NOTES OF READINGS ON DEUTERONOMY (5)
NOTES OF READINGS ON DEUTERONOMY (5)
JT If the chapters that follow upon chapter 16 are carefully examined, it will be noticed that there is great consideration for God, and for Christ, and for the priests and Levites, and for men in general. Now, if we apply this to Christianity it shows that the fully developed Christian state ensures all this. The believer is free with God, and he has consideration for others. You have the thought of a man going to war. There was to be due consideration for those whose responsibility it was to go to war.
JM What we get in chapter 16 really provides the state for this.
JT It might, perhaps, help to point out the things which are in that chapter, upon which we dwelt last night. It presents to us in type what Christ is to the soul, as delivering it out of Egypt through His death; and then the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, bringing in what He is in heaven; and finally the future enjoyment of what we shall have in His presence. The soul is established in that light. It is the past, the present, and the future. One is free from anxiety in one’s soul, and in that way we are able to consider for the good of others. No doubt the Lord Himself is in view in Deuteronomy 20, as the One who would go to war. As having the assembly He is exempt for a year, so to speak. Thus there is consideration for Him.
TMG What is the force of being exempt for a year?
JT I think it refers to Christ. He has the assembly now, and the believer is sympathetic with Him in that. There is due consideration for the marriage relationship.
JM The assembly is in that relationship with [p. 300] Christ.
JT Yes; it says in Deuteronomy 20:7, “What man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her”. And in verse 5, “What man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it”.
TMG Let him get the good of his house now, and the good of his wife now.
JT Yes and the believer recognises that. The conflict must not interfere with the enjoyment of the blessings vouchsafed by God in the land.
JM How does consideration for others show itself in the saints?
JT I think it is seen in a man whose soul is in liberty; he is free from himself. In a certain sense it is right to consider for yourself until you are entirely clear; and when you are clear, then it is that you stand forth in the scene of God’s operations, as sympathetic with Him in all that He is doing.
TMG You are sympathetic with Him in His interests.
JT Yes; so that everyone gets his due. You have a right judgment about things; you are not legal, nor circumscribed; you are spiritually broad.
JM I suppose all that was seen in Christ when He was here He considered for God.
JT Yes. Every right object, and every right relation, had due consideration from Christ.
WK “Render unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s”. Matthew 22:21. We see the principle in that.
JT It is intelligence in love, so that all receive due consideration from you, and you are a benefactor.
WH You are brought to that in your spiritual stature, so that you are free to consider everything according [p. 301] to God.
TMG And that is what we have had in the previous part of this book; we are brought up to that, so to speak.
JT Yes, I think too much stress cannot be laid on chapter 16, because it shows a fully developed state of soul. These chapters present certain sets of circumstances in which the delivered one is seen acting, and moving, and judging. Nothing comes within his range that he has not a right judgment about; he has spiritual observance; he is not unbalanced. It is remarkable how in Deuteronomy the minutest thing is taken account of; a bird’s egg, for instance.
JM And it is only a spiritual man who has a true judgment of everything.
JT Yes; the more you are with God, the more sympathetic you are; without Him a sparrow does not fall to the ground.
WH I suppose the way a spiritual man would prove everything would be according to the truth; whereas everything in the world is out of gear, and unreliable.
JT Yes, you have a true estimate of everything; but then your heart is in it; you are not above sympathy even with the lower creation. But it especially works out in Christians in their relations with one another; we consider for God we consider for Christ; for the priests, and for the Levites and indeed for everything in God’s creation. We all have to admit how unbalanced we are, and how much we are affected by natural considerations. We get affected by things here. Astronomers find out where certain bodies are by their influences on other bodies. And there are so many influences which unbalance us. Deuteronomy 16 presents what produces a fully balanced man; he has all his sense exercised; and if a man has all his senses exercised, he is balanced.
WK He that is spiritual discerneth all [p. 302] things.
WH But he has to be vigilant as to every principle in himself which might arise.
JT Yes, otherwise he becomes beclouded. Natural considerations are, you will find, very largely the cause of a great deal of difficulty. You may call them harmless, but no matter how praiseworthy they may be, from another point of view natural things are sure to influence us unduly. As the Lord said that, a man has to deny himself daily; that is, that you have to deny natural considerations.
