BY REV. MALCOLM GILLIES.
“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 . . . .” Deut. xxi, 1-9.
“And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death and thou hang him on a tree. His body shall not remain all night upon the tree . . . .” Deut. xxi, 22-3.
I. The Hidden Criminal.
Though the Law was given in the Wilderness, much of it did not come into force until Israel’s actual settlement in the Land of Canaan. The scene here depicted is in the Land of Israel—a dead body lies in the open field. It is not a case of sudden death by the hand of God; neither has the man been torn by wild beasts. There are wounds on the body; some of which might have been self-inflicted, but other wounds show that the person has been done to death by the hand of an assassin. It is clearly a case of murder. But who is the murderer? He has succeeded in eluding justice so far, and has fled to mingle with upright men, in order that he might pass as one of them. It is vain to point to him and to say, “Thou art the Man?” He is willing to pass the guilt on to another, but refuses to take it to himself. We have here the commandment of God, given to Israel, for such circumstances as these, in order that this crime might be shown forth in a figure, in its vileness and frightfulness, and the nature of the penalty incurred by the wrong-doer, which would be his, if not by the hands of men, by the just hand of God. A measuring line was brought forth to measure from the dead body, to the nearest city. Very probably the murderer belonged to that place, or was hidden within. The elders had to bring a young heifer out of the city, down to a rough valley and there cut off her neck. They had to wash their hands over the carcass of the heifer, declaring at the same time their innocence and praying to God not to lay the guilt of this blood on them or on the land. This law is typical, in common with the whole ceremonial law; it shadows forth the heinousness of sin as it is against God and man. The instrument of destruction is transgression of the Law of God and despite to the gospel. With this weapon, man has thrust at the honour and glory of God Himself.
(1) Sin, in the first place is of the nature of deicide. Man by sin does his utmost against the Being, Will and Glory of God. Sin annuls as far as it can, the Commandment, “Thou shalt not,” with its, “I shall,” and the penalty, “Thou shalt surely die,” with its, “I shall not surely die.” A godly man in Lewis was in a house one day where there was a woman fondling a child. She kept on talking about the goodness of the child as if all goodness was personified in it, till at last the good man exclaimed, “Keep quiet, woman, if that child had only the power, it would pull God off His Throne of Glory.”
(2) Sin is suicide—self-destruction of soul and body, in the nature of it, and in the temporal and eternal penalty of it. “He that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul; all they who hate Me love death.”
(3) Sin is also homicide. We undo others as well as ourselves. We are a power, each one of us, by our example for life or for death. The righteous God will require the blood of the sinner who shall die in his sins, at the hands of the watchman who failed to give the sinner warning. More so, if, we encourage one another to ruin by living in disobedience to truth. Further, sin is murder, for sin is hatred and hatred without cause is murder. This is the kind of hatred men have to God and to His revealed Will and no wonder though the end of a life of sin is death.
(4) Man though guilty hides his sin and refuses to take his place as such before Him with whom he has to do. He will not own the heinousness and death-deserving nature of sin against God. He is willing perhaps to admit that some other one is guilty, but not himself. Where will you find one who says, “I am the murderer. I have hated God and destroyed both myself and my fellow-creature.” If man gets his way, his one desire is that the sin which he has covered and hidden from himself may be forever hidden and the connection between the sin committed and himself who committed the sin, never traced.
(5) What provision has God made in face of man’s blood-guiltiness and his efforts to elude the dire consequences of his sin? God has provided what we believe is shadowed forth in this law. God’s Word is the measuring line that stretches from the vile work that man has wrought to the individual who is responsible for that work. The Church by means and by labourers seeks to bring the sinner into the line of truth by the Word read and preached. Ministers are like Scotland Yard detectives; they have the finger-prints and portraits of all kinds of sinners at hand in order by applying Law and Gospel, the Holy Spirit may bring the sinner to confession and forsaking of sin, or witness before a sinful world the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the vengeance which will be taken upon it at the Judgment and in eternity. The Word read and preached alone can get near the sinner, though this generation is so irrational and deluded as to think that counterfeits will do. But how will such trivialities as lectures on Robert Burns or Shakespeare, etc., bring the dishonourer of God, and the destroyer of himself face to face with his own vileness and guilt and extort from him the confession, “I am guilty and deserve eternal death for my sin.”
(6) We have in this law the vileness of the act of murder set forth most graphically. It is not a sacrifice in the usual sense of that term. The heifer is dragged out into the rough valley and beheaded. The sinner is like the heifer, weak and helpless under the power of Satan and lusts, having never performed any work pleasing to God, and having never submitted to the yoke of Law or Gospel. He has ruthlessly destroyed a God-given life by his sin. As he has done, so shall it be done to him. His portion in time is to tread the rough valley—for “the way of transgressors is hard.” The curse of God, the fruits of that curse in all the miseries of this life, death itself, the slavery to Satan and to divers lusts and his own conscious apprehension of judgment to come make the sinner’s rough valley where he sows nothing but wind in order to reap the whirlwind. But Oh! how the vengeance of an infinitely holy God will drag him out of the city of Time at last, into the rough valley of the final Judgment, where he shall be cut off forever by the Second Death in the bottomless, rough valley of an Undone Eternity. Sinners may be hidden in the sense that they are not brought to acknowledge their guilt in time, but the sinner’s sin will find him out at the Judgment and he and his sin will be exposed to the gaze of an assembled Universe. The whole scene here is calculated to set forth the crime committed in so clear a light that it would be difficult for the guilty party not to feel his position keenly. Then there was the solemn washing of hands and declaration of innocence, which only one given over to a reprobate mind could enact, if guilty.
