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 April 11: Curses, the Old Testament, and Freedom

Deuteronomy 21:1–22:30; 2 Corinthians 5:11–21; Psalm 38:1–22

“And if a man commits a sin punishable by death, and so he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his dead body shall not hang on the tree, but certainly you shall bury him on that day, for cursed by God is being hung” (Deut 21:22–23).

Being hung on a tree was a sign of being cursed. Romans 5:12 tells us that the punishment for sin is death; we, as sinners, deserve that curse. If Christ wasn’t cursed for us by being hung on a tree (the cross), then we would still have a debt to pay and a curse to live under.

It can be difficult to find significance in the ot, especially in passages that are as harsh as this one. But the ot still holds meaning for us today, and that meaning often reveals our human and individual state.

The same is true for those odd laws about crimes and marrying foreigners (Deut 21:1–14). It’s not that we’re supposed to practice these laws; they were intended for a land and a place. But we are meant to use them to understand God’s conceptual framework. God always opposes taking a life. Similarly, marrying someone who doesn’t share your belief in Christ (the equivalent of an Israelite marrying a foreigner) will be detrimental to God’s work: that person will lead you astray. The law may not be in force anymore, but God’s framework for interpreting the moral values in the world remains the same.

There isn’t always a clear connection between the ot laws and our lives today since the contextual framework is often quite complex. But there is always an easy relationship between our actions and what Christ has done for us. We are free from the ot laws and the curse we deserve, but that freedom is meant to prompt us to live like Christ, not for ourselves (see Rom 7). We are called to live as free people should live. We are called to live for God’s kingdom.

What moral values are you learning from the ot? In what ways are you currently misusing the freedom that Christ has given you?

John D. Barry

 John D. Barry and Rebecca Kruyswijk, Connect the Testaments: A One-Year Daily Devotional with Bible Reading Plan (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012).

Morning, April 11: Go To Evening Reading

“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.”

—Psalm 22:14

Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of woe! In soul and body, our Lord felt himself to be weak as water poured upon the ground. The placing of the cross in its socket had shaken him with great violence, had strained all the ligaments, pained every nerve, and more or less dislocated all his bones. Burdened with his own weight, the august sufferer felt the strain increasing every moment of those six long hours. His sense of faintness and general weakness were overpowering; while to his own consciousness, he became nothing but a mass of misery and swooning sickness. When Daniel saw the great vision, he thus describes his sensations, “There remained no strength in me, for my vigor was turned into corruption, and I retained no strength:” how much more faint must have been our greater Prophet when he saw the dread vision of the wrath of God, and felt it in his own soul! To us, sensations such as our Lord endured would have been insupportable, and kind unconsciousness would have come to our rescue; but in his case, he was wounded and felt the sword; he drained the cup and tasted every drop.

“O King of Grief! (a title strange, yet true

To thee of all kings only due)

O King of Wounds! How shall I grieve for thee,

Who in all grief preventest me!”

As we kneel before our now ascended Savior’s throne, let us remember well the way by which he prepared it as a throne of grace for us; let us in spirit drink of his cup, that we may be strengthened for our hour of heaviness whenever it may come. In his natural body, every member suffered, and so must it be in the spiritual. Still, as out of all his griefs and woes his body came forth uninjured to glory and power, even so shall his mystical body come through the furnace with not so much as the smell of fire upon it.

Go To Morning Reading Evening, April 11

“Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.”

—Psalm 25:18

It is well for us when prayers about our sorrows are linked with pleas concerning our sins—when, being under God’s hand, we are not wholly taken up with our pain, but remember our offenses against God. It is also well to take both sorrow and sin to the same place. It was to God that David carried his sorrow: it was to God that David confessed his sin. Observe, then, we must take our sorrows to God. Even your little sorrows you may roll upon God, for he counteth the hairs of your head; and your great sorrows you may commit to him, for he holdeth the ocean in the hollow of his hand. Go to him, whatever your present trouble may be, and you shall find him able and willing to relieve you. But we must also take our sins to God. We must carry them to the cross, that the blood may fall upon them, to purge away their guilt, and to destroy their defiling power.

The special lesson of the text is this: that we are to go to the Lord with sorrows and with sins in the right spirit. Note that all David asks concerning his sorrow is, “Look upon mine affliction and my pain,” but the next petition is vastly more express, definite, decided, plain—“Forgive all my sins.” Many sufferers would have put it, “Remove my affliction and my pain, and look at my sins.” But David does not say so; he cries, “Lord, as for my affliction and my pain, I will not dictate to thy wisdom. Lord, look at them, I will leave them to thee, I should be glad to have my pain removed, but do as thou wilt; but as for my sins, Lord, I know what I want with them; I must have them forgiven; I cannot endure to lie under their curse for a moment.” A Christian counts sorrow lighter in the scale than sin; he can bear that his troubles should continue, but he cannot support the burden of his transgressions.

 C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).

April 11th

Moral divinity

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Romans 6:5.

Co-Resurrection. The proof that I have been through crucifixion with Jesus is that I have a decided likeness to Him. The coming of the Spirit of Jesus into me realigns my personal life with God. The resurrection of Jesus has given Him authority to impart the life of God to me, and my experimental life must be built on His life. I can have the resurrection life of Jesus now, and it will show itself in holiness.

The idea throughout the Apostle Paul’s writings is that, after the moral decision to be identified with Jesus in His death, the resurrection life of Jesus invades every bit of my human nature. It takes omnipotence to live the life of the Son of God in mortal flesh. The Holy Spirit cannot be located as a Guest in a house; He invades everything. When I once decided that my “old man” (i.e., the heredity of sin) should be identified with the death of Jesus, then the Holy Spirit invaded me. He takes charge of everything; my part is to walk in the light and to obey all that He reveals. When I have made the moral decision about sin, it is easy to reckon, actually, that I am dead unto sin, because I find the life of Jesus there all the time. Just as there is only one stamp of humanity, so there is only one stamp of holiness, the holiness of Jesus, and it is His holiness that is gifted to me. God puts the holiness of His Son into me, and I belong to a new order spiritually.

 Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).

April 11

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ

Gal. 6:2

However perplexed you may at any hour become about some question of truth, one refuge and resource is always at hand: you can do something for someone besides yourself. At the times when you cannot see God, there is still open to you this sacred possibility, to show God: for it is the love and kindness of human hearts through which the divine reality comes home to men, whether they name it or not. Let this thought, then, stay with you: there may be times when you cannot find help, but there is no time when you cannot give help.

George Merriam

 Samuel G. Hardman and Dwight Lyman Moody, Thoughts for the Quiet Hour (Willow Grove, PA: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1997).