WH It is not a question of natural things being bad in a natural point of view, but of what is opposed to following Christ.
JT Yes; what is natural is to give way to what is spiritual. Hence a man is to hate “his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also”. Luke 14:26. That is a remarkable thing to be said; it puts the natural outside the door for the moment so to speak, but after the spiritual has been fully established, it comes in in its place.
WK But on another basis.
JT Quite so; when Christ has His place in the heart, then the natural gets its right place; and you will find that that will extend even to your animals, or anything that belongs to you.
SL Is not that a beautiful verse in connection with what you say: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk”, Deuteronomy 14: 21.
JT Yes, that shows how fully every right natural feeling is considered for by God, therefore by the spiritual.
WK A merciful man regardeth the life of his beast.
JM There is nothing inconsiderate, or unseemly in Christianity.
JT No; but, for the moment, while the spiritual structure is being set up and established, the natural [p. 303] is ignored.
WK What are we to get out of chapter 21?
JT Well, I think the first great point is what we have heard so much about, “local responsibility”. Whilst a man is very broad in his vision and sympathies, and the house of God is universal, nevertheless he cannot ignore his local responsibility.
WK This is fairly clear here.
JT Yes, and especially if in the locality there is any dishonour, or persecution, in regard of Christ.
WK The point here seems to be the location of it.
JT Yes, the location of responsibility.
WH The elders of the city that is next unto the slain man wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley.
JT Yes, responsibility belongs to the place nearest to that where the crime was committed.
WK Hence they measured it.
JT It is one of the most remarkable chapters in Scripture in the light of establishing what is rightly called “local responsibility”.
PL Then that would exclude any other city having to do with it?
JT Yes. It is the city that is nearest to it.
W.K. Morally nearest?
JT And I suppose geographically too. If it be a question of moral nearness, the saint who loves you most, wherever he lives, would be nearest to you. But the idea of geography is not ignored even in the New Testament. It says: “All that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord”. 1 Corinthians 1:2. That surely has a reference to geographical position.
WK I suppose the epistles, both those of Paul and John, to the churches recognise geography.
JT Quite so; and geography that man has regulated too.
TMG Would you kindly make a little plainer what you understand by all this.
JT Well, it says; “If one be found slain in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field and it be not known who hath slain him; then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain and it shall be that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer”. Deuteronomy 21: 1 - 3. There is clearly the question of locality. So that the responsible party is distinctly located.
WK And then they are bound to clear themselves.
JT Yes; therefore if evil occurs, it always affects Christ; the slain man undoubtedly typifies the death of Christ. Dispensationally the passage refers to the Jews; but it emphasises the thought of local responsibility. Wherever anything occurs that dishonours Christ, those nearest to it have the special responsibility of it.
WH So that they would have divine authority to take it up and inquire into it.
WK Provided always that they have spiritual capacity to do so.
JT Well, as you have it here, there was the acknowledgment that someone did it, and the matter it taken up. In Christianity we are all responsible. You cannot say you are not. Achan had sinned, but that involved that Israel had sinned.
WH The Spirit puts it that way, that Israel had sinned.
JT Yes the fact is, that something has happened against Christ here; it was, that He was put to death; He was murdered; innocent blood was shed; there is really no other innocent blood but His. However little or much guilt there may be in an ordinary case, it is against Christ, and no true lover of Christ will feel indifferent about it. I believe the real cause of protracted difficulties in localities [p. 305] is because the responsibility is not accepted by those to whom it belongs.
EM Are we responsible in the sense that if we were fulfilling our obligations to one another we might act as a preservative?
JT I think when some evil has occurred, the first thing is for some saints in the locality to accept the fact that it has occurred, and they are obviously the responsible ones. But then if it should be a case where the local company becomes disorganised, or divided; what then? The responsibility becomes more extended. The real secret of the prolongation of these difficulties lies in the fact that the guilt is not accepted as belonging to all.
WK You mean not accepted generally?