(7) If such pains had to be taken to emphasize the horror of literal murder, if it is the universal law of nations that no efforts be spared and that the wealth of the community be poured out in order to bring home to the guilty person the heinousness of his deed, how should the Church of God labour in every scriptural way to impress upon sinners their sinnership and the awful consequences of hiding their sin, as if they could escape the righteous judgment of God. There never was a day in which there is so little of that preaching which brings the Law of God to bear upon the consciences of men, and there never was a day when sinners needed searching teaching more than ours, for Satan as an angel of light has most of this generation deluded that all will be well, though they add drunkenness to thirst. God, they say, is love; why should we doubt but that He will be merciful to all? Are we not all His children?
II. The Criminal found out.
The last two verses of this chapter also deals with the case of a criminal, but it is with the criminal found out; with one who has been unable to hide his crime. No doubt, like the other, he hoped to pass for an upright person, but his crime has been traced to him and his guilt proved without dubiety. He stands forth as a transgressor of Moses’ law and the penalty is that he die without mercy. Two or three witnesses are enough to bring him in guilty, and even though he gives glory to the Lord God of Israel and makes confession unto Him, the law demands his death and Justice will be vindicated by his being hung on a tree.
(1) Let us take this law to illustrate the condition of a sinner who is awakened to realize that he has to do with the Omnipresent and Omniscient Jehovah against whom he has sinned sins worthy of death, spiritual, temporal and eternal, and from whom he cannot hide either his sins or himself. God’s Word, his own conscience, his past wicked life, all rise up to witness against him, and his guilt is brought home to him in its fearful reality. He seeks relief in making confession of sin, hoping for ease, but all that this does is to magnify the righteousness of God and his own vileness and iniquity. He promises amendment, but his efforts at reformation are only fresh occasions of sin, and they could not atone for his past life, though they were perfect. He finds out that all is in vain. “The wages of sin is death,” and Law and Justice will be everlastingly dishonoured unless he dies the death and is made a spectacle to the honour of offended Justice, or unless a surety is found for him. The Law knows nothing else but that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die,” and were there nothing more revealed than Law, sinners would waken to know their lost condition, only to fall into everlasting despair.
(2) What is there besides this revelation of Law which declares that the sinner must die for his sin? Blessed be God, there is the revelation of the gospel which sounds forth the glorious message that the death of the sinner has been endured by Him who could and would and did take the sinner’s place. As the glad tidings, it peals out the marvellous message, “Christ died for (instead of) the ungodly.” The sins of the sinner were imputed to the Son of God in the sinner’s nature and place, and He, the sinless One was counted “worthy of death,” and no less a death than that due to sin. The Law said, “He shall be put to death and thou wilt hang him on a tree.” The gospel speaks about the death and the Tree, emphasising the death as endured once for all and the tree of Calvary as that on which infinite satisfaction was given to Justice, once and forever. The reason given in the Law for hanging on the tree is, he that is hanged is accursed of God. In all the range of the inspired Word of God, this passage is applied to One, and to One only. The Holy Ghost has placed in the mouth and heart of His Church this adorable truth, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us, as it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.'” There is no indefiniteness about the truth that the death due to sin has been met fully by Christ. There is likewise no indefiniteness as to “the world” for whom He did die. They are those who were elected in Christ before the foundations of the earth were laid. On our side, the blessing of it is freely bestowed on whosoever believeth in Him; such an one shall not perish but will have everlasting life.
(3) The law under consideration, while it demands that the sin worthy of death can only be put away by the death of the sinner declares that Justice will be outraged, should mercy not intervene, once the sentence is completely carried out. “His body shall not remain all night upon the tree. . . that thy land be not defiled.” Thus the bodies of the thieves who were crucified with our Lord, who were in the same condemnation with Him, and they indeed justly for they were receiving the due reward of their deeds, were taken down and buried. The Holy Spirit has testified to the Church, that the claims of Justice have been fully met by the crucifixion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary. Justice would neither allow His body to remain on the Tree, nor that it should receive anything but love, respect and honour. Justice gave full liberty to Mercy to see to it that all honour be meted out to His body, while it lay “under the power of death for a time.”
(4) Life from the dead is the portion of the sinner when he is brought into union by faith on the Saviour who took the sinner’s place. What infinite love opens up to his view in the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving Himself as a ransom. Truly the love of Christ cannot but constrain him, because he thus judges that if one died for (instead of) all, then were all dead; and that He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again. The sinner is found out, and finds Christ as his substitute and Saviour, and has his sin covered and his person, saved and accepted. The hidden sinner will have every covering stripped off, and his person and sins exposed to his everlasting confusion. May the Lord in mercy give each one of us to see the utter folly of the latter position, and the priceless preciousness of the former.