Deuteronomy 21:1-9 Bible Study | Episode 923

April 23, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 21:1-9 Bible Study | Episode #923

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 21. And, well, it's. It's a fun. It's a fun passage in that. Really kind of. In our pop culture society, this is one of the. Well, one of the main genres out there for movie and TV and YouTube and all the. All the social media is one of the major, major genres genres. It is an unsolved mystery. And God deals, actually deals with the unsolved mystery. Now he deals with it for another. Other than trying to figure out who done it. He's dealing with it for a reason. Because there is an aspect of God's character that is revealed in this understanding. And there's an aspect of God's desire to atone for the killing or the taking of innocent life. And God wants for sure that a society is protected from an unknown killer or an unknown murderer. And when I say protected, I'm not talking about actually finding them and prosecuting them because then they would be the known murderer. It is to protect society spiritually from the shedding of innocent blood. And that's the whole point of this passage. But it is really neat how God deals with it. And so it's kind of exciting just to study. It's one of those. Especially as a, you know, as a judge, former attorney, you know, I just. It's just one of those things that so. Well, just interesting. It says if anyone's found slain, this is chapter 21 of Deuteronomy. Lying in a field in the land which the Lord your God has given you to possess meaning. If anybody's found slain in. In the countryside, in a field, you possess meaning in your territory. And it's not known who killed him. Basically, God's saying, is there somebody dead in your jurisdiction? And we don't know who did it. You know who we don't know who. Who, who was. Who is the assailant in the murder. It says, then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the slain man to. To the surrounding cities. Meaning we're going to find out which city has jurisdiction over this. Which means which. Which city is responsible for this murder? You know, because when someone is killed, an innocent person is killed, there's still responsibility, even if we can't find out who did it. It says, and it shall be, that the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a heifer which has not been worked and which is not pulled with a yoke. This is. This is a picture of dealing with the flesh because it's actually. It's cattle. It's. It's a heifer, you know, cattle is a picture of the flesh. Oxen, any. Any kind of sacrifice that deals with, well, beef. It's. It's a. It's a picture of the flesh. Notice it's a young one that has never, ever worked, which means it's innocent. It's. It's not had any. It's not. It's not experienced the world. And it shall. It says, they shall take the heifer. The elders of the city shall bring the heifer down to the valley which, which, with flowing water, which is neither plowed nor sown. Notice they. They're going to take it into an area that has never been. Has never been used to produce crops. So it's. So it's a virgin territory also. And it's got to have flowing water. And the reason for the flowing water is the cleansing of the Holy Spirit. That's a picture of the cleansing of the Holy Spirit. Anytime you've got that water washing or cleansing or moving, it's a picture of the cleansing of the Holy Spirit. He says. He says, which is neither plowed nor sown. And they shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley. Meaning the sacrifice made of the heifer is going to be for the shedding of innocent blood. They're going to make a sacrifice to God to appease his wrath against the shedding of innocent blood. Especially considering that they don't know who actually did that. It says, then the priest, the son of Levi, shall come near for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister and to bless in the name of the Lord by the Word, every. Of every controversy and every assault shall be settled. So he's saying, these Levites have come. They've been given to each city in each town to be a source of blessing and to be a source of determination, a judicial, actual judicial force. To be a source of determination for every. For every situation that the Jewish people may handle in that area, in that jurisdiction. This is so legal. And for me, it's just so legal. It's. It, it. It's. It's wild, really. It. It's almost like I'm. I'm. As I'm. It's almost like a lawyer is writing this. Well, you know, God is all things. So we get all our legal ideas from God, and they are here, right here in Scripture, it says, and all the elders of the city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley. Notice. So you've got the ones who determine right and wrong, the ones who are the mediators between God and the people, the Levites. Then you have the elders, the leadership of the city. They're going to wash their hands and say that they had nothing to do with the murder of this person. Then they shall answer and say, our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it. Meaning we didn't know this. We didn't know anything about this. Provide atonement, O Lord, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood. To the charge of your people Israel. What they're doing is. They are. They are separating themselves from the shedding of innocent blood. Now, it would seem to be in our. Especially as we operate in our modern time, it seems to be that we don't understand the significance or the problem in a society for the society as a whole, with those who commit murder and shed innocent blood, and especially for those who we can't find. Now, we dedicate a whole lot of resources to this. We understand the importance of making sure that we don't have somebody out there just killing people, and we have no idea who they are and how to stop them. We dedicate a lot of resources to it, but that's just for the. For the. You know, the very practical reason, we don't want people living in fear in society. That's bad for society. But there's a spiritual connotation to this. There's a spiritual aspect of this that's very important. And that spiritual aspect is, is that God detests the shedding of innocent blood. It is. It is to him a abomination. He will not abide it. It is a detestable thing to him, which is what abomination means. It's detestable to him. And so he will not stand for it. And so even though in the physical world we need to search for those who shed innocent blood, we need to find the murderer, as it were in the movies. We need to search them out and figure out the mystery. Sure, we need to do that in a very practical way for society, but in a very spiritual way. There has to be an atonement for the shedding of innocent blood, even if we never find who the killers were. And the reason is because it lingers on, lingers on past that person's death. And. And we know that all the time when they're interviewing in these movies and videos, they're interviewing family members who don't have what they call closure. And that closure that they're talking about is not a physical closure. It really isn't. It's a spiritual closure. Because the loss of that which is the loss of that which is yours, that someone takes that you don't even know why or you have no knowledge of what happened can be oftentimes debilitating. It can debilitate people. And so the spiritual closure that comes from this spiritual process, and that's what they're doing when they go out to the field. And they're very particular about what kind of sacrifice they're going to make, and they're very particular about where they're going to do it and who's going to be involved. It's a holistic. It's a whole community closure for the shedding of innocent blood. And it says, he says here, and. And atonement shall be provided on their behalf for the blood, meaning there's closure for it, even if they never figure out who did the killing. Even if they never figure out who was killed. They may not even know who's killed here, even if they never figure that out. And you got to remember back in that day, they didn't have the computer databases and all that the person that might be killed is someone they might not even know. It might even be a foreigner. And the person who is the killer may never be caught. But in this process of the society, the leadership of the people, God and the communities themselves coming together and making proper atonement for that blood that was shed innocently. It brings about closure for the people. And that's what God's doing here. He is providing for. Well, it says atonement shall be provided on their behalf for their blood. It says, so you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord. And what he's saying is, if we do right and we recognize not only the physical, devastating aspects of homicide, which is what this is, but we also realize that there is a spiritual aspect to it also, and we do it rightly, we make sure we do it in a proper way. When we do those things, then there's closure on everyone's behalf. And if we don't do it in the proper way, then there's not closure and there's a continuation of fear and there's a continuation of judgment. In reality, a real aspect of judgment. Why? Because, well, innocent blood was shed and there is no answer for it. And so that is how God deals with an unknown murder. You didn't know that was in Deuteronomy, did you? I didn't either. Well, I did, but, you know, when I read it last time, I wasn't thinking about it from this perspective. In fact, probably I just moved right on through it, like, well, I mean, that's weird. But, you know, sometimes when we sit back and take a. An account of it, you know, when you're reading through Deuteronomy, it can be very, very tedious. And yet every section of it deals with something that is really important in some way to society, even if it's not important to you today. And so what a great passage to kind of study on a Monday morning as we get ready to head into our rainy week. It's going to be sunny after today, but rain storm.

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.