JT If the locality does not deal with it, the direct responsibility becomes more extended.
TMG It should imply us all in a way.
JT Yes. The city is responsible, so the elders of it come forward. Then there is to be the sacrifice in connection with the priesthood. If we have a true sense of these things, the due recognition of the guilt, that Christ had to die for it, and the priestly state in regard to it, you may depend there will be recovery. It says, “The elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley, which is neither eared, nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer’s neck there in the valley. And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near; for them the Lord thy God hath chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the Lord; and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried”. Deuteronomy 21:4,5. So that recovery is really in connection with the priestly state.
JM And there would be the full acceptance of the thing to begin with.
JT Yes, the elders accept it.
JM They took it home to themselves and [p. 306] owned it.
TMG It is the principle of eating the sin offering in the holy place.
JT Yes. The elders represent the people. The great difficulty lies in the want of acknowledgment, where there is an avowal on our part that the guilt is there, where there is that acknowledgment, you will always find priestly state.
WH So that there will be healing; otherwise the trouble extends.
JT Yes; and there is priestly judgment. You see how all that is bound up in verse 5; “The priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near; for them the Lord thy God hath chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the Lord; and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried”. Deuteronomy 21:5. That is the priestly service in both its branches. The priest has title to draw near to God; but then also his function is to bless; and then further, “By their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried”. Deuteronomy 21:5.
TMG All depends upon a priestly state.
JT Yes, the priest is supposed to be there.
Ques Do you mean in the local company?
JT Very often where these difficulties have occurred the door for priestly ministry has been closed, and left closed. Now, the divine thought is to introduce priestly intervention. You see the idea of local responsibility implies that there is a neighbour. But to do the part of a neighbour one must have the oil and the wine, spiritually.
TMG We should try to help in the Spirit of Christ.
Ques In the beginning of Revelation do we get the same thought of responsibility in connection with the angel?
JT The angel is representation; and representation in responsibility. It would be more the elders here.
TMG [p. 307] If there was the priestly state, and the grace, and the priestly intercession so to speak, there would be recovery.
JMcF Is this the way an assembly is to clear itself if any evil breaks out?
JT Yes, that is what I thought.
WK Then how would you apply the terms and the figures that are here used, to the assembly clearing itself.
JT Well, the assembly is, so to speak, the city, and the elders are the responsible element in it, but, of course, no one would claim to be irresponsible from the Christian point of view.
WK You do not leave it to the committee.
JT Exactly; that is what I mean. You often find it is left to a committee, so to speak, and the idea is that that clears me of responsibility. Then secondly, you have the sacrifice: you have the heifer. The heifer had never borne the yoke; that is the Lord had never come under human influences. You may depend upon it that the secret of all evil is human influence; that is how crime happens. Now the Lord Jesus was infinitely free from all that. We have to come to the acknowledgment that really the principles of the world have influenced us. The heifer was entirely free from the yoke; that means that those who committed the crime were not free. If the heifer had not been free from the yoke she could not have been sacrificed. That is to say, the Lord Jesus is perfectly spotless, perfectly free from human influences, and was a perfect sacrifice.
EM It is in a barren place that the heifer is killed.
JT Yes; it is Christ in relation to the creation, taken up abstractly as never influenced by man. The ground we walk on, the moral conditions around us, all are affected by man. But Christ was absolutely free from the principles of the world, so He is in that way fit to be the spotless sacrifice.
JM [p. 308] There would be the force of all that coming home to the soul of an elder; what that blessed One, who was free from every taint of human influence, had to undergo.
JT Quite so. The sin has arisen from the allowance of worldly principles. That is what brings it about.
EM Is this the owning of it together before the Lord?
JT I think so, in connection with the priestly state.
JM One feels the importance of what is set forth in chapter 18 being understood first, to enable us to enter into what we have in this chapter.
JT It shows, that God is reverting back in the sacrifice of the heifer, the kind of sacrifice she was, and the ground on which sacrificed, to things as He created them. That is to say, all that man has brought into the world has to be blotted out; and we are to endeavour to maintain that. I believe all that man has done, every trace of his invention, all is to be effaced; and we have to come to that in the spirit of our minds. We are so accustomed to what man has brought in that we think lightly of it; but God does not think lightly of it.
