maims well, then you take a whole lot of their freedom away.

And these are the right ways to do it. And this is the right way to run society. It is. And so this is the way we should be.

And I love it that God is. He is He. He speaks in things that are unimaginable. And we seek him out, and we find new things about him that just make us wonder about Him.

And yet he is so personal and intimate that he can come in and just say the most common sense things, and it makes sense to us.

And that's what this passage is all about.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep.

You, that he'll make his face to.

Shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today.

In Jesus name.