Deuteronomy 21:1-23

God wants His people to be pure, holy and honest before Him in every area of their lives.  Sin was never to be treated lightly within the community or within a family.  Moses instructed the people as to how God would have them deal with various situations of sinfulness within the community.  We no longer deal with these sins in this way, but we must never treat sin flippantly.  There are always actions that we can take that will help us to preserve the holiness of the body of Christ.

MURDER: If a person was found dead, having been murdered, and there were no witnesses to the crime, the elders of the city were to make a sacrifice and vow before the Lord that they had no involvement in or knowledge of the crime.  Life in very precious before God and it should be highly valued by everyone.  When someone is killed the person responsible needs to be brought to justice and when that person remains undiscovered, we must recognized and be reminded of the sinfulness in our own hearts and use the tragedy as a reminder to guard our own hearts from the sins of hate and anger.  We must use the sins of society as a motivation and opportunity to examine our own lives.

MARRIAGE: God has established marriage as a holy and sacred institution.  Men were permitted to marry the women that were spared in battle, but they were to be purified before hand and were to be treated as wives and not slaves.  In the case of people who had more than one wife, he was not to treat them with favoritism.  Obviously the best case would be for a man to marry only one wife and this instruction was not granting permission for a man to have more than one wife.  It was simply telling those who had disobeyed this command how they were expected to act within this situation.  We must take our marriages very seriously and seek to honor God through our relationships.

MISCHIEF: A family who had a rebellious son was to make every effort to correct him, but when this was not possible they were to take him to the elders and they would stone the rebellious child.  This was obviously a very extreme case and I cannot imagine coming to this point, but we do clearly see that the Lord takes the sin of rebelliousness within the family very seriously.  As parents we must be faithful to teach our children obedience and respect when they are very young so that they will experience the joy of obedience throughout their entire lives.  We must never laugh at or take sin lightly within our children.  God calls us to discipline them that they might live for His glory and live under His grace.