WW If in a town, or city, everything breaks up, what would the result be? Would it be that those who would be geographically nearest to it would have to take the matter up.
JT They might have to take it up; but they would have to recognise the responsibility in that locality, remained in it. If there is one saint there, responsibility remains, and the Lord holds him responsible in that locality. If you profess to be a neighbour, then act in a neighbourly way; and you must have the oil and the wine to do that. Hence the priesthood here. The responsibility is there; and the addresses to the seven churches [p. 309] make that clear. In spite of the breakdown of the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the angel is recognised in each, and he was held responsible. The angel of the church at Ephesus was not held responsible for the church at Smyrna; and the angel of the church at Smyrna was not responsible for the church at Pergamos. But then there is the thought of a neighbour; but to do the part of a neighbour requires the priestly state.
WW Well, let us suppose everything was divided up here; the oil and wine would be found in the nearest meeting?
JT But you must fully recognise that the responsibility is here just as much as before the difficulty occurred. I think it is a very great question the Lord has raised in recent years.
RL The nearest meeting would be responsible to take up the question, as set forth here, and judge it before the Lord, before they touch it.
JT You use the word “judge” I suppose advisedly. But I think it is well to bear in mind that the priests also bless in the name of Jehovah.
RL They get right before the Lord, and they seek to set others right.
JT The priests not only judge, they bless in the name of Jehovah.
TMG That brings in Luke 10.
JT Yes. “Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing; but contrariwise blessing”. 1 Peter 3:9. There is positive power there.
TMG They must take the matter up as if it were their own; but they must also recognise that the responsibility rests with those where it has occurred.
JT Yes. Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark; you get that in Deuteronomy 27:17. It is a very strong expression that. He is your neighbour, but still he has his landmark that you cannot transgress.
[p. 310] Ques As to the responsibility in connection with the meeting dealing with the trouble, are there degrees in responsibility? Is one more responsible than another? that is to say, are those who take the care more responsible than those who do not?
JT I think one is responsible according to what one has received; that is, the measure of one’s responsibility is according to the measure of what one has received from the Lord. And, in another sense, it is the ground you take.
WK He gave to one ten pounds, and to another five.
JT That’s right. Obviously the man who had the ten had the greater responsibility.
TMG He gave to everyone according to His own measure.
RH It is the elders that accept responsibility.
JT Yes, in the Old Testament it was so, and the principle has been brought over to the New Testament. The apostle called for the elders of Ephesus, and placed the responsibility on them. But no exercised believer would disclaim responsibility.
TMG It would not do to leave out anybody; everyone who is in the assembly is responsible.
JT I think anyone that assumes to be irresponsible has disqualified himself for the assembly.
JMcF Would you say something on what follows in the chapter?
JT Well, the time has gone, and there is a good deal in it. The Spirit proceeds to speak of Christ in regard to the assembly; and the placing of the inheritance. A very solemn thing is seen in the stubborn son, and the one who is hanged, at the end of this chapter. Israel was guilty of the death of Christ, according to what we have been speaking of; but then the guilt is put away, and the testimony of it is presented to them. In the earlier chapters of [p. 311] the Acts they are held as having sinned ignorantly, and the guilt is atoned for by Christ. So that the Jews had a great opportunity, which they failed to answer to; but the assembly comes in; and I think the stubborn son is seen in the opposition of the Jew to what God was doing. The “elder son” in Luke 15 would not come into the house; he was stubborn. But then another thing comes to light, and that is, instead of him being stoned, you have Christ typically dying on the tree, as a curse; “cursed is every one that hangeth upon a tree”. Galatians 3:13.
WH At the end of the Old Testament we have the words “Lest I come and smite the earth with a curse”. Malachi 4:6. There was that possibility. But the New Testament brings in the blessing.
JT Yes, so that Christ was made a curse for us, as it is written “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree; that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ”, Galatians 3:13, 14.
See further remarks on Deuteronomy 21 on pages 323 to 335.